If Greg Manos ran a restaurant instead of coaching the St. Joseph by the Sea football team, the menu would likely be very limited. None of this nouveau fusion stuff. Caviar? Yeah right. There would be meat, there would be potatoes and there would be a line around the corner to get in.
On the football field, Manos doesn’t utilize any trick plays and quarterback Joe Lane rarely throws the ball. The Vikings run the ball, a lot. They force-feed opponents Lyle McCombs and Andrew Armato until they are stuffed.
“We only run four base plays, but we just keep playing,” senior offensive lineman Dom DiBiase said. “We just make people give up when we play them.”
On Sunday in Huguenot the senior running backs combined for 475 yards and five touchdowns en route to a 39-17 pasting of Chaminade in a CHSFL Class AAA game.
“This is by far the best St. Joe’s team I’ve seen,” Chaminade coach Stephen Boyd said. “They run a very effective running game out of that wedge. The one thing I give Coach Manos credit for is that he sticks to it, believes in it and they’re going to run it and run it.”
McCombs, on this day, was the star. He carried the ball 34 times for 268 yards and four TDs, including a 79-yard score up the middle on Sea’s second play from scrimmage.
“If you saw the first touchdown, I didn’t get touched,” McCombs said. “The offensive line wiped out everybody and I just ran. The offensive line is unbelievable.”
Usually undersized against every opponent, the Sea offensive line is physical, quick and most importantly, effective.
“I thought they were a very physical football team, the most physical team we’ve seen all year,” Manos said. “I think our guys stepped up to the test, Lyle was Lyle and did what he had to do to take over the game. I think the offensive line did a wonderful job and once again the defense really stood tall.”
St. Joseph by the Sea (4-0, 4-0 CHSFL ‘AAA’) scored on its first four possessions and led 25-3 late in the second quarter. But after Lane scored on a 2-yard quarterback sneak, Matt Clarkson took the ensuing kickoff back 95 yards for a touchdown to breathe some life into the Flyers.
Chaminade (2-3, 1-3) stopped the Vikings on their first possession of the second half and Mike Ehrhardt made a stunning catch in the front corner of the end zone for a 21-yard touchdown and suddenly the Flyers had cut their deficit to 25-17 with 2:15 left in the third quarter.
The visitors had the momentum, but there was no panic in senior-laden Sea.
“I just told the offensive line to keep playing, keep doing what we’re doing,” McCombs said. “We do a good job of playing football in the future. We just have to keep playing and things will work themselves out.”
What followed was a Manos’ specialty, a 14-play, 67-yard drive that ate up nearly 10 minutes off the clock, included three third-down conversions and a 3-yard touchdown by McCombs, who also scored on the 2-point conversion to put the Vikings in front, 33-17, with 7:57 left in the fourth quarter.
“We didn’t make any plays early, which hurt us, and they did,” Boyd said. “When we needed to make a stop we didn’t. They won on both sides of the ball.”
Three plays later, Nick Barber picked off Chaminade quarterback Marc Anthony Parrino and McCombs tacked on a 1-yard TD run to secure another blue-collar victory for Sea, which stunned St. Anthony’s, 28-24, in South Huntington, L.I. on Sept. 25.
It was a win that opened up eyes around the league and have solidified Sea’s spot as a legitimate contender for the title.
“That was a big win for us, but we’re a mature team,” DiBiase said. “We enjoyed 24 hours after that win, but we knew we had to go back to work because we still had the whole season left to go. That wasn’t the championship game.”