The facility was pretty nice overall; however, the visitor's locker room was tiny and they bought their turf from a team that used to play in Roanoke, Virginia. The turf was bad, but not as bad as Seinjajoki's turf in Finland. The attendance was around 2,800 people, which would be a small crowd in Cincinnati, but it was a record crowd in Beaumont, Texas!!!
It was a totally different atmosphere playing on the road just because our first 3 games were at home, so it was weird hearing the crowd go silent when we scored a touchdown. Anyway, we didn't get off to a solid start and Beaumont led after a boring first quarter 13-7. In the second quarter things started to pickup, after a Rayshawn Askew 19 yard TD run and a Beaumont TD, their running back fumbled the ball in the endzone and kicked it out of bounds for the first of 3 safeties in the game. That made the score 19-16 in Beaumont's favor but that is when the player of the game stepped it up. Tobias Deans one of our wide receivers went on a tear. It just so happens that he is from Port Author, Texas, which is only 15 minutes from Beaumont.
He caught a 26 yard TD pass, followed by a 19 TD reception just before half to give us a 29-19 lead going into halftime. We tried to put the game away in the 3rd quarter but the exact opposite was our fate, leaving us scoreless in the 3rd quarter but hanging onto a 29-27 lead.
Beaumont was also the first to strike in the 4th quarter, now 33-29. We had to score at this point and Tobias Deans made a huge catch in the endzone, but what made this one special is that he caught it, hit the wall, and flipped over the wall without dropping it. Beaumont responds with a TD.
You know when a man is hot you just have to give him the ball. On the first play after the kickoff, I threw another bomb to Deans and he caught it off a tip from the Driller's defensive back for a 41-yard touchdown. (Now remember the field is only 50 yards long) Beaumont responds again. On the next play, I hit Deans again down the sidelines for a 45-yard strike and his 5th touchdown on 5 catches!!! We're up 51-39 with the help of a safety as well.
Beaumont is on a roll too and they score to make it a 5-point game.
Here is where trouble strikes for the Marshals. We're up 5 points with a little over 2 minutes to go. On the second play of our drive, we called a play and I wasn't comfortable with it, so I took a timeout. Coach still wanted to run the same play and we did and it was trouble as their middle linebacker picked me off on a pass across the middle. OUCH!!!
Beaumont drives and scores putting the Drillers up one point with a minute left to go. Its time for another (I mean the first) last minute comeback for the Marshals. We start on our own 15-yard line and the first play of the drive was an incomplete pass. Second down was a pass that got picked off... by our own player. (I scared you for a second there didn't I???) I was trying to throw it to Jourdan about 15 yards downfield but Ernie Samuels stopped and caught it behind him and he got the first down. We hurried to the line and called a running play and then called a timeout. We still have one remaining at this point.
We are about midfield and I scrambled to the right and the whole defense moved with me. Tobias Deans was running left and I hit him across the field and he got down to the 5-yard line. (It was his only catch that wasn't a TD). We hurried to the line and spiked the ball with 13 seconds remaining. At this point we were going to center the ball in the middle of the field so our kicker could boot it through. So we gave it to Askew but he got right through the line for the touchdown. We went for the 2-point conversion and completed a pass to Ernie Samuels to give us a 7-point lead with 9 seconds to go. Our defense held and gave us our first road win and evened our record to 2-2.
Unofficially, I finished with a pathetic 9-24 but had 231 yards 3 picks and 5 TDs. If you average that out our team averaged 25.6 yards a catch!!! That is over half the football field per catch. I still have to watch the tape to see if I really threw 24 passes. I don't think I did but that is what Beaumont's stats say. (Hey, its my website...I have the right to speculate if I want to!!!)
This weekend we play Dayton on "Pack the House" night. All tickets are $10. We start our rivalry with Dayton and it will be the first of 3 meetings against them this season. More on that later.
By the way one of the cheerleaders hooked me up with a site that has a ton of Pictures on it from our first 3 home games. Pictures courtesy of Todd Livingston Photography and Tom Uhlman. The site is www.gamephotos.net. Enjoy.