When Bedford football needed big plays, Toscano was there to make them

The 2018 season was a little more than five minutes old and the Bedford High School football team was back on its heels.

On Nashua North's opening drive of Friday night's game, the Titans had the ball for more than four minutes, and in 10 plays, had driven down to the Bulldogs' 7-yard line.

But with North facing fourth-and-goal, Bedford's Ryan Toscano jumped in front of a pass by Titans quarterback Mike Loveless, ending the threat without any damage. Six plays later, the Bulldogs found the end zone for a lead they'd never relinquish in a 31-7 win over North at Stellos Stadium in Nashua.

"I think the biggest thing our coordinator, coach (Sean) Donahue, strives for us to bend, don’t break," Toscano said. "We had three or four times they were first down inside our 10-yard line. We didn’t break and let the offense drive down the field."

It wasn't just defensively where the senior captain made his presence felt, as he ran for 58 yards on Bedford's first touchdown drive. He added another 21 yards, including a 2-yard touchdown run, to give Bedford a 17-0 lead going into halftime, and finished with 109 yards rushing.

The touchdown came not long after North had again moved down inside the Bedford 10-yard line, but with the Titans again facing a fourth-and-goal situation, Toscano came up with a big play, stopping North's Curtis Harris just short of the goal line to end the drive.

"It wasn’t going to be an easy game, and they proved that in the first half," Bedford coach Derek Stank said. "They moved the ball on us and they proved they could stop us when they needed to. We made some big-time plays in the first half to prevent them from putting some points on the board."

Bedford's defense held North to 145 yards on the night, including just 53 in the second half, and forced four turnovers, three on first-half interceptions. The fourth turnover came on a fumbled snap by the Titans, picked up and returned 50 yards for a touchdown by - you guessed it - Toscano.

"I came off the outside and our defensive end, Andrew Twite, did a phenomenal job of squeezing down on the quarterback and hitting him as hard as can," Toscano said. "We strive on never giving up. If I hadn’t picked up that ball, one of the other guys on the field would have and ran it with me. All the guys behind me followed me and made blocks. It was a great team play."

That rounded out the scoring with 6:20 left in the game, securing the Bulldogs their seventh straight win in a season opener. Bedford returns home on Friday to host Concord, which came back to win 28-26 against Nashua South in its opener.