Cleaner play, better execution helped Bedford football pick up first win

It seemed like an odd moment for a timeout.

With more than five minutes remaining in the first half of Friday night's game, the Bedford High School football team had just picked up a first down on an 8-yard run by Logan Sfeir.

The Bulldogs were on their own 33-yard line, leading Dover by two touchdowns, and getting ready for another first down. There was plenty of time on the play clock, but all of a sudden, Bedford coach Zach Matthews turned to the official closest to him and asked for a timeout with 5:14 left until halftime.

When the teams returned to the field, Bedford was in the same formation, but with its personnel flipped. Quarterback Joe Mikol took the snap, faked a handoff and looked to his right, where the Dover defender bit on the play fake and left Colby Snow alone a good 10 yards from the nearest defender.

Mikol's pass was on the money and Snow sprinted untouched to the end zone for a 67-yard touchdown that helped Bedford picked up a 43-22 win over the Green Wave.

"I told the kids before the play, it was going to be a touchdown if we execute," Matthews said. "In some of our running game, the corner was jumping up a little early, so I knew we were going to have it. We called it to the wide side of the field and I just wanted to run it the other way. We called the timeout just to make sure we were in the right formation to do it. I told him Colby was going to be wide open, he just had to put it on him, and (Mikol) just threw a great ball there."

It was one of four touchdown passes for Mikol, three of which came off a play-action fake. With the Bulldogs (1-1) averaging 5.6 yards per carry for the game, they were able to take advantage of Dover's attempts to slow down the run.

"It’s awesome," Mikol said. "If a team tries to load the box on us, we can throw on them, and if they drop back into coverage, we can run it on them. Our running backs are doing a great job this year. We have three great running backs rotating in. I think our offense is looking very good at this point."

Sfeir (eight carries, 55 yards), Russell Erwin (five, 40) and Owen Christopher (four, 25) combined for 120 of Bedford's 157 yards rushing on the night, as all three gained positive yardage on every attempt. Mikol added 30 yards and two touchdowns rushing, as well, a big change for the Bulldogs' offense from when Matthews took over before the 2019 season.

"As a sophomore, it was very pass driven because I wasn’t comfortable running him because he was a 150 pounds dripping wet," the coach said. "Now, we really worked hard in the offseason. Last year, he had a really good year throwing the ball, but our running game wasn’t where it needed to be. We saw some unfavorable looks. Our focus was building a dominant running game and trying to build something around him."

After turning the ball over and making other mistakes in a season-opening loss to Winnacunnet, the Bulldogs were plus-3 on turnovers against Dover, scoring on the two they got in the first half.

"We knew last week was not a good representation of how we play football," Mikol said. "This week, we came out and our offense was just rolling. Our O-line was doing a fantastic job, they were picking up blocks on every play. Every play we were running was working. Huge improvement from last week."

And improvements were all the Bulldogs made from one week to the next. There were no major changes, just better execution, according to Matthews.

"We just focused on fixing those mistakes," Matthews said. "We didn’t put anything new in. We didn’t do anything different. It was just, hey, let’s get back to what works and fix the mistakes. We feel we’ve got a pretty good football team here if they play the type of football they’re capable of. I think they came out (Friday) and did just that."