Rebels defense digs in, shuts out Oak Mountain
About the only thing that the Vestavia Hills High School defense did not do on Friday night was score points.
But they did set up a score, a 14-yard dash on fourth down by running back William Schaffeld, early in the first quarter. And that was the only score of the entire game, as the Rebels shut out visiting No. 9 Oak Mountain by a 7-0 score.
On the second play of the game, Vestavia safety Jonathan Hess picked off a pass from Eagles quarterback Connor Webb, putting the home team in business on the Oak Mountain 34-yard line. Five plays later on fourth down and two at the 14, Schaffeld ran around the right side toward the pylon and scored with 9:39 left in the opening quarter.
From that point on, the defensive squads for both teams took over in earnest, with only eight first downs recorded by both sides in the first half. Rebels coach Buddy Anderson played vintage “Buddy-ball,” keeping the ball on the ground with only a few short passes to keep the Eagles guessing. Anderson even pulled one trick straight out of the leather-helmet days when in the second quarter, facing third down and 25 on his own 18-yard line, the man who’s won more games than any other Alabama prep coach called for a quick kick. It worked, as the ball went out of bounds 48 yards downfield.
The offenses only got inside their 20-yard opponents’ 20-yard line twice — but the second time almost changed the game.
Near the midpoint of the final quarter, Vestavia Hills pinned the Eagles on their own one-yard line with a coffin-corner punt that went out of bounds close to the pylon. In the longest drive of the night, Oak Mountain coach Cris Bell — whose own play-calling had been almost as conservative as that of Anderson — opened things up a bit. Webb fired a pair of longer passes, one for 24 yards to Carson Bobo and the other for 25 yards to Ferguson Smith. Add to that a defensive pass interference penalty on Vestavia, and the Eagles marched 95 yards on eight plays, all the way down to the hosts’ 4-yard line.
But on third down Oak Mountain coughed up the ball, and Rebels lineman Devin Stern came out of the pile with the fumble recovery to stop the visitors cold with 4:47 left to play.
The Eagles had one more chance to pull out the win, driving to the Vestavia 30-yard line on the final possession. But with just six seconds left on the clock, Webb’s Hail-Mary pass was picked off by Rebs safety Spencer Lawson in the end zone; he then ran the ball out as the clock ticked down to zero.
“Our defense played great. I’m so proud of them,” Anderson said. “We capitalized when we got the break, and we moved the ball enough to eat up the clock.”
Bell said that his counterpart showed a stack up the middle, which the Eagles had seen elsewhere but not from Vestavia, and his team couldn’t adjust.
“He [Anderson] had a far better game plan than we did,” Bell said. “We just didn’t do a good enough job adjusting. We were unable to handle the three interior linemen. But at the end of the day, we turned the ball over too many times.”
Oak Mountain had four turnovers, three on interceptions and the fourth on the fumble that squelched the long drive late.
Schaffeld was the main man in the Vestavia ground game, though his stats weren’t stellar; he ran 20 times for 44 yards, though he was dinged for a minus-15 play when he recovered the fumble on a bad snap. In fact, the Vestavia offense barely went the length of the football field, gaining 75 yards rushing and 39 passing for a total of 114 yards. Oak Mountain fared somewhat better, with 116 yards on the ground and 128 in the air, but the stats advantage didn’t convert to points.
Webb was 11-of-17 passing for the visitors, but threw three interceptions. The Rebels’ Coleman Petway was 4-of-9 for 39 yards.
Vestavia Hills (1-2, 1-1 region) gets its first win, and will travel to Huffman next week. The Eagles (3-1, 1-1 region) host Thompson, which defeated Mountain Brook on Friday.