Defense holds strong, serves as catalyst for different type of blowout victory

ith the potent offense not firing at optimum and typical level, Platte County showed another brutally efficient way to frustrate a respectable opponent and still end up with a running clock in the fourth quarter.

Fort Osage found limited success early but didn’t score against the defending Class 5 state champions until the fourth quarter of Friday night’s Suburban Conference White Division matchup at Pirate Stadium. The Pirates pulled away for a 46-7 victory behind a defense allowing just 176 yards of offense despite just one turnover and one sack.

Platte County (3-0) played without senior left guard Michael Poncavage and lost senior running back Adam Gisler during the first quarter to an injury and senior linebacker KJ Stallings around halftime due to illness. The Pirates also missed an extra point early, and senior quarterback Rocco Marriott threw his first two interceptions of the season — both in a dissatisfying first half that included a long touchdown called back for a penalty — while still throwing for two scores and running for another.

“If anything, this was almost good just to kind of face some challenges,” Platte County coach Bill Utz said. “We’ve been on a streak where we’ve games pretty big so to be able to be in a game that forces you to make some plays and forces you to go through some adversity is actually a good thing. Hopefully, this was a bit of a wakeup call, and we clean some of this stuff up.

“We still scored 46 points. The defense played well, and we’ll take this result any time.”

Fort Osage (1-2), entering off a blowout of Belton, suffered a second loss this season to a No. 1 ranked team after losing Week 1 to Class 4 Kearney.

Still at No. 1 in the Class 5 Missouri media poll while garnering all nine first-place votes, Platte County continued to look steady on defense with a deep unit replacing 10 starters from a year ago. The Indians gained 80 yards on their lone touchdown drive, which culminated with a 30-yard touchdown pass from junior quarterback Jonathan Ross to senior tight end Connor Elliott on the second snap of the fourth quarter.

Platte County’s disruptive starting defensive line of seniors Cole Johnson (six tackles, two for loss) and Cale Buntz (five tackles, one for loss) and juniors Brody Hawk (five tackles, one for loss) and Kyler Parker (two tackles, one for loss) even rotated with the reserves more on a hotter-than-normal mid-September night. With Stallings limited due to illness, the Pirates relied heavily on junior linebackers Carlos Baskerville and Hank Fowler, who tied for the team lead with seven tackles apiece.

Fort Osage needed 41 rushing attempts to gain 89 yards with Platte County’s lone sack credited to increasingly disruptive senior defensive end JoJo Wolo, who also made three tackles.

“(Our defensive line) occupy offensive lineman so (the linebackers) have three open gaps to run through, and I love them for it,” said Baskerville, who made one tackle for loss a week after making a career-high 13 tackles in a blowout of Grain Valley. “We’ve got to go back, watch film and just see what we got wrong, all the mental mistakes and see where we can be better”

After a blocked extra point left the lead at 20-0 with 5 minutes, 19 seconds left before halftime, Platte County missed two chances to expand the advantage with Marriott throwing interceptions on two of his next five passing attempts. The first set up Fort Osage at its own 45-yard line, but a pair of penalties doomed the drive. After a punt, Marriott completed a 6-yard pass to senior wide receiver Tres Baskerville and then found senior wide receiver Ty Christopher along the right sideline what appeared to result in an electrifying 91-yard catch-and-run touchdown.

Instead, a holding penalty limited the completion to a 25-yard gain, and Marriott sandwiched two incompletions around a 30-yard scramble into Indians’ territory. On a second and 10 from the 41 with less than a minute to play in the second quarter, a deep pass to senior wide receiver Braiden Stevens, who worked behind the defense, ended up fluttering short and resulted in a second interception that essentially sent the game to halftime.

The stretch ended up the only real blemish for Marriott, who finished 22-for-29 for 260 yards while adding a team-high 61 rushing yards on nine attempts against a defense playing off the run with Gisler limited to just three carries in the first quarter before exiting with the injury.

“Some of this is normal Week 3 scenarios,” Utz said. “You’ve got two weeks of film out there then obviously teams can do a good job of scheming against you and finding things to try and exploit. Fort Osage is extremely well-coached, and we knew they would do some things different and make us adjust.”

Platte County scored on the first three drives of the second half with brutal efficiency.

Marriott engineered a 75-yard drive to open the third quarter, going 4-for-4 passing and capping the march with an 8-yard touchdown throw to senior tight end Brooks Hall, who finished with three catches for 38 yards a week after setting career-highs in both categories while also totaling two scores. The two-point pass failed and left the lead at 26-0, but after a fourth-down gamble from Fort Osage deep in its own territory, the Pirates needed just five plays to score again.

Marriott converted an initial third and 10 with a 22-yard pass to Hall, and senior running back Zach Burch carried on the next two plays, going 15 yards down to the 1 and then bowling into the end zone for his second touchdown of the night. He finished with a career-high 49 yards rushing on nine carries as Gisler’s main backup and doubled his touchdown total after scoring a pair as a junior.

“We love Burch; we love what he does,” Platte County senior left tackle Quinn Lightle said. “He works hard. He’s not always the guy that scores, but today, he was.”

Marriott completed a two-point pass to Tres Baskerville, who led Platte County with eight catches for 100 yards, to extend the lead to 34-0.

Fort Osage then answered with the lone scoring drive against a mix of starters and reserves and then continued to avoid the running clock even after Marriott went 4-for-4 passing on a short 47-yard touchdown drive capped with his 7-yard touchdown run. The two-point pass failed, and the Pirates needed a 16-yard touchdown run from sophomore running back Cassius Guillory on a busted play with 3:08 left in regulation.

The first score of Guillory’s career put the running clock into effect for the remainder of regulation.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to be perfect,” Lightle said. “That’d be great if we were, but making mistakes and putting up a score like that means we can do so much more.”

