Nine mad minutes: Northwestern took advantage of Nation Ford late-game miscues during regular season

The football laid on the ground for what felt like minutes, instead of seconds.

A Northwestern fourth quarter fumble sat there on the District Three Stadium turf like a mallard bobbing on a peaceful green turf pond. Three Nation Ford defenders’ eyes widened as they closed in on the loose football. The Oct. 23 Region 3-4A game looked poised to lurch in the Falcons’ direction.

Nation Ford had just scored early in the fourth to cut the Northwestern lead to 21-19. The Trojans drove the ball deep into Nation Ford’s end of the field, but Falcon safety Ben Tuipulotu popped running back Jerry Howard, springing the ball free.

Northwestern sophomore receiver Jordan Starkes broke off his downfield block and dashed Nation Ford’s hopes of a momentum-swinging turnover. Watching the video, he flies in from stage left to cover the football like water splashed out of a bucket. The fumble recovery sparked a mad final 9 minutes that turned a tight contest into a three-score win for the Trojans.

Northwestern coach Kyle Richardson was so close to the fumble that he could have grabbed it.

“The ball seemed like it was on the ground for an hour,” he said after Wednesday’s practice.

The Oct. 23 game showed why Friday night’s rematch in the 4A Division II state semifinals could be just as explosive.

Two of the best offenses in the state meet at District Three Stadium hunting a spot in next weekend’s state championship game. Northwestern (12-1) is back where it plans to be this time of a year, a game away from the state championship. Eleven-seed Nation Ford (9-4) is flying into unmapped territory, but its performance for 40 of the first game’s 48 minutes offers hope for an upset.

“They’re great on defense, but they’re not unbeatable,” said quarterback Cole Martin, who has thrown for over 5,000 yards this fall.

After Starkes’ fumble recovery, Howard scored on a short run several plays later to push Northwestern’s lead back to 27-19. Nation Ford blocked the extra point to keep it a one-score contest.

The Falcons only required two plays to tie the game. Martin found Hank Tuipulotu and he skipped through several tackles for a 63-yard touchdown down the right sideline to get Nation Ford within two. The 2-point pass was too high, leaving Northwestern in front 27-25, with 7 minutes, 54 seconds left.

A tightly contested game unraveled from that point.

The 2-point conversion miss “kind of took the wind back out of our sails,” said Martin.

Twenty-six yards in Nation Ford penalties on one play in the next drive helped Northwestern push its lead back to nine points, 34-25, on a 19-yard touchdown run by QB Gage Moloney. Another unsportsmanlike penalty on Nation Ford meant Trojans kicker Thomas Gettys easily blasted his kickoff for a touchback. The flag was one of five Falcon penalties - four of which were accepted for 46 yards - in the final 9 minutes of the game.

“Losing focus and maybe a little frustration set in as well,” said Nation Ford coach Michael Allen on Tuesday. “It was a pretty good football game up to that point.”

Nation Ford still moved the ball out near midfield, but Northwestern backup defensive end Tyler Pierre, playing late in the game against the Falcons because of his speed, hit Martin as he was about to throw, forcing a fumble that Logan Rudolph recovered at the Nation Ford 38.

Howard later scored his second touchdown of the game to make it a 16-point game with less than 2 minutes left. And the Trojans glossed the scoreline late, cornerback D.J. Williams intercepting a Martin pass and taking it back 79 yards for a touchdown with just a few seconds remaining.

After all of that, Allen’s thoughts still went back to the Northwestern fumble recovery early in the fourth quarter.

“We had three jerseys around it and there were none of their jerseys around it," he said. “And somehow No. 9 (Jordan Starkes), and he’s a ballplayer, he found his way back to that ball and they maintained possession on a ball we possibly could have scooped” and scored.

The two teams’ regular season meeting could have had a very different outcome. Starkes’ hustle play - the type that traditional winning programs like Northwestern make - ensured it did not.

“You don’t know what play is gonna be it,” said Richardson. “We’ve had a ton of times this year where it’s a sack or a negative play, and then boom, next play it’s a touchdown. That just goes back to that philosophy of ‘I can’t get too high, can’t get too low.’ I think that’s why that’s happened. There’s a lot of football teams where one negative play turns into three negative plays because you’re still upset.”

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 3:44 PM with the headline "Nine mad minutes: Northwestern took advantage of Nation Ford late-game miscues during regular season."