Archbishop Wood rolls past Allentown (N.J.) in season opener

For the first quarter of Archbishop Wood’s 2015 season opener, the Vikings were in a close game.

With the game tied at 14 with 5:30 left in the first quarter the Viking preceded to score 48 unanswered points as they left William Tennent High School with a 62-21 win over the visiting Allentown (N.J.).

Wood enters this season having some questions at key positions on the offense after it lost the programs leading rusher in Jarrett McClenton, fullback Alex Arcangeli, wide receiver Justin Rubin and offensive lineman Ryan Bates.

“Our offseason was huge, losing all those guys,” Wood quarterback Anthony Russo said. “We had a bunch of transfers come in, a couple of young guys stepping up. We would just meet before film and before lifting to go over routes and stuff like that.”

For a team that had a lot to replace, it didn’t miss a beat. Senior quarterback and Rutgers commit Russo had an efficient night passing for 8-for-12 306 yards and five touchdowns in a little more than a half of work leading his troops up and down the field.

“We know that a lot of schools know us as a running team and they like to pack the box,” Russo said. “With the receivers that we have in James Gillespie and Mark Webb and Jordan Johnson those kind of guys, we know we just got to get the ball into the playmakers hands. We want to be able to stretch teams out that way the run game is going to open again.”

The Viking offense got off to fast start. The offense didn’t even get its first play until 10:34 left in the first with score tied at 7-7 as Joe Davis took the opening kick off back 79 yards for a touchdown.

Wood’s first offensive play was equally as successful as Russo connected with Mark Webb for a 58-yard touchdown. The Vikings had six first half touchdowns on drives of zero, one, three, five, six and one plays.

Defensively Wood had a little trouble early in the game adjusting to the Redbirds up-tempo spread offense as they put together back to back scoring drives in the first quarter that went 71 yards in five plays and 81 yards in 14 plays.

The Viking defense would put the clamps on the Allentown offense in the second half as Wood didn’t allow the Redbirds to score again until the game was way out of reach late in the fourth quarter.

“We didn’t know too much about this team so it was kind of a new dynamic to us,” Wood coach Steve Devlin said. “They come out, run no huddle and some different sets we aren’t used to caught us off guard and some of it was inexperience, but once we settled in and once we started doing our jibs and our assignments we got better.”

Devlin is usually critical of his team even after big wins but Wood should feel good about its Week One performance as not a lot of teams have that kind of polish early in the season.