It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, but a thunderstorm raged between the sidelines of Sid Luckman Field.
“He’s thunder and I’m lightning,” Thomas Jefferson running back Kendall (Speedy) Thomas said of fellow runner Michael Abanikanda and himself. “He’s the power and I’m the speed. Together we’re thunder and lightning.”
After falling behind 16-0 in the second quarter, Jefferson unleashed a torrent of touchdowns led by the unstoppable rushing attack of Abanikanda and Thomas, scoring 30 unanswered points and upsetting favored Erasmus Hall, 30-24, in a matchup of up-and-down PSAL City Championship division football teams.
Erasmus Hall (3-3) took little time to get on the board, with Shaquell Jackson running the ball into the end zone from 2 yards out on the team’s fourth play from scrimmage just 2:30 into the game. After a potentially demoralizing 76-yard touchdown rush by sophomore Curtis Samuel with 6:27 remaining in the second quarter, Jefferson (2-4) found itself in a huge hole, but not an inescapable one.
“This was a huge win over a huge rival,” Jefferson coach Stephen Edwards said. “After we went down quick, I had to remind these kids that there are four quarters in a football game and they had to play hard every single second. Clearly they responded.”
A 20-yard rush by Abanikanda and two of Erasmus Hall’s five unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on the day put Jefferson in prime position to mount the beginnings of a comeback, and Abanikanda cut the deficit in half with his first of three touchdowns, a 1-yard rush with 3:29 left in the second quarter.
A botched Erasmus Hall punt from its own end zone, landing just feet past the goal line and recovered by Jefferson’s Kharif Pryor for the rare 1-yard punt return for a touchdown, tied the game at 16 with 1:11 left before the half.
“At halftime, Coach pointed out some things that Hall was doing and we made a lot of adjustments on defense,” Abanikanda said.
“We knew they would work, too,” added Thomas.
They sure did, as Jefferson forced a three-and-out, recovered two fumbles, disrupted a punt which forced the punter to take a knee, and recorded an interception on Erasmus Hall’s first five second-half possessions. The sluggish Erasmus Hall offense soon became a frustrated one, as two more unsportsmanlike penalties resulted in the ejection of offensive lineman Mohammed Callahan, putting even more pressure on an already dejected offense.
“If you’re not mentally strong, you have no chance,” Edwards said. “And it was obvious that we were mentally stronger today.”
Surprisingly, Erasmus Hall Danny Landberg agreed with his counterpart’s sentiments.
“It doesn’t matter what they did, when you turn the ball over as many times as we did, it’s impossible to win,” Landberg said. “We were mentally defeated and we acted really immature out there. I don’t even know what to say.”
Whether their opponents were mentally dejected or not, Abanikanda’s 94 yards rushing, 33 yards receiving and three touchdowns were impressive regardless. But instead of singing his own praises, he and his teammates gave all the credit to the “heroes” of the game, the offensive line, led by junior Ebenezer Ogundeko.
“I love those guys, they deserve all the credit,” said Abanikanda while Thomas added: “I’m buying them an all-you-can-eat dinner tonight.”
They already bought Jefferson another week as playoff contenders.