Still things to fix, but Raiders easily take care of business

MEDFORD 43, MERRILL 0

The drive toward perfection head coach Ted Wilson often talks about isn’t near completion, as evidenced by the mistakes made in Friday’s first half, but the fact the Medford Raiders were able to still end the half with a 28-0 lead and eventually beat Merrill 43-0 may be a sign of what the team can become in the last two-thirds of the regular season.

The second half wasn’t played until a lightning delay of two hours and 20 minutes ended at 10:20 p.m., but it went by quickly as the Raiders quickly extended their lead to 36-0 in the third quarter to put the running clock into effect and get the game done at 11 p.m.

The win put Medford at 1-0 in the Great Northern Conference and 2-1 overall as it heads into the middle third of the nine-game regular season schedule. The Raiders are at 0-3 Lakeland on Friday.

Against Merrill, the Raiders seemingly took a step backward for every step forward on offense until they scored three touchdowns in the last five minutes of the first half to break the game open.

“It was very shaky at first,” senior co-captain Tucker Kraemer said. “For almost the full first half, we were playing against ourselves that’s all it was. We knew going into this game that we’re a better team. I mean Merrill came out and fought. But we knew we were a better team. It was a matter of just getting our heads into it. That’s a lot of what it is. It’s little things again. It’s always little things. It was very flat to start, but obviously we came out on top of the roller coaster.”

The defense, however, was stout throughout, allowing only a little bit of first-half movement by Merrill while collecting its first shutout of 2022.

“Overall, I thought our run defense did very well,” Wilson said. “The kids played well. They read their keys well and flowed to the ball. They have a big running back (Nathan Brzoznowski) and I thought we did a good job of rallying to the ball when he got it and working together to make good tackles.”

Penalties and snap issues slowed the offense down in the early going, but the defense gave the Raiders their first break midway through the opening quarter. Merrill got into Medford territory behind a 32-yard completion from Brian Ball to Logan Pagels but three plays later on third and nine from the 39, Ball threw an errant pass behind Pagels that Kraemer easily intercepted and returned 43 yards to Merrill’s 25. Tukker Schreiner ran for 21 yards on the next play and scored from a yard out two plays after that to put the Raiders up 6-0 with 4:50 left in the quarter.

“I read what the quarterback was doing, (the receiver) came in motion, so I bumped to him,” Kraemer said, “When the ball was coming I don’t know if the receiver even saw it. It was right in the bread basket.”

The offense sputtered on its next two drives with the second ending in an interception by Merrill’s D’Ondre Houghton on the third play of the second quarter.

The Blue Jays took over on Medford’s 46 and ground their way behind Brzoznowski to the 14 before stalling on downs. Two plays later, Raider Peyton Gilles blew through a huge hole on the right side, made one man miss downfield and sprinted to an 87-yard touchdown that, combined with Logan Baumgartner’s two-point run, pushed the lead to 14-0 with 4:51 left in the half.

“Shout out to Aiden Gardner, I felt like him on that play,” Gilles said of the Raiders’ top rusher from 2020 and 2021. “That’s what it felt like breaking it out, I thought ‘is this what Aiden feels like?’ It was good blocking by my line. I wasn’t playing super great. I just came through one hole and it was super wide open. I give the line all the credit. That was all them.”

“That was just a straight trap,” Wilson said. “One of their players the trap block is supposed to get ran himself way out of the way, which made it a lot easier. Plus, Cole Dassow got a really nice block out on the edge to spring Peyton loose. It was well blocked by the line and our wide receiver.”

Merrill shanked a punt on the ensuing three-and-out possession to give Medford a short field. The Raiders overcame a chop block penalty to score on that drive, thanks mainly to a 37-yard reception by Charlie Kleist, who tiptoed down the right sideline to haul in the third-andlong pass from Baumgartner at the 13. Two plays later, Schreiner scored from 7 yards out and Gilles ran in the two-pointer for a 22-0 lead with 1:53 left in the half.

The Raiders got another quick stop while burning timeouts to keep 1:07 on the clock when they got the ball back on Merrill’s 40 after Kraemer’s 38-yard punt return.

“That was beautiful,” Kraemer said. “I caught it and I saw a guy just kind of jogging at me. I knew he wasn’t going to get me, so I went left and just being a running back, I saw a cutback lane (to the right) and went that way.”

On second down, Baumgartner hit Kleist for 24 yards on an out route to the left. On the next play, Baumgartner scrambled to right right and found Kleist for a 16yard touchdown with 47 seconds left to widen the lead to 28-0.

Wilson said the coaches expected the passing game would improve and three games in, it’s gotten incrementally better. Wilson said the goal remains to call somewhere around 10-15 pass plays per game with the personnel the Raiders have.

“Ideally, you’d like to throw 1020 times and complete 60 to 70% of those,” Wilson said. “It’s about throwing the ball effectively and efficiently.”

After the long delay, Medford opened the second half with a quick stop and then a quick touchdown drive. The Raiders overcame another penalty on the drive, scoring on Baumgartner’s 37-yard touchdown pass to Kraemer. The play started with a bobbled snap and the pass to the left side was nearly intercepted by Bradyn Pieper. But once Kraemer turned around after the catch, there was nothing but green in front of him.

The game turned into a battle of reserves after that. Sophomore Parker Lissner capped a 43-yard scoring drive by Medford with a 5-yard touchdown run with 1:27 left.

Lightning delays haven’t been an uncommon occurrence for Medford in recent years, but in most cases, the Raiders have gotten their games completed, which, obviously, is a best-case scenario.

“We want to play football,” Wilson said, giving credit to the officials for their decisions as to when to pull everyone off the field and how they allowed play to continue when the storms moved away. “The kids want to play football. It was good that Merrill was willing to stay. I don’t think anyone wants to come back the next day and finish it.”

“We sat in the hallway and in the locker room, listening to music, watching TikTok, dancing, just trying to keep the energy up,” Kraemer said. “Because being in the locker room that long, it sucks. It really does when you want to just finish the game.”

Medford finished with 373 total yards, including 259 on the ground and 114 through the air. Gilles finished with 137 yards on 11 carries, while Schreiner added 60 on 13 attempts. Kleist caught three passes for 77 yards and Baumgartner was four of eight with one interception.

“I feel like we’re taking a lot of good steps forward,” Gilles said of the team’s offense. “I think we’re doing a lot better. Week one we didn’t do super great, but week after week we’ve been getting better. We can keep this rolling here. I honestly think we can.

“Obviously we don’t want first quarters like this,” he added. “That was not a good performance by us. A lot of mistakes, a lot of flags. We made a lot of mistakes. We have to keep moving forward and try to minimize those mistakes.”

With Braxton Weissmiller (l.) and Riley Brandner blocking behind him, Medford’s Peyton Gilles breaks a tackle on Medford’s first drive of Friday’s win over Merrill.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS