Eagles soar on the ground

After playing the better part of the first half without finding success on the ground or through the air, the Express Electronics Eagles found a play that worked against the Tinian Typhoon late in the second quarter in Saturday night’s Commonwealth Football League contest under the lights at Tinian Municipal Field.

Quarterback Dane Lizama picked up on the apparent weakness in the Tinian defense when Soni Pomee took the ball five yards off the end of the line, and then he called it again. This time the result was a six-yard gain. Though it didn’t look like much, the Eagles stumbled upon the key to the game by giving the ball to their lead back in the “I” formation, and they continued to use their new favorite play like a kid with a new toy on Christmas morning.

Though they weren’t able to score before the end of the half when they strayed from the path and Lizama got dinged with a pair of interceptions, the Eagles went back to work on their first possession and drove down the field to take the lead with their first score with a basic formula of “Run Left, Run Right” all the way to the end zone.

The Green Machine used a number of running backs to chew up the hard yards behind their mammoth offensive line and the methodical approach ate up the clock to keep the Typhoon offense on the sidelines.

Lizama took turns handing the ball off to Pomee, Semisi Paongo, and league-leading rusher Stanley Iakopo, and by the time the final whistle sounded, the Eagles gained 270 yards on the ground—more than 10 times than the 25 that their aerial attack tallied.

“Tonight it was mostly the running game. Our offense was good so I give a lot of props to my offensive line. I’m a lucky quarterback,” said Lizama.

The Eagles currently lead the league by far with a total of 758 yards of total offense through the first three weeks of the season, and they are doing so by averaging 67.3 yards per game through the air and 185.3 on the ground.

To put the dominance of their running attack into perspective, the Barbarians are second in the rushing race with an average of 85 yards per game. From there it’s all downhill as the Shell Lightning average 56.5 per outing and the Typhoon have managed nine.

Despite ruling the statistics pages, the Eagles still had to deal with the Typhoon passing attack that gained 123 yards at key times of the game to keep the home team in it

Tinian only ran five offensive plays in the first quarter and 15 in the second while the Eagles figured out how to pick apart their linebacking corps with the quick hits.

“We had work. They gave us a run for the money, that’s for sure. They gave us a good game,” said Eagles lineman Wes Foster.

The running actually started before the game. For the first time in the CFL’s five-year history, a team other than Tinian had to scramble to catch the ferry before the big game. While many Eagles took the morning boat across the channel, a good number of the Green Machine’s squad was boarding the Tinian Express with helmets and shoulder pads in hand. Some were earlier than others as wide receiver Mark Wallace was running through the parking lot to make the gate before it closed.

That won’t be a problem this weekend as the Eagles will rest up while the Shell Lightning and the Barbarians square up in the lone game this Saturday at the CPA Airport Field.