BY SAUL BERRIOS-THOMAS | STAFF WRITER
EDINBURG —Edinburg Vela senior running back Christian Flores got the ball on his first carry at the Vela 45-yard line. He made one or two moves, and he was gone.
That was it. The SaberCats led wire-to-wire, beating Brownsville Hanna 35-20 on Friday in the Monitor’s Game of the Week at Richard R. Flores Stadium.
“We were really fired up for this game, because last year, when we played them in the playoffs, they gave us a fight,” senior receiver Daniel Enriquez said. “We knew that these guys weren’t going to be easy, and we knew that meant we had to strap up and go all four quarters, pounding the rock.”
It wasn’t quite as easy as the first play would indicate, though, and the Golden Eagles refused to die until the refereeing caught up to them.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, with Vela up 21-12, Hanna junior quarterback Victor Campos completed a 32-yard pass to senior receiver Miguel Payan on third-and-12. As Payan was going to the ground, he lost the ball, and senior linebacker Richard Campos recovered it and returned it from the Vela 30 to the Hanna 40. The Golden Eagles were flagged for two penalties on the play, moving the ball to the Hanna 20.
“The ruling they gave me, was that it was a clip on our team,” Hanna coach Mark Guess said. “We are not even the return team in that situation. They are the ones that should have gotten the flag, because they were the ones blocking low, but it is what it is.”
The play was near the SaberCats’ sideline, so Vela coach John Campbell had a good look at Richard Campos’ return.
“There was a block below the waist, which sounds weird on the defending team, but obviously on any kind of return, you can’t go below the waist,” Campbell said. “Then, apparently, there was an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty over here on our sideline. Basically, we had a live ball foul and a dead ball foul, and it took them a while to get it sorted out.”
After the play, Hanna senior running back Cesar Mancias was ejected.
“The reason they gave me was that (Mancias) threw a punch,” Guess said. “He didn’t throw a punch. These guys saw some things that they didn’t see, so that’s the way football is.”
To that point in the game, Mancias had carried the ball 18 times for 69 yards and a TD.
Regardless of the calls, the play itself changed the tenor of the game.
“We were really amped when (Richard Campos) came up with it,” Vela sophomore safety Jaime Perez Jr. said. “If they complete that, it would have been huge for their momentum. It would have changed everything.”
The fumble and ejection snafu wasn’t the only questionable call that haunted the Eagles. With just under three minutes left in the third, Vela punted the ball with Mancias deep to return, and it looked as though a touchback would be called as the ball bounced in the end zone and back out onto the field. All of a sudden, one referee came in with a different call, ruling there was a fumble on the play, and Vela had recovered.
“It’s plain and simple. (Mancias) didn’t touch the ball,” Guess said. “Once again, that’s football. Sometimes it bounces your way, and sometimes these guys (referees) see things that they think they saw. And unfortunately, it hurt us, because they get a ball inside the 3. It is what it is.”
Vela scored on the next play, a 3-yard run by Flores for his second TD of the night.
The shame was, the game was shaping up to meet the expectations of a game-of-the-week-caliber matchup, but the calls ended up erasing the tension.
The Flores run that started it all wasn’t quite the harbinger of things to come that the SaberCats hoped it would be.
“That was one of the few in the early game that went exactly as planned,” Campbell said. “It got a little bit tougher after that.”
Vela was hampered by false starts and holding penalties all night.
“(Those types of calls) had a large impact,” Campbell said. “Penalties are momentum killers. They are drive killers. You never, in this position, knock officiating or anything like that. But it definitely seemed as if that became a bigger emphasis in the game.”
Several of those penalties backed sophomore quarterback AJ Sotelo into multiple third-and-15-plus scenarios.
“It does throw off the rhythm a little bit,” Sotelo said. “We have to be a little bit stronger mentally, but we can always fix that.”
Meanwhile, Hanna also struggled to get going. Vela came in looking to stop the run.
“(Mancias) is as good a player as I have ever seen carrying the ball,” Campbell said. “He is very explosive — a tremendous football player. We knew we were going to have to mix our pressures, but the focus was to try to nullify 24 as much as we could.”
Hanna continued to run the ball up the middle out of a one-back formation, which allowed Vela’s defense to clog the running lanes. Hanna continually ended up in third-and-long scenarios, which allowed the Vela secondary to clamp down for one big play each series.
“Stop No. 24, that was the plan,” Perez Jr. said of Mancias. “He is one of their best athletes. That is what we did, and we were able to succeed in putting them in third-and-longs.”
Hanna would have been content to continue the first-half grind of exchanging punts, but right before half, Vela made the Eagles pay for the slow tempo.
Just as time was expiring in the half, Vela, inspired by Thursday night’s NFL game, went to a little bit of trickery. Sotelo rolled to his left and handed the ball to Enriquez, who was coming across on a reverse. Just as Enriquez looked ready to turn the corner, he pulled up and let go of a pretty little pass lofted just over the defense. Senior receiver Aziel Garcia hauled in the pass with one hand and raced for the end zone. Garcia crossed the goal line as time expired, giving the SaberCats a 14-0 lead going into the locker room.
Campbell was back to his QB rotations Friday. He started Sotelo but switched to senior QB Elijah Trujillo after the first quarter. With about three minutes left in the first half, the SaberCats got the ball back, and Sotelo was sent out with the offense again. Sotelo orchestrated the Garcia touchdown drive, and he got the snaps in the second half.
“They are both going to have a chance,” Campbell said. “I think both of them did some good things, but AJ is young, and Elijah is new to this, as well, so we are still not quite making those decisions the way we need to.”
Sotelo was on the field for both first-half SaberCats’ touchdowns, but he had very little to do with either. Then, with about six minutes left in the third quarter, Sotelo found his rhythm. He completed four passes in a row, the first to junior receiver Justin Cantu, then to senior tight end Nico Rodriguez, and finally back-to-back passes to junior receiver Kevin Rojas.
“It felt like it was a little bit of a momentum shift,” Campbell said. “We knew we had to hit some passes. They were loading the box on us. We were struggling a little bit with their defensive front. He hit them in some clutch situations, and it seemed as if we regained some momentum with that.”
“I did (feel like I found my rhythm),” Sotelo said. “My line set up the blocks. They gave me the time that I needed. My receivers ran great routes, and we drove down the field really well.”
Even after all the hoopla surrounding the penalties and ejections, Hanna was not ready to concede. Senior receiver Roman Garay was forced into action at running back, and he provided a spark to get the Eagles into the red zone.
But then, Perez Jr. atoned for earlier mistakes by nabbing his third interception of the season.
“It felt really good,” Perez Jr. said. “Especially after getting burned on that last play, I knew I had to let that go and step up.”
Perez caught the ball at the 1-yard line, and the interception was enough to put the game away for good.
“Everyone was excited,” Enriquez said. “That’s his third interception. Like, he is actually doing better than I did last season. Props to him. Way to stick in and put the game away. This guy is going to be something special for Vela.”