On the Gridiron: Pinkerton football defense played well in loss

Brian O'Reilly stood on the sideline Friday night moments after his Pinkerton Academy football team had lost to Salem and stated what he thought of his defense's performance.

The Astros had given up 41 points and allowed two Blue Devils to rack up over a hundred yards rushing, as Salem ran for 330 yards as a team.

But with Pinkerton turning the ball over six times, O'Reilly was keeping things in perspective.

"In spots we played some pretty good defense," the coach said. "You wouldn't know it point-wise, but defensively, I thought we played better than we did last week.

"(Six) turnovers is just unacceptable. You can't beat anybody with turnovers, and the fact that we turned the ball over that many times and lost by two scores at least shows we’re getting there. That entire secondary and linebacking core for the most part are sophomores."

Josh Sibanda had 187 yards and a touchdown rushing and returned a kickoff 92 yards for another score, and James LeBlonde had 107 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. As a team, the Blue Devils found the end zone six times against the Astros defense and special teams.

But Salem took advantage of a short field on three of those turnovers to score a touchdown, and a fourth Blue Devils' score was set up when Pinkerton was forced to punt from its goal line. On those four scoring drives, Salem's after start was the Pinkerton 29-yard line.

And it could have been worse for the Astros. Three times, the Pinkerton defense was able to force Salem to turn the ball over on downs inside the Astros' 25-yard line.

In all, Salem had seven drives that started on Pinkerton's side of the field, giving the Blue Devils an average starting point of the Astros' 48.

Salem was able to take advantage of those opportunities and win for just the second time in 19 games play on Pinkerton's field. The Blue Devils only other road win against the Astros was in 2002, and it was the first time Salem had beaten Pinkerton overall since 2009.

"It's not a typical Pinkerton team right now," O'Reilly said. "This is the second time in 19 tries that they've beaten us on our field. Our kids need to understand that kind of stuff. We're not at that level yet. I'm concerned that our sophomores at least progress properly."

Those young Astros will learn a lot over the next couple of weeks, as Pinkerton heads to Londonderry on Friday before returning home to host Bedford on Sept. 30. Two weeks after that, Merrimack comes to town.