Craig helps Islip knock Sayville from unbeaten ranks
Islip's Jeffrey Craig on his way to score a touchdown during his team's win over Sayville in the Suffolk high school Division III football game. (Oct. 16, 2010) Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Both quarterbacks are rockets, armed and dangerous and can perform daring feats with their dancing feet.
Islip's Jeffrey Craig blasted off Saturday. Sayville's Steven Ferreira failed to launch.
Craig had two spectacular touchdown runs and one long touchdown pass to fuel Islip's 41-13 victory at Sayville in a showdown of unbeaten Division III teams. Ferreira, Suffolk County's most prolific quarterback with 18 touchdown passes and 1,272 yards, was sacked 10 times.
"We knew he was capable of a breakout game. He's one of the most explosive players on Long Island," Islip coach Jamie Lynch said of Craig, who rushed 22 times for 146 yards and three touchdowns.
Craig was at his dazzling best in the first half when the Buccaneers (6-0) built a 27-0 lead. On Islip's first series, Craig had a long touchdown run called back on a holding penalty and on the next play, ran a quarterback draw 25 yards for a touchdown.
Later in the quarter, with a strong wind at his back, Craig completed his only pass of the game, a 46-yard scoring strike to Alex Gaviria.
On the second play of the second quarter, a middle screen was called, but Sayville (5-1) had it covered, forcing Craig to scramble away from three defenders. He broke past the line of scrimmage, cut to the right sideline and just when it appeared he'd be run out of bounds, tailback Joe Sabbatino cut down Joe DeLuca with a crunching block.
That allowed Craig to tap dance along the sideline until he could accelerate ahead of the field to complete a 55-yard TD run. "DeLuca, being the great player that he is, snuffed out the screen," Craig said. "Then Joe made a great block and I just kept running. I always look for an opening. I'm an athlete. I like to make plays. If I see green, I go."
Ferreira must have seen red because the Golden Flashes' vaunted spread offense came to a screeching halt, except for two long TD passes. Mostly, the Sayville junior saw Islip defenders wherever he turned. He completed only 6 of 11 passes for 129 yards and wound up with more running attempts (15) than passes.
"All week, we worked on pressuring the quarterback. We know how good he is," Lynch said. "We knew we had to get to him."
Get to him they did. Andrew Oberg, John Aubel and Sabbatino had two sacks each. Gaviria made 11 tackles. "We had a game plan. We knew we had to put pressure on him," said Gaviria, an outstanding linebacker. "We had to get him out of the pocket."
Oberg, a 6-6 defensive end, added, "Their tackles were strong, but I thought they were a little slow. So I used my speed to get to the outside. We wanted to catch him and hit him. A sack really gets the team going, especially when it comes against a great quarterback like that."
Ferreira's pocket had a hole in it Saturday. Craig's turned into a launchpad.
