Pioneers fall prey to Lions

Big Blue avenges last year’s Israel Bowl loss by going on the road to beat Modi’in

The Dancing Camel Modi’in Pioneers did complete one pass on Saturday night… unfortunately it was to a member of the opposing team, never a good recipe for success in the Kraft Family IFL, or any football league for that matter.

In what was a grudge-match in the purest sense of the term, the Big Blue Jerusalem Lions became the second team of the weekend to improve to a league-best 2-0 with a 20-14 victory over the host Pioneers in a tightly-fought rematch of last year’s championship game, a dramatic double-overtime win for Modi’in.

The burgeoning chemistry between Itai Asheknazi and Idan Yaron was once again on full display, as the QB-receiver pair hooked up for three touchdowns to account for all of Jerusalem’s scoring. Meanwhile, while the Pioneers’ running game managed to gain 164 yards on the ground, Tal Brown and Uri Schiff were unable to hit a single teammate through the air, finishing an embarrassing combined 0-10 with an interception.

The victory kept Big Blue perfect on the season, although they currently hold second place in the seven-team league, behind the Mike’s Place Tel Aviv Sabres (also 2-0), on point differential. The loss dropped Dancing Camel to 1-2, and saw the defending-champs dip below .500 for the first time in over a year with a second straight defeat after 10 consecutive victories (regular season and playoffs).

The balance of power has clearly shifted in the IFL, with the Sabres and Papagaio Jerusalem Kings (1-1) making huge strides to become early contenders, not to mention the expansion Judean Rebels (1-1), who bring their own brand of always dangerous win-at-all-costs football to the mix. However, after watching Saturday’s close, but almost surgically efficient Big Blue conquest on the road over a skilled and hungry Pioneers squad, any discussion of title favorites – even at this premature juncture – that does not include the Lions can only be described as foolish.

Modi’in got off to a horrific start, finding itself down 14-0 before the contest was even four minutes old. After Brown’s opening kick went out of bounds, the defense was totally exposed on the very first Lions’ play when Ashkenazi – who had a veritable troop of vocal supporters in attendance – rainbowed a 45-yard TD bomb to Yaron, which Matan Lavi punctuated with a two-point conversion burst.

Immediately following the ensuing kickoff, Brown lofted a pass directly into the arms of Jerusalem safety Ilya Pittel, who was awarded his first career interception. It was just two plays later that Yaron and Ashkenazi gave all 150 members of the audience a déjà vu moment with a 53-yard approximate carbon copy of their picturesque previous touchdown to open up a seemingly indomitable two-score lead that only threatened to widen.

However, the Pioneers would settle down admirably and find a measure of tempo by feeding their three-headed-monster of a running back trio of Ehud Drory, Shmuel O’Neil and Kobi Nimrod. A six-minute Modi’in drive would ultimately stall at the Big Blue three-yard line, but the four first downs picked up on the 12-play march downfield was a forceful statement by the hosts that they would not go down without putting up a worthy fight in the latest edition of this fully-developed rivalry.

The second quarter began with back-and-forth action, although neither team could find much open space to move the football. Modi’in continued to pound the ground, and it finally began working with startling consistently, as Nimrod and O’Neil took turns picking up yards by the handful. Another 12-play drive – this one chewing up four minutes – finally culminated in Dancing Camel score as Brown dancing around the outside and won a footrace to the corner of the endzone against a pursuing Lion. A neat option play run to perfection between Brown and Nimrod led to a successful conversion and a 14-8 Big Blue lead heading into the interval.

After a quick three-and-out from the Pioneers to open the second half, the Lions would go on their third – and final – scoring drive, which was energized by a pair of plays that Jerusalem turned to time and again on Saturday night. One was an end-around reverse play (with a choice for the double reverse) that Lavi and Yaron ran three times, each of which resulted in large gains. The second was a nifty shovel pass that Ashkenazi threw with regularity whenever his pocket began to collapse. Yonah Mishaan and Ehud Segal were both beneficiaries on multiple occasions of the innocuous little flick from their signal-caller, who was pitch-perfect in his dissection of the Modi’in D with a series of dead-eye intermediate passes as well.

The piece-de-la-resistance of Ashkenazi’s 16-18, 141 yard, 3 TD performance was a blindly thrown dart across his body to the back of the endzone after somehow eluding a number of blitzing Dancing Camel defenders with a string of ducks and jukes. The perfectly-spiraled ball floated just over the outstretched arms of five helpless Pioneers into the hands of a ping Yaron, a perfect example of the ESP-like relationship that has quickly developed between the pair and allowed them to stake their claim as the best tandem in the IFL.

In two regular season games, Yaron has compiled eye-popping numbers of seven TDs and 249 yards. Ashkenazi, too, has a lofty 73% completion rate for 242 yards with 5 TDs and no picks. They seem so in touch with each other on the field that it at times appears as if they are playing a game of catch with some extra obstructions placed in the way just for fun. If this keeps up, they will be taking home many more co-Mike’s Place Player of the Game honors before the season is out.

Up 20-8, Big Blue was not about to start taking anything for granted. Yoni Cooper and Kasey Stewart buckled down on defense and forced Modi’in into two straight fruitless possessions, taking the game all the way to the middle of the final frame. Stewart – a first-team All-IFLer last year – led the Lions with 10 tackles while the rookie, Cooper, racked up seven, including half a sack.

It seemed as if Jerusalem would coast to an anti-climactic victory, but the even-handed nature of the match would provide for some more drama in the closing stanza. Just before the two-minute warning, Dancing Camel’s Ilan Neiger broke through the coverage on a punt return and took it 35 yards all the way back to the Lions’ nine, from where O’Neil punched it in for his first touchdown of the season on first down to give his team a glimmer of a hope.

With no time-outs remaining and down six points, Modi’in was forced to attempt an onside kick, which was alertly recovered by Segal. Even then, the Pioneers were able to force a three-and-out and Big Blue punt with 45 seconds left to set up what could have been a wild ending reminiscent of when Jerusalem pulled similar last-second of regulation hi-jinks in the Israel Bowl to send it overtime.

With no passing game, however, it is never going to be easy to get a quick-strike desperation score when you need one, a fact the Pioneers discovered the hard way as both Brown and Schiff were short on semi-hail-mary throws, leading to one final Ashkenazi kneel to secure the 20-14 final.

Both the Lions and Pioneers now have a full week and a half off before hosting their next games in the second week of December. Big Blue takes on the still-winless Beersheva Black Swarm on Thursday night, the 10^th at Kraft Stadium, while Dancing Camel and the Real Housing Haifa Underdogs (1-1) take the field on Friday at 10:30 a.m. in Modi’in for what should be an incredibly taut matchup.