ELMORE - Todd Fox's assessment was more defined to be sure. But for those who are into a CliffsNotes way of thinking, a dud week paved the way for a dud night.
And a dud night for Calvert meant a 17-7 loss to Woodmore in the final rehearsal for next week's beginning of Midland Athletic League play.
In truth, it was half of a dud night for the Senecas, who fell to 1-2 while watching the Wildcats improve to 2-1. On the offensive side, Calvert was sporadic at best.
Three turnovers - two lost fumbles and an interception - proved especially costly. One fumble put the defense in a hole and that eventually led to a Woodmore touchdown. Another resulted in a next-play score while the interception ended a last-gasp attempt at a challenge at the end.
And then there was the matter of nine penalties for 74 yards, mostly on the offensive side of the ball.
"Defensively, I thought we played a solid game against a good offense," Fox said. "But the defense was put in a lot of bad situations.
Fact Box
Woodmore 17, Calvert 7
Calvert0007 - 7
Woodmore07100 - 17
Second Quarter
W - Evan Ulinski 12 pass from Jake Matwiejczyk (Malachi Brown kick), 1:37
Third Quarter
W - Brown 40 FG, 9:34
W - Matwiejczyk 53 run (Brown kick), 8:13
Fourth Quarter
C - Tyler Long 1 run (Michael Smith kick), 11:20
CW
First downs911
Rushes-yards32-11330-75
Passing yards72175
Comp-att-int5-20-118-29-0
Punts-ave.7-36.86-33.6
Fumbles-lost3-21-0
Penalties-yards9-746-40
Individual statistics
RUSHING: Calvert - Long 16-33, Daniel Kwiat 11-44, Austin Ball 3-5, Nick Warnement 1-27, Brendan Deats 1-4. Woodmore - Matwiejczyk 21-35, Terry Rozzi 5-36, Austin Ottney 4-4.
PASSING: Calvert - Long 5-20-72-1. Woodmore - Matwiejczyk 18-29-175-0.
RECEIVING: Calvert - Warnement 3-24, Derek Herzog 1-24, Deats 1-24. Woodmore - Ulinski 6-39, Zach Brossia 4-83, Coleton Bihn 3-24, Ottney 2-5, Dan Sprinski 1-11, Brad Bringman 1-7. Rozzi 1-6.
"Offensively, we just did not play very good football and that all comes back to our week of preparation," he said. "We did not have a good week of preparation and it showed. You learn from that and you move forward. But now our backs are against the wall each and every week from here on out."
The Senecas provided an early look to a long offensive night on the game's first series. They started on their 20, but two penalties and two Tyler Long carries for minus yardage had Eric Elchert standing in his end zone to punt on a fourth-and-25 from the 5.
Calvert survived that and other first-quarter challenges, but Danny Munoz's fumble recovery helped keep field position in Woodmore's favor.
The Wildcats finally got on the board with a 42-yard drive late in the half. Junior quarterback Jake Matwiejczyk went 6 of 8 passing along the way, including a touchdown toss of 12 yards to Evan Ulinski on a fourth-and-6 play with 1:37 left. Malachi Brown, whose 33-yard field goal try was just wide of the mark on the previous possession, added the PAT for a 7-0 halftime lead.
At that point, Calvert had just three first downs and 64 total yards. Wildcat coach Britton Devier said a big part of the plan was to keep pressure on sophomore quarterback Long.
"When we didn't pressure him, he hurt us," Devier said. "So we wanted to stay with it. There were times when I think our pressure got to him a little when they wanted to throw the football.
"The other big thing is we kept the edge," he said. "We didn't let him get outside on us and that was a real key because he's very fast."
Another key was a fast start to the second half for the Wildcats.
First, there was a 51-yard pass from Matwiejczyk to Zach Brossia that set up a 40-yard Brown field goal.
Then Michael Travis recovered a fumble, and on the next snap, Matwiejczyk faked a handoff to Tony Rozzi and then headed down the right sideline for a 53-yard touchdown.
With 8:13 still to play in the third period, the Wildcat margin had grown to 17-0.
"We had a nice drive to get the field goal and then we broke the big one," Devier said. "Sometimes, as a coach, you tend to forget what it is that you do well. My assistant coaches reminded me what we do well and so we stuck with Jake a lot in the second half."
Calvert trimmed the lead to 10 with a 40-yard scoring drive early in the fourth period. Long's 24-yard pass to Derek Herzog set up Long's 1-yard sneak with 11:20 to play. But the Senecas couldn't put anything else together.
The Wildcats had two plays of 51 yards or more and two other 20-plus-yard advances. But Calvert countered by catching Matwiejczyk and others behind the line of scrimmage 12 times.
Daniel Kwiat, Marcus Somers, Brendan Deats and Dan Reineke each were in on two or more stops for negative yardage.
"Their front, those defensive linemen of theirs, they get after it," Devier said. "We had trouble blocking those guys."
Fox was in agreement.
"We went from going against an extreme power running game last week to a very good spread offense this week and I thought our guys did a great job," he said. "Unfortunately, our offense let us down.
"The first two weeks, we had guys (on offense) step up while some of the other younger guys are still trying to get up to speed," he said. "Tonight, everybody was off on the offensive side. At the same time, they had a good defensive plan and they took some things away from us."
