An early 7-0 lead wasn’t enough to propel the Fayetteville-Manlius Hornets and their football team to a victory over Nottingham in their first away game of the year. Losing the game 24-13, F-M struggled to stick to the gameplan and couldn’t control the game like they did against Gates-Chili.
Early in the game, the Hornets were feeding off of the positives from the season opener and allowed their running game to complement the strong defense, but, Nottingham pulled them away from that and eventually gained the momentum.
Besides the result, this game was much of the same story for Fayetteville-Manlius, as their offense was more active in the first and fourth quarters, but, Nottingham was able to capitalize on their miscues in the middle quarters.
The player of the game from the first game, Eric Coley, helped the Hornets get out to the early lead with yet another rushing touchdown. The senior’s touchdown accounted for the only points in the first quarter for either team.
Despite the fast start, the Hornets would go on to struggle throughout the second and third quarters, allowing Nottingham to take control of the game. Throughout the middle quarters and even into the fourth, F-M struggled to duplicate the first five quarters of the season on either side of the ball.
Soon after Nottingham cut the Hornet lead to one with the short rush into the end zone, their defense contributed to the efforts to come back by stepping up and intercepting one of quarterback Henry Josephson’s passes, which ended up being a big play in the game. A few plays later, Nottingham executed a 41-yard dart for a touchdown.
The struggles for Fayetteville-Manlius continued in the second half, as Nottingham was able to score two more unanswered touchdowns. Those two touchdowns were two of the plays where F-M’s defense struggled to track the football.
Josephson’s interception came just a few plays into a drive, so, F-M’s defense wasn’t really given an opportunity to take a breather. Plus, they were coming off of a drive where Nottingham ran into the end zone for a 2-yard touchdown right after they aired it out for a gain of 64 yards.
F-M was unable to improve to 2-0, as they lost to Nottingham 24-13 to begin the away portion of their schedule.
