Goffstown football knocks off rust, gets win over Bedford (video)

GOFFSTOWN - If there was any question about whether the Goffstown High School football team was ready to play after two weeks off, the Grizzlies answered them on their opening drive.

Goffstown started Saturday's game with an 11-play, 69-yard touchdown drive, the defense recorded five interceptions, and the Grizzlies never looked back on the way to a 28-7 win over Bedford in a Division I North Conference game.

Peyton Strickland and Aaron Duval put on a show for Goffstown (1-1), as they combined for all four touchdowns for the Grizzlies. Strickland caught four passes for 134 yards and two scores while also rushing for 21 yards and completing a pass for 50 yards to help set up his second scoring grab.

Duval finished with 128 yards and two touchdowns rushing on 21 carries and quarterback Josh Webb was 8 of 12 for 167 yards with a pair of touchdown passes and an interception. Rob Baguidy led the defense with two interceptions of Bedford quarterback Joe Mikol, while Duval, Adam Lydick and Will Sasso also had a pick each.

"I thought the effort was outstanding across the board," Goffstown coach Nick Hammond said. "I’ll give the effort an A, but the football, we’ve got a lot of work, so I’m not going to give us a grade. We were about what I expected to be in terms of areas we need to improve on.

"There’s a lot of things, from an operations standpoint, that we were really sloppy and rusty on and we’ve got to get that cleaned up moving forward."

Hammond expected that to a degree, after Goffstown had its previous two games against Manchester Central and Manchester Memorial canceled due to COVID-19 concerns within both of those programs.

On the other side, the performance by Bedford (2-2) was one that coach Zach Matthews felt was a historic one and not in a good way.

"I don’t want to take anything away from Goffstown because they deserve that victory, but that’s the worst football game I’ve seen one of our teams play in the three years I’ve been here," the Bulldogs coach said. "Turnovers, penalties, missed assignments, missed execution, not knowing where you’re supposed to be, it was terrible."

Mikol finished the day 14 of 28 passing for 191 and a touchdown and five picks. Colby Snow led six pass-catchers with four receptions for 76 yards and an 11-yard touchdown reception on Bedford's opening drive of the third quarter.

Owen Christopher led the Bulldogs with 39 yards on the ground and Russell Erwin added 27 yards.

It was still 7-0 Goffstown going into the second quarter, and after forcing the Grizzlies to punt, Bedford picked up a first down at midfield. But on the next play, Baguidy outjumped Andrew Grudinskas for a deep throw, giving Goffstown a first down at its own 27.

On the next play, Webb hit Strickland on a slant over the middle and the senior tight end got through traffic and outran everyone to the end zone for a 73-yard touchdown and a 14-0 lead with 10:19 left in the half.

Baguidy picked off Mikol again on Bedford's next possession, but Goffstown was forced to punt and the Bulldogs put together their best drive of the half, thanks in part to a 32-yard completion from Mikol to Snow.

That gave Bedford a first down at Goffstown's 24, but the drive stalled after the Bulldogs got another first down at the Grizzlies' 14 and Mikol's 29-yard field attempt was wide left.

Goffstown took over at its own 20 with Strickland at quarterback, and after he ran for no gain on first, he completed a 50-yard pass to Jonah Lopez to put the Grizzlies on Bedford's 30. Webb went back to quarterback and threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Strickland on the next play, giving Goffstown a 21-0 lead with 29.1 seconds left in the half.

"We knew we were going to call that pass at some point during that drive," Hammond said. "We thought it would give us the ability to flip the field and the momentum would be with us going into the half, especially with them getting the football."

Bedford opened the third quarter with a nine-play, 63-yard drive that ended with Mikol's scoring pass to Snow. Although the Bulldogs' defense was able to keep the Grizzlies out of the end zone, they couldn't get their offense going.

"That was a good way to come out of halftime and answer the bell a little bit," Matthews said. "We get a stop and get the ball back, and then on first down, we blow an assignment. Now you’re in a situation where you’ve got to throw the ball in a predictable situation. It gets back to execution in critical situations. It was not very good football by us."

Duval added a 50-yard touchdown run with 3:04 remaining in the game to finish out the scoring.