The last two years, the home stretch has defined the season for the Tyrone football team.
In 2023, the Eagles went 5-1 over their final six games to overcome a 1-3 start and get into the District 6 3A playoffs.
Last season, after beginning the season 2-4, Tyrone won 4 straight games, dominated Forest Hills in the District semifinals, and played for a District championship in November.
This season, however, is different. With the 3A classification as tough as it’s been in years, a strong finish might be enough to make it into the postseason, but what’s just as important is the lead-up to the end.
That begins with Friday’s game at Alumni Stadium in Wingate against Bald Eagle Area in a Laurel Highlands matchup.
BEA enters the game 1-2 coming off its first win of the season last week against Penns Valley, a 21-0 domination that was a statement of the Bald Eagles’ identity. Over 69 plays, BEA asserted its strength in the trenches, running the ball 56 times for 278 yards and all three touchdowns.
That creates an interesting battle of strength on strength with Tyrone, which has shown a penchant for limiting the running game with a solid core of defensive linemen and linebackers who can get to the football.
“We’ve preached all week about how big a game this is and how tough it’s going to be,” said Tyrone coach John Franco. “This is the first of every game the rest of the year being a big game. There are no easy games left on the schedule, not that there were any to begin with.”
Following BEA, Tyrone will host Bellwood-Antis in the Backyard Brawl before traveling to play Bishop Guilfoyle in Altoona. That’s followed by a home game against Huntingdon – which is currently tied at No. 2 in the classification with Penn Cambria, the Eagles opponent the week after playing the Bearcats. That’s followed up with a game against Philipsburg-Osceola – currently the No. 3 team in 3A.
While the Eagles were blessed with a favorable back end of the schedule in 2023 and 2024, that’s not the case this season, but it might not even matter if they can’t take care of business Friday.
Franco has been impressed with Bald Eagles’ running game, which he said used an old-school look to power the ball against the Rams.
“They ran it up and down the field on them,” he said. “It was two tight ends, foot-to-foot splits, and they just powered it with, like, an old power-I backfield. It was impressive.”
Bellefonte broke a couple of big runs against the Eagles to total 168 yards on the ground, but after that Tyrone’s defense limited Westmont Hilltop to 19 yards on the ground before holding Central to 86 last week. It’s a defensive unit that has the muscle and the speed to succeed against the run, but it will get a stiff challenge from the Bald Eagles, who are led by Nick McCulley’s 400 yards on 67 carries. Against Valley, he piled up 175 yards on 28 totes.
Offensively, the Golden Eagles made steps towards achieving Franco’s goal of offensive balance starting with the run in their game against Central. In the first half, they ran for 82 yards and a touchdown and passed for 117 and another score, but things took a turn in the second half, and Franco took some of the responsibility for that. Against a defense that was loading the box to stop the run, he said he was “stubborn,” thinking his team could break a big one.
By the fourth quarter, he went with a screen pass against the pressure, which Caleb Whitby broke for 45 yards and a back-breaker touchdown that made it 21-6.
“Normally, I would have thrown the ball in that situation because we could have made some big plays there,” Franco said. “I was just determined that we still could run the ball. Then, we just got into a bad rhythm.”
When it’s going good, the rhythm of Tyrone’s offense has been impressive, considering all of the skill starters are first-year starters at their positions. Eli Woomer has completed 29 of 53 passes for 557 yards and 5 touchdowns, and Whitby has run for 290 yards on 46 carries. Seven different players have caught passes, led by Mason Emigh’s 6 receptions for 206 yards.
The balance Tyrone strives for will be key against BEA, which suffered its worst loss of the season two weeks ago to Penn Cambria in a game where the Panthers had every aspect of their own offense clicking. Brady Jones passed for 207 yards and 3 touchdowns as the Panthers ran for 197 yards and four more scores in a 47-24 victory.
Tyrone has shown glimpses of that kind of production, but it’s going to need four quarters of it against BEA.
ORANGE AND BLACK 