If the Pennsylvania offense is looking for a theme song for next Saturday’s 40th annual Don Raabe Big 30 Charities Classic football game, they can choose between “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins or “It’s No Secret” by Jefferson Airplane.
Armed with the most prolific quarterback duo in Big 30 history statistically, Pennsylvania is going to throw the ball, New York knows Pennsylvania is going to throw the ball and Pennsylvania knows New York knows they’re going to throw the ball.
“It’s a pretty safe assumption we’ll throw the ball,” said Jason Luther, offensive coordinator from Port Allegany. “We want to stay balanced, but with our style of offense we’ll take what they (New York) give us. Honestly, it (pass-to-run ratio) will be about 60-40. There are some rules in the Big 30 that lend themselves to score points and hopefully we can take advantage of those. I’ll call the game just like I called it all last year depending on the situation.”
Port Allegany’s Matt Bodamer and Warren Area’s Austin Jerman have amassed 15,296 career yards and 185 passing touchdowns between them.
Bodamer owns four PIAA state records with 10,948 career yards, 137 career passing TDs, 13,263 career total yards, 3,951 single season passing yards (2012), and last year tied the state record with 52 touchdowns in a season.
Jerman has only started at QB for two years, but the Dragon signal-caller threw for 48 TDs and a Warren County record 4,348 career yards.
“Matt (Bodamer) can read a defense as well as any quarterback I’ve ever coached,” Luther stated. “He has a great understanding of what defenses look like at this level. Austin (Jerman) is very athletic, throws a great ball and has a good touch.
“Austin is more of a runner and Matt is more of a passer. They are both very calm back there and it is a great combination at quarterback.”
Both of these outstanding QBs will see familiar faces when the offense huddles as two Gator receivers are teamed with Bodamer and Jerman has a huge target in the 6-5 Mark Davis (Warren).
“We had a switch on the offensive line and now Rex Windsor (Port Allegany) is going to snap to Matt,” said Mike Bodamer, the Pennsylvania head coach from Port. “Nick (Conway) and Tyce (Miller) are with Matt, and we put Rickie (Bova) with Austin to help those kids because Rickie knows the offense. Warren ran a similar spread offense, so they know what we’re doing. We just had to scale it down a bit.”
Although it remains to been seen how many touches they’ll get, the Keystone tailbacks are no slouches either.
“Caden Whitman (Coudersport) is healthy for the first time in a couple of years and he has great vision between the tackles,” Luther offered. “John Pascuzzi (Eisenhower) is just a bull. Both kids understand this a pass-heavy offense, but they’ll get their shots.”
New York head coach Chad Lyter (Allegany-Limestone Central) has a pretty good inkling of what to expect on the Parkway Field artificial surface.
“If I was going to guess their (Pennsylvania) pass ratio, I would say 75-to-25 or 80-to-20,” Lyter surmised. “The plan is: we’re just going to try to stop them. We put some speed over on defense, but if we have a weakness, it’s our secondary speed. We’ll try to cover them and do the best we can.”
Lyter admitted he hasn’t seen Jerman play, but he’s read the book cover-to-cover on Bodamer.
“Bodamer is so accomplished for a high school quarterback,” Lyter noted. “He’s played with those receivers since…I don’t know. Birth? It’s going to be difficult for us with their familiarity with each other.
“Most of our secondary has never played in a 4-3,” Lyter continued. “It’s not so much the formation, but the alignment limits what we can do defensively. Our secondary can’t be up tighter than the linebackers, so that takes away our ability to keep the receivers on the line of scrimmage.”
Lyter said the Empire Staters will rely on defensive stalwarts like Pete Trathen (Southwestern) at linebacker, Chris Harris (Wellsville) at defensive tackle, Jarred Martin (Olean) in the secondary and his own Josh Harrington (A-L), who is a middle linebacker by trade who is playing in the secondary because of his speed.
“They’ll all have to play big for us to win,” Lyter predicted. “We’ll try to slow them (PA) down and hope our offense hangs onto the ball. I joked the other day we’re going to call all eight timeouts and throw the ball every down until one in the morning. I just hope we can keep them under 100 points.”
