Inside the Patriot League · recap

Holy Cross sacked Winston Watkins six times and ran for 203

We said on Thursday we would be at Zable, in the press box and on the field. We were. Holy Cross won 41-14 in front of 8,367, and the game was decided by something you could hear from the sideline before you could find it in a box score.

Winston Watkins got hit all afternoon.

The pocket, and what it cost

Holy Cross sacked Watkins six times. The part worth sitting with is who did it: eight different Crusaders were credited with at least half a sack. Cooper Ackerman had a game-high one and a half. Adam Due and Carlo Crocetti each had one. Brady Fodor, Tyler Georgs, Gabe Flores, Aidan Horodnik and Rushaune Vilane split the rest. Horodnik and Crocetti added two quarterback hurries apiece.

That is not a pass rush beating a tackle. That is a front getting home from everywhere, and it never let the offense develop into anything. Watkins was 15-of-29 for 210 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions, which on paper is a reasonable afternoon and in practice was a quarterback throwing early and from bad footing all day.

Then look at the ground game underneath it. Andrew King carried 10 times for 25 yards. Watkins carried 13 times for 18, which means the quarterback ran it more often than the running back did. Watkins carrying that much is not unusual for this offense. King finishing with 25 is. He had 122 against Fordham.

William & Mary ran for 31 yards as a team.

So the passing game could not get set up and the running game could not get going, and those two problems are the same problem. A defense that does not have to respect the run gets to send everybody, and a quarterback who is running for his life cannot hand it off his way out of that.

We got this one wrong

Thursday's preview led on the idea that Saturday was the one week all season William & Mary would not get attacked where they are weakest, because Holy Cross could not run the football. We printed their totals: 78, 66, 40, 155 and 121, at 1.9 a carry against Colgate and 2.1 against Miami of Ohio.

Holy Cross ran for 203 yards at Zable.

That is their best rushing day of the season by 48 yards. Joseph Williams had 111 on 16 carries at 6.9 a clip. Datrell Jones had 77 on 13 at 5.9. The season-long number we have been tracking, rushing yards allowed by the Tribe, now reads 157, 174, 366, 428, 286, 203.

We wrote that a win here would be close to worthless as a measurement of whether anything had been fixed. The loss is not worthless as one. Nothing has been fixed, and it turns out the opponent did not need to be good at running to prove it.

Penalties, honestly

Holy Cross committed more of them. Nine penalties for 105 yards, to William & Mary's seven for 62. One of theirs was a targeting call on Braden Haas late in the second quarter that cost 15 yards and got him ejected.

But the Tribe's came in worse places, and they came in a pattern that is hard to watch from the sideline. A delay of game on the first snap of a drive put them at first and 15. A false start on third and 13 made it third and 18. An illegal formation turned a first and 10 into first and 15. And an unsportsmanlike conduct call in the first quarter moved Holy Cross from the William & Mary four to the two, where Williams ran it in two plays later.

Seven penalties for 62 yards is not a disaster. Seven penalties that each arrived on exactly the snap you could least afford is a different thing, and it is part of why a quarterback averaging a respectable 7.2 a throw finished on an offense with 251 total yards.

How it went

William & Mary's answer to the first Holy Cross touchdown took one play. David Lynch found Ty Curran for 14 yards and a 7-0 lead with 9:36 left in the first. Ten seconds later Khylil Johnson was alone down the left sideline, Watkins hit him at the Holy Cross 38, and the freshman walked the rest of it in for 75 yards and a tie.

They scored once more in the remaining 54 minutes.

Owen Saraceno's 40-yarder put Holy Cross back ahead. The Tribe's next drive began with the delay of game, reached third and 18 after the false start, and ended when Jackson Blee caught a 15-yard ball and fumbled it away, Holy Cross recovering at the William & Mary 28. Holy Cross turned that into Williams's two-yard touchdown, with help from the unsportsmanlike call. A Max Lipinski 53-yard attempt missed. A muffed punt from the William & Mary 18 lost 15 yards and handed Holy Cross the ball at the three, and Jake Croce scored from the one. It was 24-7 at the half, and the only thing that went right in the last two minutes of it was David Roulley intercepting Lynch at the five.

Carter Carroll took the first snaps of the third quarter and threw an interception to Anthony Redfern 48 seconds in. Holy Cross scored five plays later on another Lynch throw to Curran. Watkins was back for the one genuinely good drive of the day, 55 yards in seven plays, finished with a 28-yard touchdown to Kai Austin that made it 31-14 with 3:25 left in the third.

That was the last good thing. Williams fumbled it back at the William & Mary 33 inside the final minute of the quarter and the Tribe went nowhere with it. Holy Cross then drove 80 yards in nine plays and 6:38 for Jones's 12-yard touchdown, recovered a fumbled kickoff return at the William & Mary 22, and added Saraceno's 39-yarder.

Holy Cross held the ball for 37:30. William & Mary had it for 22:30 and converted 5 of 14 third downs.

Where it leaves them

William & Mary is 2-4 and 1-3 in the Patriot League. The four losses in a row have come by scores of 44-20, 52-27, 62-7 and 41-14.

We wrote on Thursday that the race the Tribe were actually in was the one for third, and that a home loss to a 1-4 team would end that conversation. Holy Cross came in 1-4. The conversation is over.

Georgetown comes to Zable on October 24.