Thursday Night Lights: Edgar vs Iola- Scandinavia Game Recap

I finished my 2020 Fall live scouting tour across the state of Wisconsin with the highly intriguing matchup between 8-0 Edgar and 8-0 Iola- Scandinavia. Just the fact that they were able to play all 9 games was impressive and told me they must be very well disciplined teams to not have any Covid cases make them miss a week or two. This matchup was also one I wanted to catch because it had two players in my Top 10 Finalists for Player of the Year in Edgar LB/RB [player_tooltip player_id="30748" first="Austin" last="Dahlke"] and Iola- Scandinavia QB<strong> Parker Prahl</strong>. My anticipation was high all day long waiting for this game to get started. Let’s see how it played out. Thanks for reading! Iola- Scand. started the game on offense and the first drive ended up going about the same as their entire game went. They were able to pick up some nice chunks with RB <strong>Brye Hardel</strong>, who is a very well built RB that definitely has power to his game. However, those chunks rarely were able to translate into points. What also happened on this drive is what happened on a lot of other drives by the Edgar defense. That is that LB Dahlke and the rest of the front seven dominated the trench battle. Dahlke was the one who ended the opening drive with a third down sack. Dahlke flashed that crazy burst and closing speed to collect his 13th sack of the season. Best in the state. On offense, Edgar’s run game dominated the trenches. The offensive line, RB [player_tooltip player_id="30748" first="Austin" last="Dahlke"], and RB <strong>Kyle Brewster</strong> were a machine that started chugging away right from the first drive. On this first drive the pass game actually put Edgar in position to score when WR [player_tooltip player_id="30833" first="Drew" last="Guden"] hauled in the deep shot from QB Wolf. From there <strong>Kyle Brewster</strong> scored his 20th TD of the season and the team scored the 2 point conversion for the early 8-0 lead. The next Iola- Scand. drive was ended again by a third down sack. This time by <strong>Korbyn Bauman</strong>. After a great return, Edgar’s offensive line set the tone by dominating the defensive line and opening up lanes for the RB group. Dahlke finished this drive off on a designed inside run that he was forced to take to the outside. He made the jump cut and won the race to the corner for the 14- 0 lead. Iola- Scand. ended the first quarter with what looked like a nice drive starting to get pieced together after Prahl found <strong>Marcus Jaworski </strong>on a screen that he took for a first down. The second quarter did not start how Iola- Scand. was hoping though. <strong>Ayden Weisenberger</strong> was able to get a sack of his own to start the quarter and then DL <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="30954" first="RJ" last="Knetter"] </strong>killed the drive with a third down sack to force the punt. The punt was almost blocked, but Hardel was able to avoid the pressure and get the punt off. On the first play QB <strong>Konnor Wolf</strong> found <strong>Ayden Weisenberger</strong> on the deep pass. Ayden did a great job to adjust to the ball in the air and haul in the pass and push the score to 21-0 after the extra point was good. Two plays into the Iola- Scandinavia drive it went about as bad as it could have. On first down, <strong>Korbyn Bauman</strong> busted through for the TFL and then <strong>Kyle Brewster</strong> made his presence felt on defense, along with his huge offensive game, when he came up with the interception on a deep pass over the middle. Brewster wasn’t done after the interception. Just a handful of plays lter he took the carry 15 yards for his second score of the game untouched behind the blocking of [player_tooltip player_id="30748" first="Austin" last="Dahlke"]. Iola- Scandinavia came out ready to roll on offense. <strong>Parker Prahl</strong> found Heise and <strong>Kaden Jueds </strong>on back to back plays for first downs. Then Hardel picked up an 11 yard chunk. Unfortunately, the drive stalled and on 4th down they were tackled short of the line to gain. Brewster and Dahlke took over on offense and continued to dominate on the ground. They finished the drive with a Brewster TD, his third of the game pushing the lead to 34-0. The second half started with Iola- Scandinavia on defense and they were ready to play. They forced Edgar to go 3 and out and punt for the first time of the night. Then on offense they got tricky with it. RB <strong>Brye Hardel</strong> took the direct snap, rolled left, and fired it deep to QB <strong>Parker Prahl</strong> for the 43 yard gain. Two plays later, Hardel took another direct snap and plowed his way towards the goal line. He was able to stretch out for the score. This closed the gap to 34-8. Iola- Scandinavia wasn’t able to come out and stop Edgar on offense again. Instead, Edgar once again hammered the defense with <strong>Kyle Brewster</strong> and [player_tooltip player_id="30748" first="Austin" last="Dahlke"] over and over until Dahlke busted his way into the endzone for the score after a 5 minute drive. With the third quarter ticking down, Edgar sat at a 42-8 lead. Edgar’s defense wasn’t going to let Iola- Scand. have the same drive that they just had again. Dahlke almost got another sack, Knetter almost picked off a screen, and on 4th down [player_tooltip player_id="30833" first="Drew" last="Guden"] came up with the pass breakup to end the drive in short order. Edgar’s defense had too many playmakers to stop and they were smothering Iola- Scandinavia’s offense. Edgar ended the third quarter on offense and started to rotate in their depth players. The 4th quarter started with<strong> Ayden Weisberger</strong> and <strong>Jordan Bunkelman</strong> taking over in the Edgar run game and it didn’t miss much of a beat. They slowly ran their way down the field until Bunkelman broke through the line for the short TD run and 49-8 lead. The 40+ point lead started a running clock. The Edgar defense wasn’t going to relax on defense, even with the game well in hand. Instead, [player_tooltip player_id="30748" first="Austin" last="Dahlke"] made another huge play as he perfectly slid into a passing window, picked off the pass from Prahl, and then ran down the sideline for the easy score and 56- 8 lead. Even then the Edgar defense didn’t slow down. On the next drive, [player_tooltip player_id="30797" first="Brayden" last="Baumgartner"] came up with the sack on 1st down. The team’s 5th sack of the game overall. A couple plays later Iola- Scandinavia punted the ball back to Edgar and Edgar ran out the clock giving them the 56- 8 victory. Make sure to check back in for my Players of the Game article coming out very soon! Thanks again for reading!