If you were lucky enough to have spare time during your Friday night, away from all the Zachary homecoming festivities that have gone on throughout the past weeks and were in attendance for the Broncos homecoming football game, you truly witnessed something. No, there is no adjective to go along with something, and anyone in the home section of the Bronco corral witnessed, just something.
The game started with a really strong showing from the Bronco offense. Jeremey Patton (11), a usual suspect for explosive runs, dropped a huge 60-yard rushing touchdown to start the game off with a bang. The following drive, Liberty punched right back, scoring six points plus converting a solid rushing two-point-conversion. The back-and-forth trend continued, with Michael Kirby (12) delivering an early Christmas present to ULL commit Kriston Brooks (12), who caught the fade route for a second Bronco touchdown.
Liberty exposed another weakness in the Bronco secondary, dropping their second touchdown and two-point conversion to jump ahead 16-14. Just 1 minute later, Trikoby Rheams (11) returned the Patriots kickoff to the logo, and it would seem like neither team would go away. The Broncos would eventually punt the ball away to the Patriots, but Jeremiah Smith (12) recovered a big fumble which set up Boston Bently (12) to deliver a field goal to put the score at 17-24 Patriots going into the half.
The Broncos, possibly settled down from the halftime break, found Jeremey Patton off a 25-yard run to tie the game not even two minutes played in the second half.
The Patriots would continue to dominate the run for the remaining 2 quarters, with the Bronco defense coming up short in countering the rushing attack. In the early third quarter, despite numerous penalties that delayed the Liberty touchdown, the Patriots would tag on another score pushing through the Broncos defense. And then another to push the Patriots ahead even further and stop the back-and-forth game it had previously been.
The Broncos had some life in the final quarter, putting up another score to put their point total at 31, but the Patriots kept their rushing attack going, thumping 52 points of offense on the Broncos 32×65 foot jumbotron. A tired defense Bronco hadn’t let up more than 20 points all season in all but one game before the night against Liberty. You pair this with the Broncos passing game that never got off the tarmac, and you get a piping hot dish that the chef dropped as soon as they took it out the oven.
The Broncos suffer a huge district loss, going 5-1 so far on the season, and 1-1 in district play, the record that is tied with Central and below Catholic on the district standings.
The Broncos will head to Baton Rouge next Friday, October 24th to tackle the Woodlawn Panthers, and will return to the Corral for a much-anticipated rivalry matchup against Central High Wildcats the week after.