Phillipsburg football suffers stunning loss after giving up TD on final play

The Phillipsburg High School football team seemed to go through four of the five stages of grief after watching Ridge score a game-winning touchdown on the final play of the game.

The Stateliners were adamant that senior Jack Pickell did not catch the tipped ball at the front of the end zone and believed that the Red Devils should have been penalized for how they protected senior quarterback Tristan Frank before he threw the 4-yard touchdown toss.

After it became clear that the referee closest to Pickell signaled that it was a touchdown and none of his fellow officials would offer a reason to overturn the call, Phillipsburg slowly started to make its way to midfield for the postgame handshake after a devastating one-point defeat.

Ridge’s touchdown on 4th-and-goal took up the final four seconds of the game and sealed a 14-13 win over the Stateliners in the Big Central Conference, American Silver Division contest at Ridge’s Lee Field Friday night.

“I thought we got held and I thought it was incomplete, but that’s the way it goes,” Phillipsburg coach Frank Duffy said. “Officials, sometimes, they don’t get everything right, just like coaches don’t get everything right. That’s life.”

“I told these guys, sometimes it’s not fair, but life’s not fair,” Duffy continued. “We’re not gonna make excuses about having a short week, we’re not gonna make excuses about calls. That’s part of the game. You gotta be able to make enough plays to bounce back from that. Unfortunately, we didn’t tonight.”

Phillipsburg, which had just three days to prepare for the trip to Ridge after its game at St. Joe’s Metuchen (a 42-31 win) was postponed to Monday due to weather, had several chances to avoid the upset loss.

Including on the last play.

Frank rolled to his right away from pressure and fired a pass towards the end zone that junior Azaii Moses jumped up and got two hands to. The ball bounced off Moses’s hands, though, and into the arms of Pickell, who secured possession as he fell to the ground for his first varsity catch.

“I saw my boy (junior) Jack Donley come in motion so I thought it was going to be him, pylon catch, I didn’t really expect the ball to go there,” Pickell said. “Tristan got pressured, just gotta air it out there. Then it went through the guy’s hands. I caught it, touchdown, game over. We win.”

“I just saw an opening, took it, and then we got the heart,” Frank said. “We know how to fight. Just because that ball is tipped initially, doesn’t mean we’re not gonna go get it.”

Frank eluded pressure several times and extended plays in crucial situations to set up the final score.

After the Stateliners (4-2) scored to take a 13-8 lead with 3:07 left in the fourth quarter, Frank returned the ensuing kickoff about 25 yards to the Red Devils’ 34 and moved them to midfield on back-to-back runs.

“I trust my legs,” Frank said. “When I don’t see anything clear in the pocket, I’m just gonna get out and run. I know I can run.”

On third-and-13, Frank was hurried almost immediately by Phillipsburg senior Elijah Montgomery but scrambled away for a 23-yard gain.

Two plays later, Montgomery sacked Frank to bring up third-and-20 from the Stateliners’ 31.

Frank kept the ball on the ground once again for a 9-yard gain and then, on fourth-and-long, lofted a pass to his right that senior Stephen Coffey leapt up to catch four yards from the goal line.

“Stephen Coffey, that’s what I saw. He’s my guy,” Frank said. “I’ve been throwing to him forever, I love him, I trust him so much. I just threw it up and I knew he’d come down with it.”

“He’s a good football player, made a lot of plays with his feet,” Frank Duffy said of the Ridge senior QB. “I thought we did a very good job in the pass game for the most part, other than the last one there, the fourth-and-10. We didn’t get it knocked down.”

Ridge spiked the ball to stop the clock with 10 seconds left after that fourth-down conversion. Frank threw incompletions on back-to-back quick throws before the memorable touchdown finale.

“It was just great,” Pickell said. “Being out there, all the hype of it, big rival over there, great team over there. We struggled to get down the field, Stephen Coffey, one of my boys, made a great catch, best hands on the team.”

“Didn’t go our way tonight. That was a heck of a football game,” Duffy said. “That’s the way it goes sometimes, but what I like is the fight of our guys. We’ve been in some really good, tight ball games and this is gonna pay off for us down the road.”

The Stateliners, who are ranked fourth in the region by lehighvalleylive.com and No. 16 in the state by NJ.com, scored on their first possession and led 7-0 at halftime.

Phillipsburg turned the ball over on downs on its first drive of the second half when junior quarterback Dominic Bracco’s quick pass to senior Shane Moore fell incomplete on fourth-and-3.

The Red Devils took over at their own 40 and marched 60 yards in 10 plays.

On third-and-7 from the Stateliners’ 28, Frank lobbed a pass to Donley, who fought off contact from Phillipsburg junior Blake Paulus to make the catch for a gain of 25.

Two plays later, Frank plunged into the end zone on a quarterback sneak from a yard out with 1:23 left in the third quarter.

Ridge initially lined up to take the PAT that would have tied the game at 7-7, but the Stateliners were called for back-to-back pre-snap penalties, first for having 12 men on the field and then for offsides.

With the ball inside the one, Frank took a snap out of the shotgun and dove over the goal line to put the Red Devils up 8-7.

Ridge had the chance to expand its lead when it got the ball back in the final minute of the third quarter, but senior running back CJ Griffith fumbled and Phillipsburg senior Noah Reid recovered at the Stateliners’ 45.

Phillipsburg ran the ball 13 times on the 14-play drive, which Moore capped with a 3-yard touchdown run as he extended his arms to get the ball across the goal line with 3:07 left in the fourth quarter.

On the two-point conversion, Bracco rolled right and fired to Moore in the flat, but the senior couldn’t come up with the catch.

“We had a tough time getting the run game going there,” Duffy said. “… Although, at the end there, we started getting things rolling a little bit and were able to punch it in."

Moore led the Stateliners with 66 yards on 17 carries. Junior Vincent Berger put Phillipsburg in front with a 29-yard touchdown run with 5:39 left in the first quarter.

Phillipsburg rushed for 131 yards as a team on 33 carries. Bracco completed 4 of 11 passes for 26 yards. Junior Xavier Campbell-Graham ended Ridge’s second and fourth possessions with interceptions.

After a quick turnaround this past week, the Stateliners head into their bye week before they will prepare to host Bridgewater-Raritan 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16.

“I’m damn proud of our kids, their resiliency. That’s a tough week, playing on a short week, Monday to Friday, but we don’t make excuses here at Phillipsburg,” Duffy said. ”I gotta get these guys in the right mind frame, which I will.

“I like our senior leaders that we have. We have a bye right now,” the 11th-year head coach continued. “We’ll rest up and heal up a little bit, physically. We’ll attack the bye week and get better at the things we need to get better at. Looking forward to getting back on the field in two weeks.”