By Pedro Velazco
Tribune sportswriter
Greentown — The Eastern football team stands at 2-0.
Few if any of the current Comet players can even remember the last time they posted that mark. But rest assured, they’ve been informed.
After roaring back from a two-touchdown deficit to beat Madison-Grant 41-21 Friday night, the current Comets are putting the sour history of the recent past behind them.
“This is the first time we’ve been 2-0 since 1997. I can’t even remember the last time we beat Madison-Grant,” said Eastern running back Cale Roark.
The Comets had lost three straight to M-G since the teams’ began their current series of Week 2 games.
“To come from down at halftime, and then come back and just manhandle them in the second half, it feels awesome,” Roark added.
The Comets found themselves down 21-7 late in the first half before two key plays turned the momentum. Stalled out at the M-G 48, Eastern punter Sean Ryan crushed a punt that pinned the Argylls on their own 3 with just over a minute to play before halftime. On the next play, Eastern linebacker Clay Marner invaded the M-G backfield, forced a fumble in the end zone and pounced on the pigskin for a touchdown.
The Comets went into halftime down just one score, 21-14, then blitzed the visitors after the break with another 27 unanswered points.
“It was immense,” Eastern coach Josh Edwards said of Marner’s TD. “There’s really no way to describe the tables that turned, because we’re looking at a two-touchdown deficit going into halftime. With that score, we’re looking at a one-possession game, get the ball the start of the second half. That was a huge play.”
Challenged to be more intense after halftime, the Comets struck quickly with a seven-play drive finished by a 37-yard scamper from Roark with 9:48 left in the third quarter. Eastern missed the extra point, but the game had already turned the Comets’ way.
After forcing the Argylls into a quick punt, Eastern struck again, this time on a 21-yard TD pass from John Horner to Joey Price. Another Horner-to-Price connection on a two-point conversion made the score 28-21 Eastern with 4:52 left in the frame.
By then, Eastern was in control. The Comets next scored on a 52-yard fourth-down run by Roark, who exploded through the line and left defenders in the dust with 43 seconds left in the quarter. Eastern’s final TD came on a 23-yard pass from Horner to Blake Donson in the fourth quarter.
“We felt like it doesn’t really matter whether we were running the sweep on the outside, or whether we were running a dive right up the middle, that our line was going to take care of business, that John Horner, the quarterback, was going to take care of it,” Roark said. “It felt out there like we could manhandle them, like we could do most anything we wanted.”
Roark finished with 166 yards on 23 carries. Horner, who raced 62 yards for an Eastern TD in the first quarter, completed 9 of 14 passes for 94 yards. He threw two interceptions in the first half, then two TDs in the second. He was 6 of 7 after halftime.
“They got momentum and they took it, made big passes, big runs,” M-G coach Beau Engle said. “Cale Roark is a speed demon. He’s tough. That quarterback is good. I felt like we were twice as aggressive as them in the first half. The second half, we didn’t get it done.”
Madison-Grant QB Brady Franklin opened the scoring with a 28-yard TD pass to Cedric Presley. The Argylls also got an 11-yard TD run from Presley in the second quarter, followed by a one-yard plunge from fullback Neil Stevens for a 21-7 lead. Stevens had 74 yards at halftime, but got just three more yards on six carries after the break.
