Jack Porter snagged two fourth-quarter touchdown passes against South Whidbey. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
They almost made Al Micheals lose his freakin’ mind.
The Coupeville High School football team came within one broken tackle of pulling off its second miracle comeback in three weeks.
But it wasn’t to be, as visiting South Whidbey swarmed Wolf QB Chase Anderson at midfield as time ran out Friday, escaping with a 30-26 win.
The non-conference loss, in which Coupeville rallied to score the game’s final 19 points, drops CHS to 4-2 on the season.
South Whidbey, which is 2-3, retains possession of The Bucket and has won six straight in the Island rivalry series after the Wolves won four of the previous six games.
Two weeks ago, Coupeville, trailing by 21 points with nine minutes to play against Cedar Park Christian-Bothell, stormed back to win 55-49 on a defensive touchdown on the game’s final play.
Friday night, having fallen behind 30-7 with five minutes left in the third quarter, the Wolves needed another epic rally. And got most of it.
Anderson banked a touchdown pass to Davin Houston, with the ball ricocheting off a defender first, to cut the margin to 30-14, before the Wolf defense stiffened.
Jack Porter stuffed South Whidbey’s QB on the next possession, forcing a punt, and Coupeville immediately made the Falcons pay for their failure.
Anderson airmailed a pass to Porter, who snagged the ball, sliced between defenders and was off to the races for a 52-yard touchdown to open the fourth quarter, pulling CHS to within 30-20.
A two-point conversion attempt came up short, but the Coupeville defense was in lock-down mode and got the ball back with a little over six minutes left to play.
Senior Marcelo Gebhard crashed through the Falcon line for a key sack on third down, before freshman Liam Blas denied South Whidbey on fourth-and-15, and there was hope lingering in the prairie air.
Especially when four plays later Anderson and Porter hooked up for another score, this one a 59-yard heave in which the elusive Wolf QB pump-faked the entire defense out of its shoes before lofting a laser.
South Whidbey got a bit of redemption when it blocked the PAT, keeping the lead at four and ensuring Coupeville would need a touchdown and not just a field goal to keep things going.
The Falcon offense, which basically consisted of Cody Redford and Cohan Criswell alternating carries all night, couldn’t score on its final drive, but managed to burn a lot of clock.
While South Whidbey sputtered out on fourth-and-14, with Marquette Cunningham dragging Redford to the turf short of the first down, that left CHS very little time for a final miracle.
Criswell chased down Anderson for a sack as the clock ran dangerously low, setting up one last play with everything riding on it.
Needing to go almost the full length of the field, Anderson got to the left sideline, shedding tacklers and trying to find one final burst of speed.
Crashing hard, he carried several Falcons with him, before the visitors managed to group-tackle the Wolf QB, forcing him out of bounds at midfield and setting off a celebration on the far side of the field.
The wild finale capped a game which started as a shootout, turned into a defensive stalemate, then veered back and forth.
The Wolf defense swarms to the ball.
Redford ran for one score and threw for another to stake South Whidbey to a 14-7 lead at the end of the first quarter, while Anderson netted Coupeville’s first score on a 52-yard run in which he spun several defenders around while busting free on a fourth-down sprint.
Coupeville had a chance to pile up points in the first half but was hurt when back-to-back drives deep in South Whidbey territory ended prematurely thanks to lost fumbles.
One came inside the 20-yard line, the other inside the 35, and stymied the Wolves in a game in which their rivals didn’t have any turnovers.
Neither team scored in the second quarter, with Coupeville getting big-time defensive plays from Hunter Bronec.
The senior stuffed Redford on fourth-and-three to end one drive, while coming up with a crucial sack right before halftime to throw a wrench in another South Whidbey effort.
The Falcons broke through in the third quarter, however, with battering ram Criswell punching in a pair of touchdowns in a two-minute-plus stretch.
Packaged around Coupeville turning over the ball on downs, that put the Wolves in a major hole — one which they almost made it all the way back out of again.
CHS, which has played five of its six games against 1A schools this season, gets a chance to play a fellow 2B school next week when it travels to Adna to face a 3-3 Pirates squad in another non-conference game.
