Hollis-Brookline at Hanover | Friday, Oct. 23 | 7 p.m.
After two weeks on the road, Hanover High football returns home Friday night with two more victories, a winning record and a defense that has increasingly established what the Bears can count on.
The bigger question is on the other side of the ball.
Hanover hosts Hollis-Brookline at 7 p.m. Friday after beating John Stark 20-3 and Kingswood 9-6 on consecutive road trips. The wins have improved Hanover to 4-3 overall and 3-2 in Division II after an 0-2 start. Hollis-Brookline enters the game 1-6 overall and 0-5 in division play.
At this point, Hanover’s defense has become the team’s constant. The offense remains inconsistent at best, capable of moving the football effectively, even explosively at times, but too often unable to sustain long drives.
Developing a more consistent running game, getting steadier production through the air and winning individual battles are things that come through hard work, grit and fierce competition. There is, however, some low-hanging fruit: Hanover needs to stop neutralizing its own big plays with penalties.
Flags have repeatedly erased some of the Bears’ best offensive plays this season. For an offense that hasn’t consistently generated points, those mistakes are particularly costly. Rather than turning a big play into momentum, Hanover too often finds itself moving backward and again asking its defense to protect a narrow margin.
The Bears’ last two games illustrated both sides of that equation.
Two road wins, two different offensive performances
At John Stark, Hanover generated most of its offense through the passing game while getting relatively little from its rushing attack. It was enough because the defense left plenty of margin for error. Hanover held John Stark to just three points and came away with a convincing 20-3 victory, an important response following an 18-13 loss to Souhegan the previous week.
A week later at Kingswood, the equation flipped. Hanover ran the football considerably better, but the passing game was lackluster and the Bears generated just 123 yards of total offense. By contrast, Kingswood finished with 313 yards and yet Hanover somehow found a way to leave Wolfeboro with a 9-6 victory.
Kingswood running back Dean Porter carried 37 times for 207 yards, accounting for substantially more yardage by himself than Hanover produced as an entire offense. But the Bears forced four turnovers, repeatedly preventing Kingswood from converting its advantage in yardage into points.
When Porter’s success on the ground became an increasingly serious problem, Hanover defensive coordinator Mike Ivanoski made a critical halftime adjustment. Ivanoski shifted the Bears into a five-man front for the second half, putting another defender at the line of scrimmage and significantly limiting Porter’s effectiveness after the change, forcing Kingswood to rely on throwing the football. Hanover’s players executed the adjustment by containing Porter, pressuring the quarterback and continuing to create turnovers to protect a three-point lead.
Defense has given Hanover a chance every week
The Kingswood performance was hardly an aberration. Hanover has surrendered only 81 points through seven games, and no opponent has scored more than 22. John Stark and Kingswood combined for just nine points over the last two weeks, which has allowed the Bears to weather considerable inconsistency on offense.
Hanover’s 34-point performance at ConVal demonstrated what Hanover’s offense is capable of when everything clicks, with quarterback EJ Frechette and Peak Temple connecting for several big plays. But subsequent games have made that performance look more like an example of the offense’s potential than the emergence of a consistently explosive attack.
Even during the current winning streak, each part of the offense seems to take turns working. At John Stark, the passing game carried most of the load while the running game struggled. At Kingswood, the running game improved while the passing game struggled. What Hanover hasn’t done consistently is put the pieces together.
The low-hanging fruit is discipline
There isn’t necessarily a schematic change that suddenly turns Hanover into a high-scoring offense.
The beautiful thing about football is that it almost never rests on individual performances alone. A more dependable running game requires a team effort that has to be earned by every man on the field, starting with grit and competition in the trenches and ending downfield as effort and blocks are sustained through the whistle. A more consistent passing game requires complex coordination. Blocking, route-running, reads and execution all have to come together to find success. Those gains require hard work and a lot of practice.
Penalties are different.
If there has been one particularly frustrating constant in an otherwise inconsistent offense, it has been the Bears’ ability to wipe out some of their own best plays with flags.
For a team playing the type of games Hanover has played, the consequences are magnified. A big gain erased by a penalty can turn a promising drive into a punt. A touchdown called back can be the difference between playing from ahead and once again asking the defense to preserve a one-score game.
The lesson should be straightforward: Make the opponent stop you. Don’t do it for them.
The Kingswood game provides the most extreme example of why that matters. Hanover found a way to win despite being outgained 313-123. Its defense compensated for that disparity by producing four turnovers. That is a tremendous defensive effort. It may not be a winning formula the Bears can depend upon against the best teams in the state.
Hollis-Brookline offers an opportunity
Friday night could provide an opportunity for the offense to take a step forward.
On paper, Hanover should be favored. Hollis-Brookline is 1-6 overall and 0-5 in Division II, while Hanover is 4-3. Against five common opponents - Milford, Pelham, ConVal, John Stark and Souhegan - Hanover went 3-2 while Hollis-Brookline went 0-5.
Hanover has surrendered 81 points. Hollis-Brookline has allowed 261. Interestingly, however, Hollis-Brookline has actually scored more points than Hanover, 126 to 99. That should be enough to get Hanover’s attention.
The Bears don’t necessarily need an offensive explosion Friday night. Their defense has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to keep games manageable. What Hanover needs is something simpler: a cleaner and more complete offensive performance.
Can the Bears establish the running game without becoming one-dimensional? Can the passing attack produce consistently enough to prevent Hollis-Brookline from loading up against the run? Can Hanover sustain drives and finish them? And perhaps most importantly, can the Bears stop erasing their own successful plays?
From 0-2 to an important final stretch
Those questions shouldn’t obscure how much Hanover has accomplished since the beginning of the season. The Bears were 0-2 following the loss at Milford and had scored just 11 points. Since then, they are 4-1. In that time, they have learned how to win close games. They have responded well to some tough losses. Their defense has shown an ability not only to execute a game plan, but to adjust when an opponent finds something that works. The Kingswood victory might be the best demonstration of that grit yet.
For the Bears to become playoff contenders, the offense needs to show similar growth. Some of that improvement will require exactly what improvement in football usually requires: hard work, grit and fierce competition. There are no shortcuts to becoming more physical, more consistent or better at executing.
Hanover has shown that it can play with the elite teams in the division. But the Bears can stop erasing their own good plays, make the opponent earn its stops, and in doing so give a very good defense a little more help. If Hanover can begin doing that Friday night, the Bears may enter the final week of the regular season not simply with another victory, but looking considerably more like the complete football team they have occasionally shown they can become. If they can accomplish that over the next two weeks, the Bears have a real chance at chasing a title.