SALT LAKE CITY — Never mind that it's early March — the musical rendition of the Christmas classic "Let it Snow" blasting through the Rice-Eccles Stadium speakers on Saturday night was completely appropriate, given the circumstances.
Snow began falling an hour and a half before the first snap of the Salt Lake Stallions' 20-11 loss to the Orlando Apollos. The wintry conditions turned a primetime contest into a low-scoring first half that heated up a bit in the second half.
"The earlier prediction was 40 degrees, possible snow, something like that. I tell you what, yesterday we flew in and came out here and walked around about 5:30 or so and it was beautiful — 45 degrees, no wind. I said, 'This is football weather.' Of course, (the snow) blew in a little bit today. But you just go play," said Apollos head coach Steve Spurrier, who was coaching his first game of his storied career in Utah.
Salt Lake coach Dennis Erickson thought both teams adapted well to the weather.
"Actually, the conditions weren't all that bad. They obviously adapted just as well as we did or better," he said.
Orlando (4-0), which entered the game averaging 32.7 points per contest, maintained its perfect record by controlling the clock and scoring on its first two drives in the second half.
The Stallions (1-3), meanwhile, couldn't muster enough offensive continuity to win back-to-back games.
"Our issue was not scoring touchdowns, moving the ball and getting in the red zone," Erickson said. His Stallions reached the red zone just twice in the game, scoring once.
Salt Lake was also just 1 of 9 on third-down attempts. "It's fricking awful. You can't win games like that," the Stallions coach said.
The Apollos took the first double-digit lead of the game on their first drive of the second half when Garrett Gilbert hit Donteea Dye Jr. for a 20-yard touchdown pass.
"It had been set up on that drive twice before. Donteea did a really nice job running that route and was able to slip by them and make a nice catch in the corner of the end zone," said Gilbert, who threw for 244 yards in the game.
Orlando used some trickery to score on the two-point conversion. Gilbert pitched to D'Ernest Johnson, who threw a pass to a wide-open Sean Price for two points.
Salt Lake responded with a touchdown of its own on the ensuing drive. The Stallions drove 75 yards in 10 plays and were aided by a fourth-and-2 conversion by Joel Bouagnon in Orlando territory before Bouagnon bounced off a defender and rushed 14 yards for a touchdown to cap the drive.
Stallions quarterback Josh Woodrum then completed an underneath pass to Terrell Newby for the two-point conversion to make it 14-11 Orlando with 27 seconds left in the third quarter.
The Apollos struck quickly, though, marching 75 yards in just eight plays and scoring again on a 2-yard Akeem Hunt touchdown run where he leapt a defender. Even with a missed two-point conversion, Orlando bumped its lead to 20-11 with 11:17 to play.
Salt Lake, which finished with 265 yards of total offense, never seriously threatened after that.
"You win games by getting chunk yards and tonight, we didn't have a lot of those," Woodrum said.
The Apollos possessed the ball for nearly 12 minutes in the final quarter and held a four-minute advantage for the game, helping to squander any chances for a Stallions comeback.
"We couldn't get them off the field in the second half. That says a lot about them. They're a really good football team," Erickson said.
The first half turned into a field goal battle, as the Apollos went into halftime with a 6-3 lead off two 40-plus yard field goals from Elliott Fry. Salt Lake countered with a 41-yard field goal from Taylor Bertolet early in the second quarter.
The Stallions missed an opportunity to get on the board first on the team's opening drive. After driving 64 yards to the Apollos' 23-yard line, Salt Lake faced a fourth-and-1. Running back Newby was stopped for no gain, though, ending the scoring threat.
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2TmnaEF
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