Friday Night Lights IX: it's a heart-stopper!

The helmets were held high following the game tonight.

An ending for the ages! Something we haven't seen at B-B-E on the gridiron in 28 years of B-B-E football. Straight outta crazy town! I may never see this at B-B-E as long as I live.

Trailing 19-14 as the final minutes approached in the fourth quarter, the B-B-E Jaguars football team got a badly-needed defensive stop right as it appeared as though Lester Prairie/Holy Trinity was about to put the game away. The Bulldogs had first down on the B-B-E 17-yard line. Here's how it played out: loss of two yards on run play, incomplete pass, a pass reception for five yards...on fourth-and-seven, Kyle Felling made a great defensive play to bring another incomplete pass.

*Here's a short video clip from the middle of the second quarter, where the Jaguars turned back an LP/HT drive; the Bulldogs had a fourth down play on the B-B-E four-yard line:


Even so, the odds were not in B-B-E's favor with possession of the ball on their own 15-yard line. Their offense had sputtered most of the night, and they had just five minutes and eight seconds on the clock to cover 85 yards. From the start of the game up to that point, the Jaguars had just 158 yards of offense. Here's what happened next:

1st-and-10: Tanner Heinsius reception for six yards
2nd-and-4: Heinsius run for six yards
1st-and-10 on the 27: Heinsius converts again with a 14-yard gain
1st-and-10 on the 41: Sidney Shacter got out ahead of the defense and caught a perfect pass from Ryan Illies to set up the Jaguars at the Bulldogs 28-yard line!! If you're keeping track, that catch was good for 31 yards.

From the 28-yard line, the Jaguars converted again to get a first down on the LP/HT 12-yard line. Things were looking GREAT with just over three minutes of game left.

At that point, the unthinkable happened: a lost fumble recovered by LP/HT at their own 10-yard line. The clock had just 3:11 on it. Not good!

LP/HT proceeded to convert one first down on third-and-seven, and from there they burnt three seconds shy of two minutes of game time. The Bulldogs were held to fourth down and 13 yards to go. At that point they punted from their own 22-yard line with 44 seconds on the clock after gaining just 12 net yards of offense on six plays.

The Jaguars got a nice punt return from Heinsius of about 20 yards and had the ball on the LP/HT 42-yard line. That was the good part. The bad part: just 34 seconds were on the clock.

Fast forward to under 10 seconds to go, and Kyle Felling ran in a 13-yard touchdown reception with 4.4 seconds left! The two-point conversion was caught by Heinsius in the left flats for a final score of 22-19. Felling's historic catch came on third-and-10, on which the ball was snapped with 10.0 seconds to go. Felling ran a route to the right and evaded numerous Bulldogs before leaping across the goal line just inside the right pylon. LET ME TELL YOU! NFL players have nothing on Felling for his dramatic catch, run and score.

Making it even crazier: Ryan Illies threw the game-winning pass under duress, right as he was getting knocked to the ground.

Coach Langer reminding his kickoff team that "the game is not over yet" following the game-winning touchdown.

On the final play of the game, LP/HT's quarterback rolled out to pass, but he was chased down and sacked as the clock expired. It was an incredible and stunning turnaround in the final minute after the Jaguars trailed 12-7 at halftime and then fell behind 19-7 with seven minutes left in the third quarter. When the dust settled, they added 114 yards of offense to their stats in the final five minutes of the game. When all was said and done, the Jaguars had 272 yards of total offense compared to 229 by LP/HT. The passing stats were nearly identical (just one yard different), but the Jaguars out-rushed the Bulldogs by a 162-to-118 margin.

**Posted on Thursday morning...I couldn't keep this one wrapped any longer. Please share this link through e-mail and social media and allow others to watch the exciting ending. The first minute of this clip is quite a thrill to watch!!!!
http://bbejaguars.blogspot.com/2015/10/friday-night-lights-ix-its-heart-stopper.html



Next is a game at undefeated Minneapolis North on Tuesday, October 20 in the section semifinals. They had a first-round bye. From the information I've read, the game has a 3 p.m. kickoff. I do know we are making an effort to move the kickoff time to 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock.

In the other two quarterfinal games of Section 4A:
Mayer Lutheran 28, Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg 6
Upsala/Swanville Area 52, Kimball Area 7

Area football playoff scores on October 14:
Holdingford 21, Melrose Area 20 (quite the border battle! Section 6AAA)
Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City 25, Eden Valley-Watkins 20 (Section 5AA; nice job, Falcons!)
Sauk Centre 37, Osakis 16 (Section 5AA)
Paynesville Area 64, Benson 35 (Section 5AA)
Maple Lake 31, Norwood-Young America 6 (Section 4AA)
Montevideo 21, Litchfield 17 (Section 6AAA)
New London-Spicer 32, Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta 14 (Section 6AAA, Wildcats win at Big Cat Stadium in Morris)