If anyone could brag about having the best defense in the city, it would be the Camden High football team.
The Panthers, ranked No. 10 in the state in the latest NJ.com Top 20, enter Thursday’s Thanksgiving rivalry game against Eastside (formerly Woodrow Wilson) with four shutouts to its name. Camden also had four other contests where it allowed the opposition to score just once.
However, it was the Tigers’ defense that did the talking as Camden was held out of the end zone, save for a safety, as Eastside dominated the Panthers, 25-2, at Mike Rozier Stadium in Camden in front of a police-estimated crowd of 1,000.
“It says that we had the talent this year (on defense), we just have to get the offense right,” said junior defensive back Terron Loyd who intercepted two passes, returning one for a score in leading the Tigers. “Next year, I feel as though we are going to be the top dogs.”
Eastside won for the third year in a row over Camden. However, the Panthers still lead the series, 54-34-3. The Tigers finished the season with a 5-5 record. The Panthers capped a championship campaign with a 10-3 mark.
“It’s the Turkey Game; it’s Thanksgiving,” rookie head coach Melik Brown said. “It’s your rivalry. Records don’t matter. All the preseason and postseason things don’t matter. When you play the Turkey Game, it’s about bragging rights. We have bragging rights for one more year.”
Eastside last played a game 20 days prior to Thursday’s matchup, and it showed. The Tigers owned a 7-2 lead at the break. A bad snap on a punt attempt resulted in a safety for Camden as senior James Heard Jr. tackled senior punter Luis Rodriguez in the end zone.
Junior Judah Anthony caught a 61-yard pass from sophomore Makhi Brunson with 6:44 left in the first quarter for a 7-2 lead after junior Julius Dominguez’s successful point-after try. The first half was sloppy and undisciplined as the two squads combined for 18 called penalties, many of the personal foul and unsportsmanlike conduct variety.
“We just asked the guys to lock in when it was time to play football,” Brown said. “We gave them time off to recuperate and get healthy. We just asked them when it was time to play football, to play football. As long as we play football, everything else will take care of itself.
“What you have to understand is that it was a rivalry game, so emotions are high. So one thing I talked to the guys about was emotional control. Be physical. Be violent. But in between the plays, control their emotions. Emotions got the best of us a little bit in the beginning of the game, but we kind of settled down a little bit and were able to make the plays we needed to make to get the win.”
Junior Fatim Diggs added a 1-yard dive in the third quarter. The score was set up by a 74-yard catch-and-run by junior William Love that placed the ball on the 2-yard line.
Loyd’s first pick (he had one in the first half negated by a roughing-the-passer penalty) gave the Tigers the ball on Camden’s 39-yard line. Seven plays later, Eastside was in the end zone as senior William Norman caught a 3-yard pass from Brunson.
“The defense has been playing hard all year,” Brown said. “They just continued to play ... a real scrappy bunch. Like I told you, as long as we put football first, we are a heck of a team. When we start worrying about everything else that has nothing to do with football, we make mistakes. When we play football, we can play with the best of them.”
Loyd capped the scoring with a 50-yard pick-6 in the fourth quarter.
“We worked hard this week,” Loyd said. “I feel like this was earned. We knew what we were coming into. We actually knew we were better than them. We showed that today.”
Camden was able to muster only 62 yards of total offense.
“That was probably the worst football I have ever been a part of,” head coach Rob Hinson said. “We lost discipline. We lost focus. I don’t know if we were prepared enough. There really wasn’t anything positive to take away from today. That starts from me, all the way down. We took a couple of steps back today as a program.
“We are going to give them a couple of weeks off and then we will get back into the weight room and start rebuilding our culture, because after today, we don’t have as solid of a foundation as I thought we did. It all starts with me. This is going to be a really tough offseason.”
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With the football playoffs expanding, many Thanksgiving Day traditions are being pushed to the wayside. Could the City of Camden’s rivalry be next?
“We will always play this game on Thanksgiving,” Brown said before the question could be finished asking. “It’s tradition. You can’t have this game on any other day but Thanksgiving. This is a day we bring out the whole city to glorify our young people. When we try to switch it to something else, it won’t be the same. Keep this on Thanksgiving, because after we play the football game, we go and share some turkey.”
Hinson wasn’t as definitive.
“It seems like it’s getting tougher and tougher for that to happen,” he said. “You know what I’m saying? Both teams are good teams. We are still a good team even though we had a crappy day. They had an up-and-down season. They had a lot of injuries. They had a lot of players who didn’t play early on, so they are still a good team as well.
“The expectations from us — and I know the expectations from their program as well — is that we are going to be playing late into the season. You then have to weigh different factors. If you don’t have the kind of season that you want and you are not playing late, you then have teenage kids that you have to keep focused for a couple of weeks. I still like being a part of it. I still like what it means to our community. But it seems like it is getting a little bit tougher to kind of maintain this tradition.”
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