DUKE CENTER — New Otto-Eldred head football coach Troy Cook had a tall task in the offseason replacing departed starting quarterback Sawyer Drummond. The Big 30 All-Star was the key cog in last year’s AML North Championship team.
But judging from the 2018 season opener, Cook may have found his replacement in Cole Sebastian.
The sophomore had one heck of a debut leading the Terrors to a 34-6 victory over Port Allegany on Friday night. Sebastian finished 17-of-24 for 251 yards with three touchdowns and an interception while also running for 59 yards and another score.
“To tell you the truth we still didn’t really have a guy that pulled ahead in the race,” Cook said about the QB competition. “So we just thought that it was important to name a starter before the first game and we went with Cole. It’s still going to be evaluated on a game-by-game basis. I don’t feel like he did anything to lose the job.”
That’s putting it mildly.
After a slow start marred by a number of blocking penalties, Otto got on the board when Sebastian hit Cameron Magee for a 24-yard strike late in the first quarter.
Magee had quite a performance himself, finishing with seven catches for 105 yards. He also had a kickoff return touchdown that was called back on a penalty.
Sebastian’s other favorite target on Friday was his older brother Chase, who caught two touchdown passes on the night while finishing with five receptions for 94 yards.
While the Terrors played far from a clean game (racking up eight penalties for 77 yards and five fumbles), their clear edge in talent shone through in the end.
“I feel like that’s kind of what we got by on tonight,” Cook said. “We have a lot of skill guys, a lot of guys that can move in space. At some point in the game we let those guys take over.”
The Sebastian brothers led the way in that regard in the second quarter.
Cole made it 12-0 on a nifty 30-yard run. Then, a few minutes later, he found Chase for a 16-yard score to give O-E a 20-0 halftime lead.
The brothers hooked up once again in the third quarter, this time from 25 yards out, to up the lead to 28-0 and essentially seal the victory.
“We have a lot of things to clean up on the line and in the backfield as far as meshes and hand-offs go,” Cook said. “But when you’ve got athletes like Cam Magee and Chris Connelly (four catches, 65 yards) and you can have Cole Sebastian in the backfield, sometimes you can let those guys take over a little bit.”
On the other side of the ball, Port Allegany’s ground-heavy attack wasn’t able to find much room to operate. It took the Gators 46 carries to gain 103 yards, a feat made even more difficult by the fact that they didn’t complete a single pass.
Cook said the Terrors had an inkling of what Port A’s offense was going to look like and planned accordingly.
“We really tried to keep it vanilla on defense this week,” he said. “We knew that we’d probably see some pulling and some misdirection in the backfield, so we didn’t want to throw a lot of blitzes and stunts in. We tried to keep things as vanilla as possible and just following those guards, and it seemed to pay off for us.”
Josh Rees and Deven Smoker were among the only Gators to find much running room, as they finished with 71 and 49 yards, respectively.
Rees finally got Port Allegany on the board midway through the fourth on a five-yard touchdown run.
Otto’s Ethan Smith would add on six more points late in the game on a three-yard run.
The game came to a halt in the third quarter when Port Allegany’s Collin Smith went down with an unknown injury. Smith left the field in an ambulance after being stabilized, though he showed signs of movement while down on the field. No other information was made available regarding his condition.
Otto-Eldred (1-0) will visit Redbank Valley next Friday, while Port Allegany (0-1) will host Keystone.
BY QUARTERS
Port A 0 0 0 6—6
O-E 6 14 8 6—34
TEAM STATISTICS
First Downs: PA 7 O-E 16; Rushes/Yards Rushing: PA 46-103, O-E 33-106; Yards Passing: PA 0, O-E 275; Comp-Att-Int: PA 0-4-0, O-E 18-28-1; Penalties: PA 9-64, O-E 8-77; Fumbles-Lost: PA 3-0, O-E 5-2; Total Yards: PA 103, O-E 381; Offensive Plays: PA 50, O-E 61
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Passing: PA: Trey Ayers 0-4-0; O-E: Cole Sebastian 17-24-251-3-1, Chase Sebastian 1-4-24
Rushing: PA: Josh Rees 17-71-1, Deven Smoker 11-49, Jared Mahon 1-3, Trey Ayers 7- -27, Collin Smith 3-2, Taro Tanaka 4-8, Eli Petruzzi 2- -3; O-E: Chase Sebastian 7-0, Cole Sebastian 11-59-1, Brady Valerius 4-10, Steven Langworthy 2-13, Cameron Magee 3-4, Colton Gietler 1-4, Ethan Smith 3-16-1
Receiving: PA: none; O-E: Chris Connelly 4-65, Brady Valerius 1-6, Cameron Magee 7-105-1, Chase Sebastian 5-94-2, Colton Gietler 1-3, Steven Langworthy 1-2
Scoring summary
First quarter
O-E: Magee 24-yard pass from Cole Sebastian (2-pt conversion failed), 2:35
Second quarter
O-E: Cole Sebastian 30-yard run (2-pt conversion failed), 7:57
O-E: Chase Sebastian 16-yard pass from Cole Sebastian (Magee 2-pt conversion), 2:45
Third quarter
O-E: Chase Sebastian 25-yard pass from Cole Sebastian (Valerius 2-pt conversion), 4:45
Fourth quarter
PA: Rees 5-yard run (2-pt conversion failed), 7:55
O-E: Smith 3-yard run (2-pt conversion failed), 3:08
