Amarrvelous! Tyger ‘all

MANSFIELD — “Amarr the star!” shouted Mansfield Senior football coach Chioke Bradley as he ran past Friday night’s hero at Arlin Field.

It had a nice, poetic ring to it, for sure, but if anything “star” was a little bit of an understatement given all that Amarr Davis accomplished in the Tygers’ 24-14 win over defending Division III state champion Canfield.

With junior Nate Dismuke making his first start at quarterback since eighth grade, he couldn’t have asked for a better security blanket than Davis.

He caught a jump ball from Dismuke and turned it into a 45-yard touchdown, answering Canfield’s first scoring drive.

He caught a short pass over the middle from Dismuke, zigging and zagging his way to a 59-yard go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter.

He caught a tipped pass from Dismuke and turned it into a 26-yard gain, setting up a 26-yard field goal from Quinton DeBolt that extended Senior High’s lead in the third quarter to 17-7.

“Amarr is just a baller,” said Dismuke, who found out on Wednesday he would be starting at QB for Duke Reese, who is week-to-week because of a wrist injury on his throwing arm. “He does that stuff on a regular (basis) … he does it at practice, games … I mean, he just does it.”

And Davis did it again after Canfield quarterback Paul Bindas scored on a four-yard run with

2:04 left to cut the Tygers’ lead to 17-14.

Davis fielded the ensuing onside kick on a perfect hop and ran it back 49 yards for the game-sealing touchdown.

“I was in the middle waiting for a bounce,” he said. “I didn’t know if it was going to bounce, but I had to be ready to make a play. That was a perfect bounce. I caught it right at my chest and knew I had to take it to the house.”

The Tygers, coming off a 35-14 loss in their opener at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary, had only started 0-2 twice in Bradley’s 14 years as head coach. And Davis made darn sure it didn’t happen a third time as Canfield’s 11-game winning streak came to an end.

After becoming the Tygers’ all-time leader in reception yards in the opener, Davis went over 2,000 yards for his career against Canfield. He finished with five catches for 158 yards and accounted for 173 of Senior High’s 228 yards total offense. Throw in his 49 yard kick return and he finished with 222 all-purpose yards.

That number dwarfed Canfield’s 177 yards of total offense.

“He’s not the only guy they’ve got, but, obviously, he’s special. There’s no doubt about that,” Canfield coach Michael Pavlansky said of Davis. “We didn’t handle his speed like we needed to, and that’s why we lost.”

A jump ball TD is one thing, a broken field TD is another, and a catch off a tipped ball … well, that’s just mean. But the absolute killer was Davis’ special teams heroics.

“That’s one of a couple onside kicks we have,” Pavlansky said. “We felt good about the formation we had. We thought the middle was open …”

And then, with the blink of an eye, it wasn’t.

“He’s ‘all-time’ for a reason, man,” Bradley said of Davis. “He’s a Division I (college) recruit. Lots of schools really need to look at this kid. He makes plays all over the field, in all three phases. He’s a ‘hard guard.’ We’ve got to figure out different ways to get him the football. We moved him around a lot tonight and used him in various ways. We took advantage of some things that we saw on tape that they were doing defensively, and Nate Dismuke did a great job of managing the game for us under a (ton) of adversity.”

Dismuke is listed in the program as a wide receiver, but Bradley said he and Davis are actually the Tygers’ backup quarterbacks. And both took snaps behind center.

“I told Nate, listen, tonight is going to be a roller coaster,” Bradley said. “We ain’t asking you to go out and win the game. We’re just asking you to control the game and give your best effort. You’re going to make mistakes and we’re going to live with them. There’s 10 other guys who have to step up and match your intensity, and they’re going to do that. Just go out and have fun and get us a win.”

Bindas, Dismuke’s counterpart, made something out of nothing when he got flushed from the pocket, reversed his field and found Nick Berardino along the right sideline for a 49-yard touchdown and early 7-0 lead.

But in between that pass and Bilas’ late scoring run, the Cardinals spent most of the night bottled up deep in their own territory. Bindas was only 9 of 27 passing for 131 yards, and aside from the TD strike, mustered only 83 yards through the air. Canfield gained only 46 yards on 27 rushing attempts.

Leading the defensive charge for Senior High were senior defensive back Ja’ontay O’Bryant and junior linebacker Maurice Bradley. They shared the team lead with seven tackles. Bryant broke up several passes and Bradley had two tackles for loss, including the Tygers’ only sack.

“Our defensive guys played lights out,” Bradley said. “They were flying around. I feel like it was our best week of practice. Last week we didn’t practice well and so we lost. This week we were locked in and focused and paid attention to detail. Guys were where they needed to be. We had some guys get tired at the end and we lost containment a few times, but everything we did wrong is fixable. It’s not a lack of talent.”

Pavlansky knew that would be the case when Canfield reached out to Senior High this past winter about playing this season. Next year the Tygers will play there.

“We want to put our kids in the best stadiums against the best competition we can find,” Pavlansky said. “We’re an independent team, so we have to travel a little bit. Once we found out they had an opening … they were in the state finals in 2019. We knew what we were getting into.”

Canfield lost 28 seniors off last year’s state championship team, but Pavlansky didn’t use that as an alibi.

“The guys we’ve got are good football players,” he said of the Cardinals, who opened with a 38-19 win over West Branch. “Tonight we just weren’t good enough. Mansfield had a great game plan and we couldn’t get our running game going, which we live on. They’re a well-coached team and they were more ready to play than we were.”

This was a huge win for the Tygers, given what they are biting off the first four weeks of the season. In St. V-St. M, they were up against a team that made it to the third round of the DII playoffs last year. Next week, they travel to Massillon, coming off a DII state semifinal appearance, and that leads into the Ohio Cardinal Conference opener at home in two weeks against defending champion West Holmes, winner of 23 straight regular season games.

“This is a big win to beat a team of that caliber … great coaching staff, extremely disciplined, scrappy,” Bradley said. “They play hard and never take a play off. They’re never out of a game, so to come out there and get a win for ‘Shorty,’ (late assistant coach James Gordon, on the second anniversary of his death) and for our city was phenomenal.”

The Tygers probably haven’t tackled a slate this tough since 1993. Mansfield City Schools superintendent Stan Jefferson was a first-year head coach, inheriting a schedule that saw Senior High open with Groveport Madison, Zanesville, Mentor, Massillon and Canton McKinley.

Jefferson was able to get out of the contract with McKinley, but looking back he didn’t need to worry about how that team – with Bradley as the star defensive back and Effie James at quarterback – would hold up. The Tygers went 8-1, won a conference championship and made the playoffs for the first time.

“The benefit, as long as you don’t sustain injuries, is that once you get into conference games you know you can play at a high level,” said Jefferson, watching from the end zone Friday night.

Now that he’s in Jefferson’s shoes, injuries are the only downside Bradley sees as well.

“We can’t lose,” he said. “Even if we lose, it’s a win because you learn so much and you get better from it. I’ve always said iron sharpens iron. When you play good football teams you have to get better. I always cross my fingers and say my prayers that nobody gets hurt.

“As long as we stay healthy and keep sharpening our tools against good football teams, we’ll be a better team in the long run.”