IBM rides well-balanced offense to big win over Asahi Beer

KAWASAKI (Oct. 4)—There was little doubt that both passers would be filling the sky with an aerial barrage. But IBM also brought a ground game, and that, along with a persistent defense, made the difference.

Ryo Takagi and Tomokazu Sueyoshi combined for 158 yards and a touchdown on 25 carries, providing balance for an offense that got 199 passing yards and two touchdowns from Kevin Craft, as the BigBlue outlasted the rejuvenated Asahi Beer Silver Star 35-18 in a clash of Central Division unbeatens at Fujitsu Stadium Kawasaki.

Asahi Beer relied almost entirely on the arm of new quarterback Mason Mills, who threw 62 passes, completing 33 for 462 yards and two touchdowns. But he also threw five interceptions, two of which were returned for touchdowns.

“It was one-dimensional today,” Mills acknowledged. “They had a good pass rush against us, and trying to make plays with the pass rush, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That’s a good lesson for our team.”

The Silver Star (3-1)  had just 11 running plays, seven of which were scrambles under pressure by Mills for minus-46 yards. Still, as predictable as the offense was, the Silver Star led 10-7 at one point in the second quarter.

Even after falling behind again, Asahi Beer was very much in the game when it pulled to within three points at the end of the third quarter on Mills’ second touchdown pass to Roman Wilson and a successful 2-point conversion.

But IBM (4-0) responded with Takagi’s 17-yard touchdown run with 6:19 left in the game, then put it away on Asahi Beer’s next series when defensive end James Brooks picked off a Mills pass and returned it eight yards for a score.

“We had a lot of offense we didn’t even get a chance to run,” said Craft, who completed 18 of 23 passes. “Because we’re like, well, we’ll just keep doing [what's working.] And we never needed to go to the next thing. But we had a lot more in the game plan.”

Mills and Wilson, the first American players in Silver Star history, have helped turned the team around and make it a contender for a first division title since 2009. But IBM’s awesome pass rush, led by Brooks and new import Demetrius Eaton on the ends, kept pressure on the playmaking Mills and forced some key errors. Eaton had two of IBM’s five sacks, while Brooks had one.

“We knew we had to mix it up with Mason, he’s going to throw the ball a bunch of times,” Brooks said. “A lot of good receivers out there. They do a lot of good things in their three-receiver sets, four-receiver sets. So we just wanted to rush three and try to get as much pressure as we could, and it worked. We had a good game plan, disguised some blitzes, disguised some coverages.”

It was the defense that provided IBM with its first points of the game. After Asahi Beer opened the scoring with a 23-yard field goal by Yoshitaka Sakurai—a drive that stalled at the IBM 6 following a 63-yard pass from Mills to Wilson—-the Silver Star threatened again when Mills engineered a drive to the IBM 4 that extended into the second quarter.

On a 4th-and-goal gamble at the 1, defensive back Koji Hoshida stepped in front of  a pass into the right flat, snagged it and raced 99 yards for a touchdown. On the previous play, Hoshida made the stop that prevented wide receiver Kazuya Togura from getting into the end zone.

“I think our red zone defense is outstanding,” Brooks said. “We gave up one score in the red zone, but other than that, we got the pick, we had the goal-line stand, we gave up three when they could have got seven. Those are big stops for us. We had a great plan and I think we executed it brilliantly.”

If Mills was down after that, he was certainly not out. He came right back and engineered an 8-play, 87-yard drive, capped by a perfect 49-yard scoring strike to Wilson, who had sped behind three defenders to make the catch at the goal line.

Craft replied  with a 21-yard touchdown pass to Hiroyuki Kawai to put IBM back in front 14-10, which is how it stood going into halftime after the two teams traded turnovers prior to the break.

Asahi Beer stopped IBM on the opening drive of the second half, but a roughing-the-kicker penalty on a punt allowed the BigBlue to keep possession (although an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the return negated the extra yardage).

Craft took advantage of the second chance, throwing two passes to Takeshi Kurihara for 43 yards and running nine yards on a quarterback draw on 3rd-and-8 to give IBM a 1st-and-goal at the 1. On second down, he connected with tight end John Stanton for the touchdown and a 21-10 lead.

Later in the third quarter, it was IBM that committed the penalties that would help the opponent. With Asahi Beer going for it on 4th-and-2 at the IBM 35, the BigBlue were flagged for pass interference, then again three plays later to put Asahi Beer on the IBM 5.

Linebacker Yusuke Kishimoto sacked Mills for a 21-yard loss, and a run gained just one yard. But Mills came through in the clutch and on 3rd-and-goal from the 25, threaded the needle to find Wilson between two defenders for a well-earned touchdown. Togura made a leaping catch on the 2-point conversion to cut IBM’s lead to 21-18 with :47 left.

Brooks said that Stanton, one of the team captains, encouraged the team by saying it had prepared for just such a situation.

“We knew it was going to be back and forth,” Brooks said. “We knew we might be down three or seven, or we might be up three or seven, in the third or fourth quarter, and we have to deal with it. And so we dealt with it.”

There would be no more rabbits for Mills to pull out of his hat, however, as he threw interceptions on his next three drives. On the first, defensive back Daisuke Hoso wrestled the ball away from Atsushi Uehiro as the two went up for the pass. That set up the score by Takagi, who finished with 93 yards rushing on 13 carries.

On the next possession, Mills was close to being sacked for a safety when he errantly threw the ball directly to Brooks, who had an easy path into the end zone.

“Honestly, it was kind of a broken play,” Brooks said. “We had a play called where I was supposed to go inside. I communicated with my other guy, Let’s change it up, you go inside, I’ll loop around. As I’m looping around, I see Mason scrambling the opposite way, so I followed him. He gets a little pressure and kind of throws it up, and I’m luckily in the perfect spot.”

Mills acknowledged that he might have tried to do too much in his desire to get Asahi Beer into scoring position while conserving some energy.

“Maybe sometimes I got a little impatient, trying to help out the offensive line, get a chunk here or there, when we could have just done what we were doing earlier in the game,” he said. “Obviously there’s mistakes that I made, and mistakes that everybody made. There are things we can correct, we’re not down.”

—Ken Marantz for the X-League