Salem CC looking to find some offense and a win in Friday morning game against Navy Prep in Annapolis
CARNEYS POINT – The offensive line has been a work in progress all season. The quarterback is learning on the fly. Special teams have been suspect at times. And the defense has kept the team in games.
Sounds a lot like the Philadelphia Eagles right now, doesn’t it? Thing is, that’s the entire Salem CC inaugural season in a nutshell.
The Mighty Oaks are trying to figure out how to create some kind of consistent offense as they hit the final stretch of their season. They play Navy Prep Friday morning in Annapolis and then wrap up at Erie CC in Buffalo.
The Eagles’ trouble is one of their best offensive linemen retired midseason and another was traded away, and they’re now working with a deep backup quarterback as the starter. The Mighty Oaks are just inexperienced in both areas.
“It’s a similar situation,” Mighty Oaks coach Jay Accorsi said of the comparison to the Eagles. “We knew at the beginning of the year we would be hard pressed on the offensive line. With the inexperience of the offensive line, that’s been a little bit of a task.
“I think we knew with the quarterback situation, no matter who it was. The Sussex kids are sophomores. The Erie guys are going to be sophomores. You just can’t make up for that lack of inexperience at that position. It’s not anything against the players. It’s not anything against the coaches. You can’t make up for that lack of experience, and you see it all levels.”
And now the Eagles will be without their quarterback for the rest of the year as Jalen Hurts is on injured reserved for blood clots. Salem, meanwhile, has used six players at quarterback who, even if they were older in age, haven’t any experience at the position on the college level. Jimmy Wilson, who’s played most of the last two weeks, “probably” will draw the start Friday.
“Jalen Hurts is out so when you lose somebody like that you just don’t replace all that,” Accorsi said. “It’s not so much the skill and the athleticism and the play, it’s the experiences … of having done so many different things, to be prepared for whatever you see, whatever occurs, whatever happens. And now you put a bunch of all new players around that position and then you have an offensive line where there’s not a lot of experience, even at the high school level, that’s just a lot of stress.”
The one silver lining to the season is the Mighty Oaks haven’t had any major injury issues this season. They can’t afford to lose any on the offensive line.
While the Mighty Oaks only have statistics available for their first three home games, they were averaging 143.8 yards a game, 74.8 rushing. They had only 42 yards on the ground in getting shut out last week against Sussex and have scored only 14 points in their last three games.
“We’ve got to be more aggressive and pushing on on the offensive side,” Accorsi said. “Not that we’re not doing that, but we don’t have the capability to do that.”
Despite that, the defense has given them every chance to stay in games. One bad quarter cost them at Army Prep. Last week they turned back the Skylanders six times from inside the 25, twice from inside the 10 and once at the 1.
“I guess I’m not surprised, we’ve been doing it all year long,” Accorsi said. “We turn the ball over or we don’t field a punt right or give up a long kickoff return and there’s the defense with their back against the wall but they’ve done a great job all year. I think we’ve got some really good players on that side of the ball , a lot of good players on that side of the ball, so it makes it a little bit easier, and they’ve been a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect the defense to be as good as it is.
“In my mind it was all right if we can be competitive and lose games 40 or 50 to 6 or 7, then we’re competitive and we’re much closer than that. With all the things we’ve gone through offensively to only lose 15-zip (to Sussex). We’ve been within two scores most games all year long. If you would’ve asked me at the beginning of the season I wouldn’t have expected that and I think that’s a big surprise that we’re actually one or two possessions (apart) in a game.”
The Mighty Oaks are 1-5 heading into their final two games of the season against arguably their two toughest opponents of the year. They play a much-anticipated game with Navy Prep at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis Friday, then it’s on to an overnighter to Erie CC the following week to wrap up the season.
Because Navy’s Sprint team plays afterwards and the Midshipmen host North Texas Saturday, the Mighty Oaks’ game is at 11 a.m. with 12-minute high school quarters. They played Army Prep at West Point, making them the only junior college in the country that plays both service academy preps. Accorsi expects the same kind of experience and hoping for a better result.
“I think it’s going to be an awesome experience,” he said. “We’re in a Division 1 stadium. How many times can a junior college players say that; probably not many. We’re playing the second service academy. I thought we did well against Army Prep except for the second quarter. We’re going to have a huge task at hand because they’re really good.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for our players to play, compete. We’ll see if we can keep it close to the end, maybe squeeze out a win. That’s gonna be our goal. I think defensively we can. It’s just a matter of kind of mustering up some offense and taking advantage of it.”