Saturday, November 20, 2010

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Old Tappan quarterback Devin Fuller ran for 6 TDs, threw for one and rolled up almost 500 yards of offense as the Knights held off Paramus, 63-56, in a wild North 1, Group 3 state sectional semifinal shootout.

OLD TAPPAN – In the event that you missed it, there is no way that words on a page, photos on the web or highlights on TV are going to give you a sense of what really happened on Friday night on the turf behind Northern Valley/Old Tappan High School. The short of it is that the home team got an eight-yard touchdown run from Keith Rodman with 53 seconds left in the fourth quarter for the winning points in a 63-56 win over Paramus in the semifinals of the North 1, Group 3 state sectional playoffs. The long story is a lot harder to tell, even for those involved in one of the craziest high school football games in the history of Bergen County.

“I mean, I am at a loss for words, you know?” said Old Tappan junior quarterback Devin Fuller.

Only if you were one of the 4,000 or so spectators at the game could you know what Fuller meant. There is no way to quantify just how well Fuller played, but the stats say he rolled up almost 500 yards of total offense. He ran for six touchdowns and threw for another. He ran for two two-point conversions and threw for one. When Fuller scored on a 37-yard touchdown run with still a full 10 minutes left to play in the game, he pushed his rushing yardage total to 355.

“I can’t say anything more than what you saw on the field. There really is no way to put it into words,” said Old Tappan head coach Brian Dunn, asked to describe Fuller’s performance. “The kid is on another level.”

Paramus QB John Robertson was brilliant with 7 rushing touchdowns and one passing.

The kid Fuller is on another level, the same one occupied by John Robertson, Paramus’ senior quarterback who, believe it or not, matched Fuller’s eye-popping numbers with some gaudy ones of his own. Robertson ran for seven touchdowns and threw for another. His final touchdown run, a 23-yarder with 6:07 left in the fourth quarter, gave Paramus at 56-55 lead.

“It had to be a lot of fun to watch. I don’t know how much fun it was to coach, but it was amazing,” said Paramus head coach Dan Sabella. “If they are not the two best quarterbacks in the state then I don’t know who is. They are just two great football players and both of them put their teams on their backs.”

Old Tappan’s biggest lead of the game came when Andrew Dobitsch raced down the seam to catch a Fuller pass in stride for a 61-yard TD. Fuller added a two-point conversion run to give the Golden Knights a 29-18 lead with 8:44 remaining in the second quarter, but Paramus caught and passed them before the half.

Robertson hit Michael Bussanich for an 18-yard score on the ensuing possession to cut the deficit to five points. When the Paramus defense forced Old Tappan to punt for the first and last time in the game with 2:00 minutes left in second quarter, Robertson brought his team right back down the field. The Spartans caught a break when an apparent Jeff Pinelli interception was nullified by a late hit on the quarterback and, two plays later, Robertson swept the right side with eight seconds showing on the clock to give Paramus the 30-29 lead it carried into the locker room.

Adding to the whacky nature of the first half was each team's aversion to kicking extra points and it was not too long before both sides quit trying. Paramus scored five first half touchdowns and had the minimum 30 points to show for them, while Old Tappan scored four TDs and trailed by only a single point.

Old Tappan's Keith Rodman scored the game-winning TD with 1:01 left in the fourth quarter.

Old Tappan caught up in the TD department when Fuller scored from 67 yards out on the first play from scrimmage in the third quarter. That score made it 35-30 Old Tappan and also served as the first of nine second half lead changes, an incredible stat in itself. Over the final two quarters, Paramus led 36-35, 42-41, and 56-55. Over that same stretch, Old Tappan had leads of 35-30, 41-36, 42-41, 55-50 and the one that counted most, 63-56 at the end.

It got to the point where Paramus employed the onside kick twice after scoring because it figured to have a better chance of recovering a free ball than to stop the Golden Knights in the traditional fashion. Old Tappan’s best defense down the stretch was time management and, even trailing with under 2:00 minutes to play in regulation, Dunn was busy trying to find ways not to score. An explanation of that will come shortly, but it is better to describe how the game got to that point.

