OLMSTED TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Only the clock could stop Avon and Olmsted Falls from scoring touchdowns.
By the final two minutes, Avon quarterback Sam DeTillio began to take kneel-down snaps at the 4-yard line — before scoring again — Friday night in the Eagles’ 63-42 win at Olmsted Falls that keeps them in position for a seventh straight Southwestern Conference football championship.
“I think this was a big step for offense,” said DeTillio, who threw for 370 yards and five touchdown passes to fellow senior Ethan Holbrook.
Overall, DeTillio threw six TD passes on 18 of 25 passing. His offense gained 689 yards overall with Holbrook hauling in big passes early and junior Jakorion Caffey running downhill toward the final stretch of it.
As a result, Avon (6-1, 4-0) — as the area’s No. 4 team in this week’s cleveland.com high school football Top 25 — is now alone in first place of the SWC standings with its win at No. 10 Olmsted Falls (5-2, 3-1).
“I’m happy with our progress and where we’re at,” Avon coach Mike Elder said. “Historically, we’ve always been better by Week 10. That’s what we do as a program. I challenged this team. I said, ‘Just because teams in the past have done it, that doesn’t mean we will.’”
The Eagles know Olmsted Falls well, considering they met twice last year, including the Division II regional semifinals.
“Last year, our run game was very dominant,” Holbrook said. “That’s kind of what pushed us over the edge to win.”
Holbrook said he thought the run game — led last year by returning backs Caffey and Gavin Ehrhardt — opened up the pass game Friday night at Olmsted Falls’ Charles A. Harding Memorial Stadium. A senior, Holbrook not only scored five touchdowns but added 208 yards on 10 receptions from DeTillio.
“He’s one of my best friends,” DeTillio said. “We spent hours and hours together, working for these spots and to be in the position we are.”
Olmsted Falls led 14-7 before the Eagles rallied with three straight TDs to take a 28-14 lead at halftime. Ehrhardt hauled in a short pass from DeTillio, then rumbled 19 yards to score the tying TD early in the second quarter.
DeTillio followed that up by finding Holbrook, who pulled in a one-handed catch of a 25-yard pass midway through the quarter. Avon led the rest of the way.
“Whoever gets him has hit the lottery,” Elder said. “Not too many people are recruiting the red-headed wide receiver from Avon. He can flat out play.”
Holbrook scored his third and fourth TDs in the third quarter, pushing Avon’s lead to 42-14 before Falls mounted a comeback.
Rocco Conti, who rushed for 240 yards on 15 carries, broke loose on an 82-yard scoring run. Holbrook and DeTillio hooked up for a fifth time to make it 42-21 late in the third quarter, but Falls’ Jack Pinchek ran back the following kickoff for another touchdown.
Conti recovered Noah Minadeo’s onside kick, and the Bulldogs pulled even closer.
“We came out at halftime and we didn’t want to quit,” Olmsted Falls coach Tom DeLuca said. “They played their hearts out. Obviously, execution-wise, we’ve got to get a lot better on defense.”
The teams combined for 1,178 yards.
Falls rallied within 48-35 of Avon, but Caffey answered with two long TD runs to push that difference out of reach.
“I felt I needed to run a little harder than I was because I didn’t want this game to slip away,” said Caffey, who rushed for 279 yards on 21 carries. “I’m going to give 100 percent every carry I get, but I definitely kicked it up a notch.”
Caffey ran last year for a then-career-high 175 yards in the regular season against Falls. His performance Friday just missed his new career high of 291 yards, set in a 43-42 win in Week 2 this year against Medina.
Avon, which is at home Friday next week against Berea-Midpark, needed all of the offense it could get from Caffey, Holbrook, DeTillio and Co.
“The Bulldogs, man, they fight hard,” Holbrook said. “They’re always crawling back into the game. They’re a tough team. I just seen them scoring touchdowns, and I was like, ‘We’ve got to keep going. The game’s not over yet.’”
Falls, which plays host next week to Amherst, pushed Avon to what should be one of the best performances by a receiver at the school. Elder said he wasn’t sure if Holbrook’s five receiving TDs is a school record.
“I’ll have to look in the record books to see where he stands,” he said. “We have record books. We just don’t publicize them. He’ll be in there, but we don’t really want to talk about records. We want to talk about one record, and that’s wins and losses.”
Contact sports reporter Matt Goul on Twitter (@mgoul) or email (mgoul@cleveland.com).
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