A year earlier, Fort Osage shortened the game with an efficient rushing attack and ultimately pulled within 28-13 with a touchdown on the final play of the Week 3 matchup. The Indians were one of just three teams to avoid a running clock last year against Platte County and put designs on doing so again.

Fort Osage ran the ball early to set up the pass and converted a pair of initial third-and-longs and then a fourth-and-1 with a power rushing set.

Platte County eventually forced a punt but only after nearly half the first quarter elapsed on a drive that only reached the Pirates’ 42-yard line. The defense settled in from there with a completely revamped secondary limiting Ross to 10-for-21 passing for 87 yards and just 1 yard on seven rushing attempts.

The starting cornerback duo of juniors Jack Johnson (five tackles) and Jordan Moore (one tackle) limited any deep opportunities, while a safety rotation of senior Mogie Walkingstick (six tackles) and juniors Matt Cisco (four tackles, one for loss), Maverick Troncin (four tackles) and Devin Lumm (two tackles) were disciplined against a balanced offense. Troncin returned to the lineup after missing Week 2 with an ankle injury, while Lumm’s strong play to start the season have earned him more snaps.

“For most of the first half of the first drive, I feel like we were shell-shocked by the physicality,” Carlos Baskerville said. “We didn’t expect them to kind of come out and fight like that, so once we got that out of the way, we were golden. Coming into the game, we were expecting a lot, and coming out, we didn’t really get that so it was just a big adjustment, especially on third downs.”

After the initial punt, Platte County showed signs of another explosive offensive performance, going 90 yards in just seven plays. Marriott completed passes to Hall, senior wide receiver Braiden Stevens and Christopher before Gisler ran twice. He galloped 28 yards through the Fort Osage defense for 28 yards and then scored from the 2, his fifth touchdown in three games.

Gisler ended up with just one more carry on the second scoring drive and then appeared only briefly as a decoy on a few plays before coming out of halftime without his shoulder pads and helmet. After his final touch, Marriott hit Tres Baskerville for 23 yards, scrambled for 2 more and then connected with Stevens for a 10-yard touchdown, making him the only one of the Pirates’ top five receivers with a score in each of the first three weeks.

Stevens finished with five catches for 58 yards, while Christopher ended up with three for 43 and only didn’t end up with a touchdown due to the penalty.

“This could have looked differently,” Utz said. “The penalty, those happen, and I’ll give credit to them, especially on the interceptions. The defense they were running closed some windows down, and they did a nice job. It’s part of the game, and we have to adapt and move on from those mistakes. And we did.”

Platte County also continued to use the tight ends with senior Jack Utz catching two passes for 20 yards. However, the Pirates were forced into more passing sets without Gisler and created some difficult defensive looks for Marriott, a third-year starter.

With Poncavage out, Platte County freshman Jayden Horn made a first career start at guard next to Lightle on the left side, while senior center Lucas Dillingham and juniors Reece Moppin (right guard) and Cooper Koenigsfeld (right tackle) were in the opening five for a third straight week. The Pirates gambled on a fourth down on the first possession after taking the two-score lead and turned the ball over on downs.

Stallings (two tackles) then made his first career interception on the fifth play of Fort Osage’s next drive.

Burch made his lone reception for 1 yard on the ensuing play and then ran twice on a six-play touchdown drive, piling into the end zone from 12 yards out to extend the lead to 20-0. He remained the featured back until the fourth quarter when sophomores Guillory, Caleb Hill (one carry, -6 yards) and Brady McDaniel (two carries, -1 yards) all received touchdowns. Paxton Bennett, a sophomore, also took snaps at quarterback and rushed once for 4 yards.

“I take (my leadership) role seriously,” said Lightle, a starter for the majority of his first three seasons after earning a spot as a freshman briefly missing some early time due to injury as a sophomore. “I have to make sure everyone is ready for everything, and I have the best group of guys to do it with. I was incredibly impressed with (Horn). He reminds me a lot of myself, and I love helping him. He’s a great kid, and he’ll have a bright future.”

Fort Osage missed any chance to stay close after gaining only 60 yards of offense in the first half.

Platte County again ended up with a solid list of defensive contributors with senior Cooper Hammontree, junior Nick Fetterman and sophomore Miller Bigus all recording a tackle in the defensive line rotation, while sophomore Boston Wasserman also made a stop at linebacker. The Pirates’ reserves also included junior Noah Omoike (two tackles), senior Kylar Howren (one tackle), sophomore Nolan Sipes (one tackle), sophomore Zachaeus Paxton (one tackle) and sophomore Trey Keraus (one tackle).

Through three games, Platte County’s starting defense hasn’t allowed any points with William Chrisman and Fort Osage both scoring late and Grain Valley’s 23 a week earlier including a safety and two kickoff return scores. The Eagles also scored once on offense for the game’s final points after being down as many as 40.

“We don’t have a ton of depth or as much depth as we maybe had last year, as far as experienced depth,” Bill Utz said. “But the kids who get in there keep doing a good job, even when some of them were put in spots they weren’t expecting. Luckily, there’s nothing major we have to completely revamp, but at the same time, we have kids getting some valuable playing time, and we’re seeing them be willing to take on the challenge when called off the sideline.”

Platte County’s victory pushed the current winning streak to 17, matching the second-longest in program history — equaling a run from 1961-62 and behind only the 52 straight from 2000-2003. The Pirates travel this week to Topeka, Kansas, for a rematch with Washburn Rural, a Class 6A school off to a 2-0 start and receiving votes in the KPreps top five poll.

A year ago, Marriott threw three of his season total of five interceptions against Washburn Rural with Platte County still pulling away for a 49-20.