Milford football pounds its way past Lebanon

MILFORD – If Keith Jones thought his Milford High School football team could win games without throwing the football, the Spartans never would.

Perhaps Friday night was a step in that direction.

After its first two – and only – passes were intercepted, Milford didn’t throw another pass, picking up all 248 of its yards on the ground in a 35-14 win over Lebanon in a Division II game.

Four players got a rushing touchdown for the Spartans (4-1), as they were able to shut down the Raiders (3-1) offense for most of the game, thanks to tough defense and some long scoring drives.

“We played tough up front,” Jones said. “We kept them in check. They’ve been pounding people, so we wanted to make sure they didn’t have a chance to pound us.

“The offense, it’s still Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One series we look fantastic, then one series we’ve got second-and-37. We don’t have a 17-yard play. We are grind it out, smash it up and get what we can get. Hopefully, we’re making it third and short.”

Bryce Walker led Milford with 89 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries, while Jahir Romney added 84 yards and a score on 12 carries, and also returned a kickoff 75 yards for a touchdown that Lebanon coach Chris Childs felt was a momentum breaker for his team.

After Lebanon’s offense finally showed some life, scoring on a 51-yard pass from Joseph Flanagan to Ryan Milliken, Romney took the kickoff back to make it a 20-7 lead for Milford.

“If we hadn’t given up that kickoff return before the half, for as bad as we played, we had a chance,” Childs said. “We came back and punched one in real quick in the second half. The momentum was going and we couldn’t seem to get going.”

Milliken finished with 91 yards rushing and a touchdown to go with the only reception of the game.

The game started with the teams trading interceptions on their first drives. Milford was able to turn Lebanon’s turnover into a 3-yard touchdown run by Walker, but the Spartans lined up in the swinging gate and went for two, with the pass falling incomplete.

On the next drive, Milford’s Mark Madigan intercepted Flanagan for a second time, but Max Urda was picked off by Caleb Broughton six plays later. The return – and a personal foul on Milford – gave the Raiders the ball at the Spartans’ 27.

“This is exactly why throwing the football should be illegal,” Jones joked after the game. “I wish I was Knute Rockne, before he invented the forward pass. I wish I was Walter Camp. They never threw the football.”

After picking up a first down, the Raiders went backward, turned the ball over on downs and Milford went on an 8-play, 73-yard drive that ended with Romney’s 5-yard touchdown run.

“We struggled running the ball and they had a nice game plan against us and we didn’t block very well,” Childs said. “They beat us in the trenches. (Jones) didn’t show us anything that we didn’t know was going to come.”

Milliken’s 47-yard touchdown run on the first drive of the second half cut the lead to 20-14, but the Raiders couldn’t get anything going again offensively and the Spartans were able to eat up a lot of the clock.

After a Lebanon punt put Milford back on its own 11, the Spartans went on an 11-play, 89-yard drive that took 5:46, capped by a 1-yard touchdown run by Dustin Post. The drive was highlighted by a 39-yard run by Romney, where he burst out of a pile near the line of scrimmage for the big game, and a 12-yard run by Walker, where he carried a Lebanon player for most of that distance.

The Raiders turned the ball over on downs at midfield, and Milford came back with a 12-play, 49-yard drive that was aided by a Lebanon penalty on fourth down. Madigan ran it in from a yard out to finish out the scoring.

The win helped Milford keep pace in the South Conference with Windham (5-0), which also won on Friday, while Lebanon falls into a tie in the North Conference with Laconia (3-1), which knocked off St. Thomas.

“They’re all huge when you only have eight,” Jones said. “With this whole conference setup, you’ve got to finish second, otherwise you’re done the last week of October. Every week is a playoff week. We prepared this week like it was a playoff week. We want to be playing November.”