Murphy – It had been two weeks since Murphy was last on the field, when the Bulldogs lost at Franklin 35-15. Head coach Joseph Watson said his team had a lot of anger and frustration they needed to get out from that loss, and they certainly did that to Georgia Force Christian.
Murphy scored on every drive excepts its final one, putting on a running clock in the first half in a 58-14 win. It was the first career win Watson, who replaced David Gentry after he retired in June.
“I think the fact that we had to deal with a loss for two weeks, a little pent-up anger there, it was good to let it out on somebody,” Watson said.
The first half was an offensive clinic for the Bulldogs, who scored seven touchdowns despite only running 26 plays. Murphy’s longest drive in the first half was six plays, and four of the touchdowns were longer than 10 yards.
The first drive was four plays, ending when Kellen Rumfelt hit Juan Allen with a deep pass on the right sideline and Allen juked a defender and ran into the end zone for a 40-yard touchdown. The second drive was six plays, and came after the Bulldogs (1-1 overall) stopped the Blue Knights (1-1) on fourth-and-3 on the Murphy 7 yard line.
After picking up two first downs on the ground and two through the air, Ty Laney capped off the drive with a two-yard touchdown, and Cole Laney ran it in on the two-point try to increase Murphy’s lead to 15-0 with 3:05 left in the first quarter. The next drive was only three, with Ty Laney finishing it with a 38-yard touchdown, his second of the night.
When the starters were in, the Bulldogs were able to move the ball at will. In the first half, Murphy ran for 269 yards on just 17 carries, and Rumfelt completed six of eight passes for 176 yards and two touchdowns.
Rumfelt’s second touchdown was a beautiful deep ball to Payton McCracken, who caught it, waltzed around a defender and ran the last few steps to the end zone for a 61-yard touchdown. That gave Murphy a 29-0 lead with 8:37 to go in the second quarter.
“Most people come into a game thinking we’re going to run the ball down their throats,” Rumfelt said. “That’s what we do, but it feels good to throw it on them, too, and show we can score anyway we want.”
A 35-yard run by Allen pushed the lead to 36-0, though Josh Patterson held off the running clock for a few minutes by returning the ensuing kickoff 70 yards for a touchdown. Murphy scored three more times before the end of the half: a 44-yard run by Allen, a safety and a 6-yard run by Hunter Stalcup. The running clock was on from there and stayed on until the whole second half.
Coaches love to say how you see the most improvement from your first game to your second game. Though Murphy played an overmatched opponent, Watson could see progress.
“We played a little more physical from the Franklin game,” Watson said. “We’re proud of that, we knew we needed to do that. We got better.”
Murphy was supposed to play South Pittsburg (Tenn.) this week, but the Pirates’ season is on pause due to COVID-19. Thankfully, the Bulldogs were able to strike an agreement to host Rabun County (Ga.) on Friday night.