Pascack Valley shut out West Milford 35-0 on Saturday. However, there are some stats that a scoreboard does not show. Penalties, overthrown passes, and overall sloppy play were a common theme throughout the Homecoming Game at Pascack Valley.

The true reason for Valley’s win Saturday was its defense, who put up the shutout, the big goose egg that the defense produced because of its fine play. The first “drive” of the game for West Milford was stopped quickly as Valley forced a 3-and-out. This sums up the performance of Valley’s defense pretty well. Even if the Highlanders started to push down the field, which did not happen often, Valley always found a way to bring the drive to a screeching halt.

West Milford’s running game was nonexistent on Saturday. Final stats for the Highlanders running game, 9 carries for a total of 1 yard. Yes, Valley’s defense held West Milford to one singular yard. That statistic alone is indicative of how well the defense executed on Saturday.

The Highlanders did not have any success in the air either. Valley sacked Austin Hopler, West Milford’s starting quarterback, 3 times, causing him to be jittery in the pocket. These sacks led to Hopler going 3-for-8 in the air for 16 yards. In addition, Hopler threw two interceptions, which one was reversed because of pass interference, and the other was by Kyle Alvarado, which he then brought back to the 10, but because of yet another flag, was brought all the way back to the 46 yard line. But, this was not a problem because Dedrick hit Mike Pimpinella for a 46-yard touchdown pass.

The defense led the team as they handed the ball to Colin Dedrick every series with great field position. Defense was the most important factor for Valley in this game, and hopefully the defense keeps this play up for a tough matchup against Wayne Hills this week.

There were 15 penalties in total, and 11 of them were caused by Valley. This number is unusually high for any football game, and is quite concerning considering Valley’s next opponent, the Patriots of Wayne Hills are 4-0.

Pascack Valley didn’t stick to their traditional style of play, which is pound the ball into the middle, but instead, relied a ton on the deep ball. On the first play of the game, Dedrick made a lucky connection with senior Mike Soravilla as the ball was tipped by West Milford’s corner back right into Soravilla’s hands for a 55 yard touchdown pass to open up the game. 

The Valley offense did not seem to be on point against West Milford. Dedrick, who seems like he can throw a ball on a dime to any of his wide receivers in his sleep, was off at Saturday’s game. He overthrew multiple passes to wide open receivers down field which would have let to 2 additional touchdowns.

In fact, there were two fumbles as well, one by Andrew Flores, who had 2 touchdown runs for PV, but it was recovered by PV. Pimpinella also fumbled, and this time, Valley was not as lucky as West Milford picked the fumble up.

Valley’s O-line played well, as usual, allowing Dedrick to have a great day throwing the ball and giving Flores the holes that he needed to run the ball.

“My O-line did a great job considering they had so many guys they had to block. You know they do a great job every week,” said the quarterback.

Nevertheless, Valley still won, and they go into next week’s game with outstanding 3-0 record.

Colin Dedrick: Despite overthrowing some targets, Dedrick was 12-for-18 with 234 yards and 3 TD’s. 

Andrew Flores: Yet another great performance for Flores. He had 86 yards on 19 carries and 2 TD’s. It will be very interesting to see who starts when Jake Giambona comes back from a shoulder injury.

Mike “Pimp” Pimpinella: Another great week for him as he finished the day with 4 receptions with 100 receiving yards. He also had 1 TD which was 46 yards long.

Mike Soravilla: Soravilla had 2 receptions for 75 yards and a touchdown.

Valley Special Teams: With the exception of one punt return in which Soravilla bobbled a punt, Soravilla put Valley in a very good field position often, as West Milford was forced to punt often.

Although the offense did not play as well as expected, Valley stil posted 35 points. Hopefully, performances like Dedrick’s are carried into next week’s showdown vs Wayne Hills. “It’s gonna be a battle against Wayne Hills, it’s always a battle against them. If we do our job and do everything right I think we got the guys to come out on top.”

Every week our sports writers try and predict the score of the game. In addition, every week we have a new celebrity guest. At week 3 here are the standings:

Evan Jones: 5 points

Jake “The Snake” Aferiat: 4 points

Mike Zocco: 3 points

Calvin Ralph: 1 point

Claudia Ralph: 1 point

Bobby “Bobberino” Saul, Jaimie Smith, Kyle Comito, Jimmy Dronzek, Jeremy Lesserson and Noah Schwartz: 0 points

Celebrity guest winner:

Jeff Jasper (3 weeks in a row)