Paramus looked like it might take control, if there was such a thing in this game, when Robertson scored on a 23-yard touchdown run to give the Spartans a 56-55 lead with 6:07 to play. The Paramus defense backed that up when Bussanich recovered a fumble on the next offensive play that Old Tappan ran. The Spartans were up a point with the ball in OT’s territory with a chance to make it a two-score game, but on their second snap of the drive, a fumble went Old Tappan’s way and the Knights were back in the driver’s seat with directions to the end zone.

That is when Dunn decided to take the ball out of Fuller’s hands, worried that the quarterback might score too quickly and leave Robertson enough time to pull out the win. Enter Rodman, Old Tappan’s bruising fullback, who moved the ball down the field in chunks of skin instead of chunks of yardage.

Paramus fell to 6-4 with its annual Thanksgiving Day matchup against Ridgewood remaining on the schedule.

“We had a couple of time outs left and we used the clock smart. Devin had a great game, but we used Keith Rodman to get us 3, 4, 5 [yards] a carry. Our guys just kind of controlled the line at the end of the game where we were actually trying not to score too quick,” said Dunn. “Instead of giving the ball to Devin where he could break one, score and give them the ball back with two minutes left, it would have been a different game.”

Instead, Rodman’s last carry on the drive went for an 8-yard score, Dobitsch caught a two-point conversion pass and Old Tappan had the 63-56 lead with 1:01 left to play.

“Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to be me [to score the game-winning touchdown]. I always look to Devin in that kind of spot,” said Rodman, a junior. “But when they gave me the ball and put it in my hands, I just said I have to make this play and I fought for the end zone.”

Nobody was ready to count out Robertson just yet as the Spartans took over with 53 seconds to play on their own 20 yard line with one time out left. But at that point, Old Tappan was just one defensive play away, and Peter Al-Sharif made it on the first play of the drive when he slipped his blocker and caught Robertson by the ankle for Old Tappan’s first and only sack of the game.

That forced the Spartans back eight yards and also cost them their last time out.

“It was an amazing feeling. I don’t even know what came over me. I just went after it right off the ball,” said Al-Sharif. “As a whole, I think the defense is going to be in bright and early tomorrow morning getting yelled at, but right now this is an amazing feeling.”

Old Tappan still had a little sweating to do as Robertson hit Bussanich for a 20-yard gain and Michael Urban for 18 more to reach midfield. But with time winding down and the pocket in collapse, Robertson’s last option was a Hail Mary that was picked off by Fuller in centerfield.

Peter Al-Sharif had Old Tappan's lone sack and it short-circuited Paramus' final drive.

That brought an end to an incomparable high school football game, one in which Fuller and Robertson did everything except….forget that, they did everything.

“Honestly, I am not big on stats, I truly want to come in and win and we came up three points short. It really sucks right now,” said Robertson, the Villanova-bound senior who didn’t so much lose the game as he more just ran out of time. “We did play well and [being a part of a game like this] is pretty good to think about, but at the end of the day, we lost. If I don’t win then I am upset for a while and this one is no different in that way.”

Paramus, which won on the cutoff day just to make it into the state playoffs as the No. 6 seed before upsetting No. 3 Ramapo in the opening round last weekend, fell to 6-4 on the season with one game left, the annual Thanksgiving Day matchup against rival Ridgewood.

On the other side, the best season in the history of Old Tappan football rolls on. The Knights (10-0) can finish off a perfect regular season with a win on Thanksgiving against Northern Valley/Demarest and then will head to the state final for the first time in school history. Old Tappan, the No. 2 seed, will play No. 1 Wayne Hills in two weeks in the New Meadowlands Stadium.

“We’ve been knocking on that door for a lot of years. We’ve been close, we’ve been in this game [the semifinals] a couples of times, we’ve been in the quarterfinals a bunch of times,” said Dunn, a normally stoic postgame interviewee, who this time let it all hang out. “What [going to the state final] means to so many people, guys who played here, coaches who we have had the same group of for a lot of years, the guys who were all on the sideline and came close but didn’t get it. I can’t explain how much that means to them and how much they want it for us and our guys stepped up and did it for a lot of guys that put in a lot of time.”

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