Yoshimoto shines as Frontiers end Seagulls’ reign, return to X Bowl

Fujitsu wide receiver Junpei Yoshimoto leaps for extra yardage after a catch during the third quarter.

YOKOHAMA (Nov. 30)—Junpei Yoshimoto stands all of 169 centimeters, but the Fujitsu wide receiver loomed particularly large in the Frontiers’ historic dethroning of the Obic Seagulls.

Starting the game with a spectacular kickoff return to set up the Frontiers’ first score, Yoshimoto all but secured the victory with a gritty second effort to convert a crucial third down as Fujitsu was running out the clock and moving closer to another shot at a first-ever league championship.

“He has the heart of a lion,” Fujitsu running back Gino Gordon said of Yoshimoto, who finished with eight receptions for 78 yards to help the Frontiers avenge a recent pair of stinging losses to Seagulls with a 27-17 victory in the first of two semifinal games at Yokohama Stadium.

Colby Cameron completed 28 of 40 passes for 280 yards and two touchdowns for Fujitsu, which advanced to the Japan X Bowl for the fifth time in eight years and sixth time overall. Fujitsu will look to finally walk off a winner when it faces the IBM BigBlue on Dec. 15 at Tokyo Dome.

For Obic, the loss before the crowd of 4,453 brought the curtain down on its unprecedented four-year reign as league champion. Fujitsu was the dominant side on Sunday, as it has been all season, but the Seagulls did not go down without a fight.

“I think in the first half, we kind of came out trying to do too much,” Obic defensive end B.J. Beatty said. “We came out at halftime, we calmed down….It turned into a good game, you can’t be mad at that. My hat’s off to Fujitsu.”

The Seagulls trailed 17-3 going into the second half, but took advantage of a bad snap on a punt to pull within a touchdown on rookie quarterback Takushiro Hata’s 9-yard touchdown pass to Noriaki Kinoshita.

After Hidetetsu Nishimura kicked a 43-yard field goal for Fujitsu with 6:06 left in the game, Kinoshita, last year’s league MVP, gave Obic new life by returning the ensuing kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown to make it 20-17.

Kinoshita had returned the opening kickoff of the second half 53 yards to the Fujitsu 36, but the Seagulls came up empty-handed when Yosuke Kaneoya was wide right on a 40-yard field goal attempt. He had made a 35-yarder in the first quarter.

Fujitsu was left with 5:51 left on the clock to either kill or score and make it a two-possession game. It was reminiscent of the situation in last spring’s Pearl Bowl final, in which the Frontiers had the lead and the ball with four minutes to go, but could not sustain a final drive and Obic came back and tied the game on the final play of regulation. The Seagulls then won in two overtime tiebreakers 37-34.

The Pearl Bowl win had come just months after the Seagulls had denied the Frontiers a first-ever title in the Japan X Bowl by holding on for a 24-16 win.

But this fall saw Cameron, a former star at Louisiana Tech who joined Fujitsu in the spring, really getting into synch with the offense and his receivers. And that made a world of difference in finally ending Obic’s dominance.

All season, Cameron’s favorite target had been Teruaki Clark Nakamura, who caught nine passes for 253 yards and three touchdowns in the 48-24 romp of the Panasonic Impulse two weeks ago in the second-stage finale.

On Sunday, Obic put the clamps on Nakamura, who would end with just three catches for 45 yards. That forced Cameron to go mainly to his secondary target, the pint-sized dynamo Yoshimoto.

“In today’s game, we knew that Clark would be heavily covered,” the 23-year-old Yoshimoto said. “Through scouting, we figured that I, as the No. 2 receiver, would be more effective. In practice, many passes came my way.”

Yoshimoto had an added incentive for stepping up. He personally shoulders the blame for the Pearl Bowl loss, although his dropped pass in a key situation was just one of several that may have affected the outcome of the game.

“I wanted to make up for that,” he said. “I didn’t want to get too caught up in it, but I was glad I could do that.”

Fujitsu started the final drive at its own 8 and Cameron immediately gained some breathing room with an 18-yard completion to Nakamura. Two 2nd-down completions moved the ball out to the 48, and two plays later Fujitsu was facing 3rd-and-9. With 3:38 on the clock, a failure to gain a first down here would give Obic the ball back with plenty of time.

But Cameron and Yoshimoto connected on a 15-yard pass to move the chains, a precursor to the bigger play they would soon be involved in.

The Frontiers faced 3rd-and-8 at the Obic 34 with less than two minutes left when Cameron was forced to scramble. The defenders closed in as he looked desperately for an open receiver. Then he found Yoshimoto and drilled a bullet to him.

“I didn’t like what I saw right off the bat and I thought I could extend the play and I saw him pop into [view],” Cameron said. “He did such a great job to come back to the ball, because I kind of underthrew it.”

Yoshimoto made the catch, but he was a good three yards short of the first down. In a flash of agility and instinct, he suddenly spun out of a tackle, then used all of his 70 kilograms to bull past the marker.

“I knew someone had come up from behind me, but after I caught the ball, he didn’t hit me right away, so I could spin away from him,” Yoshimoto said. “I looked ahead, then I checked where the first down was and just made it.”

Said Cameron: “He’s a fighter.  That second effort got us a first down, which was the game. He did a great job.”

Fujitsu now had to just run out the clock. But after Gino Gordon gained nine yards on two runs and was stopped on third down for no gain, the Frontiers went for it on fourth down, and Cameron put the final nail in the coffin by scoring on a 16-yard run with :27 left for the final margin of victory.

Cameron was quick to praise his offensive line, which has responded well to the mentoring of offensive line coach Grant Johnson and held Obic’s All-League defensive ends Kevin Jackson and Beatty pretty much at bay.

“Grant Johnson helped with the O-line, and all week he preached that we could pick up their blitzes and we game-planned for it, and those guys did an awesome job. Those guys deserve all the credit in the world on the offensive side today.”

Yoshimoto set the tone for the game when he returned the opening kickoff 55 yards to the Obic 37.

“I was tight from nerves, so I thought it was good that I got that far,” Yoshimoto said. “But if I just ran as usual, that would have been a touchdown. It was good, but it could have been better.”

No matter, as the offense needed less than two minutes to get the ball into the end zone. After Gordon, who finished with 59 hard-earned yards on 18 carries, ripped off a 9-yard run, Cameron completed four straight passes, the final one for a 5-yard touchdown to Sei Kyo.

Obic, led by starting QB Shun Sugawara, responded with a drive to inside the Fujitsu 20, but it stalled there and the Seagulls had to settle for Kaneoya’s field goal.

Nishimura booted a 46-yard field goal on Fujitsu’s next possession. In the second quarter, Cameron engineered an 11-play, 80-yard drive that he capped with a 1-yard touchdown pass to Kyo to make it 17-3.

Sugawara nearly reenacted his Pearl Bowl drive at the end of the second quarter. With 1:32 left in the half, he completed five of seven passes to move Obic from its own 17 to the Fujitsu 40. On the final play, he lofted a Hail Mary pass that Yuki Ikei caught in a crowd, but he was stopped at the 1-yard line. Obic argued that he had gone over the goal line, but to no avail.

Sugawara finished 13 of 21 for 150 yards before being replaced early in the third quarter by Hata, whose mobility made him more effective against Fujitsu’s fierce pass rush that recorded three sacks. Hata had to contend with defensive end Austin Flynn, who was suspended for the first half for an incident during the Panasonic game.

But Flynn got the last laugh, sacking Sugawara on the final play of the game.

“I had to do something, and I had to do it quick,” Flynn said.

—Ken Marantz for the X-League