By DOUG DONNELLY

Monroe News

BLISSFIELD – On his first snap ever as a varsity quarterback, Whiteford senior Ryin Ruddy dropped back to pass, rolled out and scrambled 74 yards for a game-breaking touchdown as the Bobcats came-from-behind to stun Blissfield, 28-21 in the game’s final seconds.

“First and foremost, that’s not me, that’s God working through me,” Ruddy said. “There’s no way I could do that by myself. There was a lot of good blocking downfield. I don’t know what else to say.”

The Bobcats, who won for the 15th straight game, appeared destined to lose its season opener when the home Royals took over the ball with 1:19 left in the game and a 21-20 lead.

Three run plays and three Whiteford timeouts, however, resulted in Blissfield punting the ball back to the Bobcats. Hunter DeBarr scooped up the punt and got out-of-bounds at the 22-yards line with 58 seconds remaining.

Starting quarterback Tre Eitniear ran for four yards on first down and was had the wind knocked out of him right near the Whiteford bench. He went to the sidelines and Whiteford coach Todd Thieken inserted Ruddy at quarterback.

On what was a pass play, Ruddy instead saw an opening in the Royal defense and raced down the field, getting multiple key blocks and landed in the end zone.

“It was supposed to be a pass play,” Ruddy said. “I didn’t see anything, and I saw backside opening so I just went. It wasn’t just me. I had blocking down field. I scrambled this way, then I saw Hunter had a nice block and I cut back.”

On Blissfield’s final play, DeBarr intercepted the pass to secure the win.

“In 30 years of coaching football, I’ve never seen anything like that,” Thieken said. “We should never of put ourselves in that position, but I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Eitniear, a freshman, had two touchdown passes in the first half to Kolby Masserant and had 196 yards passing in the game. The touchdowns were from 27 yards and 85 yards as Whiteford went up 14-0.

Blissfield countered with a long scoring drive to pull within 14-7, which was the score halftime.

The Bobcats went up 20-7 in the third quarter on a 1-yard touchdown run by DeBarr, but Blissfield got a 1-yard run by Jack Deatrick on the last play of the third quarter to pull within 20-14, then scored with 3:37 left on a short run by Kassidy Lenz, tying the game at 20-20. Dove Eitzen converted the extra point and Blissfield led 21-20.

“We have some areas to work on, for sure,” Thieken said. “I hope our football team can learn from this. If nothing else, I hope the kids take that away from what they saw. A lot of things we did were uncharacteristic of a championship team.”

Whiteford finished with 458 yards of total offense, compared to 231 for Blissfield, but the Royals had 22 first downs compared to 16 for the Bobcats. Ten penalties hurt the Bobcats, often in crucial situations. Ruddy led the Bobcats in rushing yards on his one carry. DeBarr had 68 yards rushing, Drew Knaggs 57 and Jake Iott 56. Masserant caught 8 passes for 182 yards.