Focused Eagles don’t look past winless Cedars, put up 51 in 1st half
2023 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
By Matt Gaffney — MikeDragoSports.com correspondent
One of the many things the Exeter football team does well is what it doesn’t do: It’s not looking too far ahead.
These Eagles are a hyper-focused bunch who aren’t going to look past the week’s opponent. It’s all by design.
“We never look ahead,” said Exeter coach Matt Bauer. “The kids know better. We are a one-week-at-a-time team and they know better than to be looking down the road.”
Friday night at Don Thomas Stadium the Eagles showed why they are ranked No. 4 in the state in Class 5A.
Sophomore quarterback Riley Martinez threw four touchdown passes, two to Zack Zandier, and the Eagles scored all of their points on each of their seven first-half possessions in a 51-0 Lancaster-Lebanon Section 2 win over Lebanon.
Exeter (2-0, 5-0) kept its unblemished record intact while the Cedars remained winless (0-2, 0-5). Lebanon continues to search for their first win since 2020; it has lost 27 consecutive games.
“We have to improve ourselves week to week and last week we had a tremendous amount of mistakes and penalties,” said Bauer. “We challenged the kids tonight to clean up some of that stuff and I think, by and large, we did.”
His quarterback agreed.
“We just can’t look down the road and get trapped,” said Martinez.
Exeter had little resistance from the Cedars, scoring four touchdowns in the first 10 minutes.
Martinez carved up the Lebanon defense as he played just a half, completing 7-of-9 passes for 135 yards and the four scoring tosses; Zandier hauled in four receptions, including touchdown catches of 19 and 20 yards.
“He is making good decisions,” Bauer said of his quarterback. “He’s delivering the ball in some tight spots and he’s taking what the defense gives him.”
Martinez is quick to credit the big boys up front protecting him.
“We have a lot of guys that I can throw to and if it wasn’t for the O-line, I wouldn’t be able to throw to any of them,” said Martinez. “It’s good to have a great O-line.”
Martinez often looks to get the ball in the hands of his top target, Zandier, the 6-6 Coastal Carolina recruit. Facing Lebanon, Martinez had a little extra reason to get it to his tight end – it was Zandier’s birthday.
“I had to get him at least one touchdown but I happened to get him two,” Martinez said.
Younger brother Jayden Zandier scampered for 107 yards on just four carries, including a 58-yard touchdown run. Pharrell Caceres later added a 58-yard rushing score of his own as the Eagles piled up 318 rushing yards against the overmatched Cedars.
The one-sided affair gave Bauer an opportunity to get a number of players involved.
“All in all, we spread the ball around and a lot of kids got an opportunity to make plays for us,” he said, “and we came out of this relatively healthy and that’s the most important thing, especially as we head into the meatier part of our schedule.”
Bauer attributed his team’s success to the play of his offensive line.
“I can’t say enough about our offensive line,” he said. “They’ve kept (Martinez) clean now two weeks in a row, which they are taking a lot of pride in.”
The contest was never in doubt as the Eagles opened the game with a seven-play, 85-yard drive capped off by a Genuine Stutzman 9-yard run. A few moments later, Martinez threw his first touchdown pass of the night, a 30-yard strike to Nathan Pashley.
He followed that up with the two touchdowns to Zack Zandier and then came back to find Stutzman on a 35-yard hookup for his final scoring pass of the contest. Stutzman made the most of his touches as he scored both times he had the ball.
Exeter’s stable of running backs ran free as the Eagles controlled the line of scrimmage with Caceres adding 94 rushing yards to complement Jayden Zandier.
While the Exeter offense was humming, the defense harassed Lebanon quarterback Paul Trace the entire game. Trace struggled, completing only 5-of-26 passes as Lebanon was able to total only 91 yards. The Cedars struggled to get anything going; their longest play from scrimmage went 16 yards. The offense was hampered by multiple dropped passes.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Final | |
| Lebanon | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Exeter | 29 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 51 |
Scoring summary
| 1 | Exeter | Stutzman, 9 run (Gaston kick) | 10:04 |
| 1 | Exeter | Pashley, 30 pass from Martinez (Gaston kick) | 6:20 |
| 1 | Exeter | Z. Zandier, 20 pass from Martinez (Redding pass to Gerhart) | 3:52 |
| 1 | Exeter | J. Zandier, 58 run (Gaston kick) | 2:40 |
| 2 | Exeter | Z. Zandier, 19 pass from Martinez (Redding run) | 11:52 |
| 2 | Exeter | Stutzman, 35 pass from Martinez (Gaston kick) | 4:40 |
| 2 | Exeter | Caceres, 58 run (Gaston kick) | 2:48 |
Team statistics
| Lebanon | Exeter | |
| First downs | 4 | 20 |
| Rushes-yards | 13-47 | 33-318 |
| Passing yards | 44 | 142 |
| Total yards | 91 | 460 |
| Passes | 5-26-1 | 9-12-0 |
| Fumbles-lost | 2-0 | 1-0 |
| Punts-average | 6-29.1 | 0-0 |
| Penalties-yards | 11-110 | 10-120 |
Individual statistics
RUSHING
Lebanon: Buchmoyer 5-20, Medlock 6-14, Trace 2-13.
Exeter: J. Zandier 4-107, Caceres 8-94, Paschall 4-43, Hafer 4-19, Boston 4-12, Ware 2-10, Martinez 1-10, Stutzman 1-9, Ortiz 3-8, Payne 2-6.
PASSING
Lebanon: Trace 5-26-1–44.
Exeter: Martinez 7-9-0–135, Hafer 1-2-0–4, Payne 1-1-0–3.
RECEIVING
Lebanon: Infante 3-32, Beaver 2-12.
Exeter: Z. Zandier 4-59, Pashley 2-41, Stutzman 1-35, Weaver 1-4, Ware 1-3.
INTERCEPTIONS
Exeter: Young.
