E.D. White shuts out Morgan City 41-0

While E.D. White and Morgan City played to a scoreless first quarter, things soon got better for E.D. White, but they worsened for Morgan City in Friday’s District 7-4A game at Yockey Bernard Field at Harvey Peltier Memorial Stadium.
A second-quarter tsunami that resulted in 28 points gave the Cardinals a four-touchdown lead at halftime en route to a 41-0 shutout victory against the Tigers in Morgan City’s district opener.
Michael Clement got the scoring started with a one-yard touchdown rush at the 8:45 mark of the quarter, and 28 seconds later, E.D. White reached the end zone again after Peyton Amedee intercepted Devonta Grogan’s pass to give the Cardinals prime real estate at the Morgan City 42-yard line.
On the drive’s first play, Cardinals quarterback Devin DeSandro found a wide-open Brandon Legendre for a 42-yard touchdown completion to push the lead to 14-0.
Then, two special teams’ mistakes by Morgan City (2-3 overall, 0-1 district) led to the game getting out of hand.
A blocked punt and a recovery by E.D. White’s Brandon Boudreaux set the Cardinals up at the Morgan City 20-yard line following the Tigers’ next possession. That led to a first-and-goal situation and Legendre rushing in from 6 yards to pad the lead to 21-0 with almost five minutes remaining in the half.
On their next drive, the Tigers’ punt team woes worsened when a snap sailed over Morgan City punter Noah Sierra’s head and rolled into the end zone. E.D. White’s Andrew LeBlanc recovered the ball to push the lead to 28-0 at the 2:25 mark of the period.
“Our defense was playing well for 16 minutes, and then once we had the momentum swing, we kind of put our heads down because most of the kids I have on defense I also have on punt team,” Morgan City Coach Chris Stroud said. “They put their heads down a little bit, and we’ve got to learn to overcome that. We didn’t do that last week against Donaldsonville, and we didn’t do it this week. I’ve got to do a better job of coaching special teams, and we’re going to try and get that done next week.”
For E.D. White, winning the special teams battle was something that wasn’t lost on Cardinals coach Chris Bergeron.
“Special teams is the first thing we work on in practice every day,” Bergeron said. “We feel like we have to prepare, and that’s an edge for us.”
Not much was an edge for Morgan City Friday.
Grogan, a dual-threat quarterback, showed signs of promise, even flashing electric breakaway moves while carrying the ball, but Morgan City came well short of finding the end zone. The Tigers were held to 135 yards of offense and six first downs. Grogan finished the game with 10 carries for 48 yards.
Kerwin Francois had eight carries for 31 yards for Morgan City, and Dylan Tingle had four rushes for another 26 yards. All told, the Tigers had nine players carry the ball, but none had a breakout performance in large part because the Tigers were being dominated at the line of scrimmage.
“That’s a concern, but it’s more of a concern in the weight room and where we’re at right now in our program,” Stroud said. “Those kids in the trenches have got to spend some years in the weight room, and we’ve got some that came out at the last minute. Thank God because we wouldn’t have had enough linemen, but they don’t have the time in the weight room yet, and that’s where you win the battle.
“It’s not a matter of effort or them not trying,” Stroud added. “They’re doing a great job of trying. They’re just not there in the weight room and just aren’t ready. We’ve got to change that.”
After getting out to such a big lead, E.D. White was on auto pilot for the second half. It tacked on two more scores when Legendre found Thomas McGoey for a 19-yard touchdown strike just two minutes into the third period, pushing the lead to 35-0.
A five-yard touchdown rush by Branton Vicknair late in the game capped the scoring.
E.D. White had eight different ball-carriers in Friday’s game that combined to rush for 145 yards and three touchdowns on 32 carries. The Cardinals also threw for a combined 115 yards between Legendre, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette commit, and DeSandro, despite just three total completions.
“We feel like we’re pretty a balanced team,” Bergeron said. “We didn’t get into any situation where we felt we really had to throw the ball tonight. We threw it well when we needed to, but we felt really good about running the ball.”
E.D. White (3-2 overall, 1-1 district) finished with 260 yards of offense and eight first downs.