Although the Purple & White racked up over 400 yards of total offense, picked up 25 first downs, ran 77 offensive plays to Zanesville’s 41, and controlled the ball for nearly 30 minutes of time on the game clock, the stubborn Blue Devils still had the ball on their own 33-yard line with 7:08 left in the game with a chance to pull off an upset.

But the Chieftain defense stiffened and forced a Zanesville punt before the offense ran out the game’s final 5:15 with a terrific 14-play, ball-control drive to escape with a 16-14 victory.
 
The good news for the Chieftains, in addition to remaining undefeated (6-0 overall, 2-0 in the Southeastern Ohio Athletic League), is that when the OHSAA computers figure out playoff points, neither margin of victory nor style come into play… it all comes down to whether you chalk a “W” or an “L.”

And getting away with that “W” will suffice for now.

“I kept thinking back to that USC game last night,” said Logan coach Dale Amyx. “You leave (the Blue Devils) in it long enough, it’s a two-point game there at the end, and I’m thinking ‘they have a pretty good kicker’ if they get the ball back. He could nail a long field goal.”

His thoughts were of Oregon State’s 27-21 college football upset of the top-ranked Southern California Trojans on Thursday night — a classic example of the “what can happen on any given night” theme if there ever was one.

“Zanesville’s a good team. I knew that when I saw the film,” Amyx noted. “I thought they would be one of the best teams we would play this year, and the score is indicative of that. They have a good football team and they’re going to win some more football games.”

The Blue Devils (2-4 overall, 1-2 SEOAL) have lost to quality competition — Licking Valley, Wheeling Park (W.Va.), Chillicothe and, now, Logan.

While they came to Logan Chieftain Stadium with a solid game plan and made it work — they took away some of the things that have made the Purple & White so successful this fall — it still came down to one key thing: the Chieftains made too many mistakes deep in Zanesville territory.

Logan turned the ball over three times and quarterback Patrick Angle was sacked on three occasions with his team inside the red zone (the Zanesville 20-yard line) that kept the Chieftains from scoring.

“I think a lot of our wounds tonight were self-inflicted,” Amyx said. “When we get inside the red zone, we just have to score.”

Right off the bat, the Chieftains drove from their own 20 to the Zanesville 5 and had a sure touchdown pass dropped in the end zone on second down. Two plays later Amyx rolled the dice and went for six points on fourth-and-four, and Angle was sacked for an 11-yard loss to finish the drive.

“I’ll take (the blame for) that one,” Amyx said. “We probably should have kicked a field goal. I have a lot of confidence in these kids. I thought we could (score) and we didn’t.”

After holding the Blue Devils to a three-and-out on the next series, the Chiefs again drove to the ZHS 5, but this time a holding penalty ultimately took them out of touchdown range. Ronnie Burcham booted a 29-yard field goal on the second play of the second period to put the Chieftains ahead.

Mason Mays picked off a pass on the next play from scrimmage and an Angle-to-Mays 45-yard pass play got the ball to the Zanesville 5. One play later, however, Angle was sacked for an 18-yard loss and Zanesville forced and recovered a fumble.

Then, after Logan’s Ralph Robinson recovered a Zanesville fumble near midfield, the Chieftains drove still again deep into Blue Devil territory.

They had a 41-yard scoring pass from Angle to Jaushua Huntsberger called back on a penalty, but eventually got the score back when Angle hit Mays in the left flat. Mays made a one-handed catch and went 16 yards to paydirt and a 10-0 lead with 5:32 remaining in the first half.

Zanesville, which only crossed midfield once in the first half — and that was on the fumble that Robinson picked out of midair — got a huge break when the Chiefs fumbled the second-half kickoff and the Blue Devils recovered on the Logan 28.

Two plays later, Zanesville’s Kyle Gladden scored on a 15-yard run and it was a 10-7 ballgame.

“That was (a) soft turnover. We fumble the kickoff return and, bam, two runs and they’re in,” Amyx said. “We’re going to have to work on that mind-set, but it’s hard to drill that situation in practice. That’s twice we’ve done that (Pickerington North scored in a similar fashion at the outset of the second half of a game a month ago), turned the ball over in the red zone and let (the other team) score in a couple plays.”

But the Chieftains quickly got that touchdown back. Facing third-and-four from his own 38-yard line, Angle threw deep down the left side toward senior Zach Adams. When a Zanesville defender went for the interception and missed, Adams made the catch and went the distance to complete what proved to be the game-winning, 62-yard touchdown play.

Logan missed the extra point but led 16-7 less than two minutes into the third period.

Moments later, Logan once again drove to the Zanesville 5-yard line but Angle was sacked and then intercepted by Zanesville’s Wesley Tandy, who would have brought the pick back 91 yards for a touchdown except that Angle brought him down by his shoelaces at the Zanesville 41.

The Blue Devils pulled within 16-14 less than a minute into the final stanza when quarterback Cole Hudson hooked up with wide receiver Michael Lynn on a 45-yard scoring pass down the left sideline, and it looked like the Chiefs were in trouble.

The Chieftains wound up maintaining possession of the ball for 9:17 of the game’s final 12 minutes, limiting Zanesville to just one first down before forcing the Blue Devils into a punt and taking over at their own 24 with 5:15 remaining.

Though what followed wasn’t exactly Logan’s vintage grind-it-out ground attack, the Purple & White steadily drove the ball downfield, with Angle or Clay Morgan running the ball 10 times in all, as the clock steadily drained.

Zanesville called all three of its timeouts towards the end in an effort to hold off the Chieftains, but Angle converted a fourth-and-one-foot QB sneak for a first down at the Zanesville 20 with a little over a minute to play and Logan ran out the clock.

“That was our drive to win the game,” Amyx said. “If you’re going to win a championship, you have to be able to do that somewhere down the road. We did it tonight.

“But we did it (ran out the clock) out of the spread,” he added. “The spread is what we are and that’s how we move the ball.”

Angle threw the ball 31 times (completing 16 for 242 yards) and ran the ball 31 times (for a team-high 84 yards), meaning he was fully involved in 62 of the Chieftains’ 77 offensive plays. Adams (84 yards) and Mays (77) both had four catches and a touchdown.

Fortunately for the Chieftains, Zanesville matched Logan’s three turnovers and only managed 172 yards of offense — 84 rushing and 88 passing — and over half of those passing yards came on the Blue Devils’ fourth-quarter touchdown pass.

“We didn’t show up for a couple (defensive) plays, but we played lights-out defense otherwise,” Amyx said.

The Chieftains play three of their final four games on the road, starting with next Friday’s SEOAL contest at Marietta, which dropped a 35-28 decision to Jackson on Friday night.

“We can use this game to motivate and get mentally ready,” Amyx said. The victory “is the main thing, but we definitely have some things we have to address.”

Read More in the Logan Daily News.