The ground game wasn’t working, so Capital City went to the air.
After five games of moving the ball freely on the ground in their split-back veer offense, the Cavaliers struggled to get moving gaining only two first downs on their first three drives in their eventual 24-22 Central Missouri Activities Conference loss Friday night to the Helias Crusaders.
The Cavaliers hadn’t completed more than three passes in a game through Week 5, but when Capital City got moving on its fourth drive, the success mostly came in the air.
On the way to that fourth drive, Helias was able to move the ball at will, scoring 17 unanswered points on three consecutive scoring drives.
Jaylan Thomas started the Cavaliers’ first scoring drive with an 11-yard run, one of Capital City’s two runs of more than 10 yards, it’s lowest total in any game this season. Then Thomas ran off another six to help build his final line of 16 carries for 113 yards. Hayden Carroll then got his first completion of the game to Hurley Jacobs before finding Cameron Harrison on a play-action post deep down the middle of the field. With Helias’ defense pulled toward the line of scrimmage all night to stop the run, Harrison was able to get wide open for a 46-yard touchdown.
“We claw and scratch our way through things sometimes,” Capital City coach Joe Collier said. “We always believe that play will work.”
Joe Schaefer made his first of two extra points to send the Cavaliers into halftime down 17-7.
Capital City got the ball to start the second half and struggled to run again, gaining only 13 yards on six attempts, but the drive didn’t stall early because Carroll connected with Harrison on a quick slant, with Harrison cutting all the way from the right hash mark to the left sideline for a 29-yard gain.
“(The passing) is a maturation for us,” Collier said. “We knew going through the season and getting to district play that we were gonna have to throw the ball around a little.”
But the drive ended with a fourth-and-3 run that gained two yards to come up just short on the Crusaders’ 30.
Helias drove down the field to add its final score of the game and take a 24-7 lead with 6:03 left in the third.
“We’ve just got to get out of series,” Collier said. “… It was the little things, the little technical things tonight that compounded to big things. (Helias) is a good football team and we knew that. It was a good challenge for us. We’ll learn from this and get better, then we’ll see them again and we’ll see what’s up.”
Capital City went to the air four times on its next drive, gaining 35 yards on three completions, while only gaining 10 yards on five runs, but the drive ended on another turnover on downs. On fourth-and-6, the throw to the flat was caught, but the effort came up just short once again, setting the Crusaders up at their own 15.
The Cavaliers forced a three-and-out to start its next drive at its own 36.
The ground game looked like it has in every other game this year, with Thomas gaining 3 and 6 yards on the first two plays, but Jacobs was stopped just short of a first to set up fourth-and-1 from the Cavaliers’ 45. Capital City went for it once again, but this time Thomas broke through the line and cut to the home sideline for a 50-yard run to set the Cavaliers up at the Crusader 5. Carroll connected with Harrison for a 5-yard touchdown on a quick slant to cut the Helias lead to 24-14.
“We can actually throw the ball,” Collier said. “(Helias) particularly played off the ball on us and we’ve seen teams do that. … Tonight we had to throw it a little more because the ground game wasn’t working as much.”
The Cavaliers were unsuccessful on their next drive, then a muffed punt set the Crusaders up to let the clock run out.
Instead, Helias called timeout with :01.7 left on the clock on the Cavalier 6 and tried to kick a field goal to get the maximum amount of points in the Class 5 District 4 standings with a 13-point win.
Instead, Harrison came around the edge and blocked the kick, then Dante McRoberts picked up the loose ball and ran it back 85 yards without anyone chasing for a score as time ran out.
Thomas ran up the middle for the 2-point conversion to create the final two-point margin.
“Sometimes things don’t go your way,” Collier said. “Sometimes you meet adversity and you just have to plug away. … You just work to cut the little things down until one day you get that victory.”
Carroll ended with nine completions on 13 attempts for 125 yards and two touchdowns, by far the most passing the Cavaliers have done in a game this season. As a result, Harrison had his best day of the campaign with four catches for 86 yards and two touchdowns.
“That’s been the plan for a couple of weeks now,” Collier said of adding more passing to the offense. “We always thought we’d need to get the ball in the air a little bit. We have a quarterback who can do it, we have the receivers. That’s always been the second part of it, the evolution of our offense.”
After averaging more than 300 yards on the ground through five weeks, Capital City earned only 149 rushing yards.
Capital City (4-2, 2-2 CMAC) will try to get back on track after dropping two of its past three games when it hits the road to play Sedalia Smith-Cotton at 7 p.m. Friday.
Helias (4-2, 3-1 CMAC) will try to earn its third straight city championship when it plays Friday, again at Adkins Stadium, against Jefferson City.