Defense forces five turnovers as Bedford football blanks Nashua South

NASHUA - Every offense has an off night over the course of a season.

Luckily for the Bedford High School football team, the defense was up to the task Friday night against Nashua South.

The Bulldogs forced five turnovers, held the Panthers to under 70 yards in each half and kept them out of the end zone in a 42-0 win in a Division I game at Stellos Stadium.

Bedford's defense sacked South quarterback Dante Young five times, with three resulting in lost fumbles recovered by the Bulldogs, the last of which knocked Young from the game. The Panthers managed just 127 yards on offense and got inside the Bedford 30-yard line twice.

"The defense came to play and we needed them, offensively," Bedford coach Derek Stank said. "We were happy with the way they got after the quarterback and put pressure on them. To be able to get in there, and not only get to the guy, but cause the ball to come out, those are big moments in a football game. Those sudden-change moments that are hard to respond from sometimes from the other team."

The turnovers helped give the Bulldogs (6-0) great field position all night, as they averaged the South 47-yard line as the starting point for each possession. That made up for a tough night for the offense, which gained 225 yards, including just 91 in the first half.

South (2-4) was able to contain Bedford's inside running game, limiting Ryan Toscano to 55 yards on 13 carries, although the senior back was able to find the end zone twice. The Bulldogs did more damage on outside rushes, with Harrison LeGoullon gaining 30 yards and a touchdown on five carries to go with a 10-yard touchdown reception from Thomas Morgan.

Morgan finished 4 of 11 passing for 27 yards and two touchdowns, as he also connected with Solomon Sanchez for a 3-yard scoring pass late in the third quarter that made it 28-0. On the play, Morgan was surrounded in the backfield by three Panthers but was able to heave a left-handed pass to Sanchez for the score.

"I think we’re able to handle adversity because of the playmakers we have on the offensive side of the ball," LeGoullon said. "We did shoot ourselves in the foot few times. We’ve got playmakers on the outside and playmakers on the inside, solid linemen that can open up holes."

Jaylan Pacheco led the Panthers with 33 yards rushing, but needed 19 carries to do so, as South ran 42 times and gained 97 yards, an average of 2.3 yards per carry. Young finished 8 of 10 passing for 30 yards.

It was the second time this season South has been shutout, and in the Panthers' last three games, they've averaged just 4.7 points per game. In their first three games, the Panthers scored an average of 39.7.

"We can’t give a good team a short field all night," South coach Scott Knight said. "I don’t know how many times we had the field tilted, we just could not get out of our end. We had a couple of turnovers down here again. The kick return right out of the gate, that wasn’t great. I thought we held it down at times pretty good, but we weren’t going to hold them all night. Not like that. It just caught up with us."

Lucien Mumpini set Bedford up with great field position to open the game, returning the kickoff 66 yards to the South 22-yard line. Four plays later, Morgan connected with LeGoullon on a short pass toward the sideline, and the Bedford tight end broke a tackle at the 5 and rumbled his way into the end zone.

After the teams traded punts, Bedford forced the game's first turnover, as Christian Bourgeois sacked Young, forcing a fumble that was recovered at the South 20 by Cole Wheeler.

Two plays later, LeGoullon got the ball on a sweep to the left, stopped and reversed directions, and outran the South defense for a 20-yard touchdown.

"We were running that sweep to the left, and I just saw that whole defense running to that side, and I knew I had to cut it back," he said. "I saw that vacancy on the other side, so I just headed for the green and got into the end zone."

South answered with its best drive of the night, as the Panthers put together a 12-play drive that covered 55 yards. But on fourth-and-6 from the Bedford 20, Young's pass to Christopher Keefe came up a yard short and South turned it over on downs.

Toscano scored on a 17-yard run with 4:06 left in the first half to make it 21-0, and that's were it stood until late in the third quarter, when the Bulldogs started to put the game away.