Goffstown football charges past Concord in season opener

GOFFSTOWN – Justin Hufft had a simple answer when asked if he’d known his Goffstown High School football team was going to beat Concord by five touchdowns.

No, the Grizzlies coach said, shaking his head from side to side as if to add emphasis.

Goffstown was dominant in all three phases of the game as it rolled to a 42-7 win over the Crimson Tide on Saturday in the Division I opener for both teams.

Connor Bourque went over a hundred yards rushing and scored three touchdowns while Casey Gervais had nearly 300 combined yards of offense to go with two touchdowns passing and one rushing for the Grizzles (1-0).

The defense did its part as well, sacking Concord quarterback Jake Lewis seven times, forcing two turnovers and holding the Tide to just 47 yards in the first half. And the Grizzlies got great returns from Bourque in the kicking game and didn’t allow Concord to break big gains of its own.

“I knew we were well-prepared and that we’ve worked hard,” Hufft said. “We worked hard this season and we were healthy coming into this game, so that helps.

“We played well there (on defense). We have a lot of guys back on defense, so I think we’re ahead of some teams. The kids read their keys and they were able to anticipate plays pretty well, I thought.”

Bourque finished with 103 yards on eight carries and scored on touchdown runs of 65 and 2 yards in the first half. He also had a 75-yard punt return for a score called back on a hold and returned the opening kickoff 67 yards, getting caught from behind at Concord’s 33-yard line.

“The opening kickoff, I thought he was gone, but the guy got an angle on him and tackled him,” Hufft said. “I don’t know if I’ve seen that before. Maybe Bourque is slipping a little, I don’t know. I thought he had it. It’s Connor being Connor. I don’t get tired of it. It’s not as surprising as it used to be.”

Gervais was just as good, running for 80 yards and the game’s first touchdown, a 2-yard plunge with 7:39 left in the first, and the senior was also 11 of 16 passing for 217 yards and two touchdowns. The second of those scoring passes was a 47-yard catch-and-run by Bourque in the third quarter that made it 35-0.

The Grizzlies were able to take that lead despite being penalized 10 times for 100 yards in the first half.

“I’m thankful,” Concord coach Eric Brown said. “I don’t know what would have happened if they didn’t. It would have been a whole lot worse.

“You’ve got to give them a lot of credit. I don’t think we played particularly well in a lot of aspects of the game, but I think a lot of the credit goes to Goffstown. They made us play not very well. We made mistakes. The whole read option that Gervais was effective with, we knew that’s what they were going to do and we thought we had an answer for it. We just didn’t do what we were supposed to do.”

Concord got the ball across midfield just once in the first half, thanks in part to a Goffstown personal foul, but the Grizzlies sacked Lewis on two of the next three plays to push the Tide back across the 50.

Lewis finished the game 8 of 13 for 65 yards, but had minus-45 yards rushing thanks to the sacks and also lost a fumble. Goffstown also held Leo Sudieh to 52 yards on eight carries.

“They have great defensive team speed,” Brown said. “They do a nice job at the point of attack. We have a very similar scheme with running and the read stuff, but they did a really good job of not allowing our linemen off their block and getting to where they needed to go.”

Goffstown made it 42-0 late in the third quarter when Nik Moquin hit Carter Cormier for a 9-yard touchdown. Concord got on the board with 4:09 left in the game when Chris Munnell scored on a 10-yard run.