By Brian Argabright
The 830 Times
Del Rio’s loss to Odessa High Friday night was one the Rams will no doubt want to forget.
The Rams lost to the Odessa High Bronchos, 49-0. It was the worst loss at Walter Levermann Ram Stadium since Del Rio lost to Laredo United 54-3 in October 2019.
Had Odessa not botched a pair of point after tries, it would have tied that dreadful mark with a 51-0 loss.
The win snapped a 13-game losing streak for Odessa (1-1). Del Rio (0-2) saw its losing streak extended to four games including last year’s playoffs.
Del Rio trailed 9-0 at the end of the first quarter. Odessa struck first with a 25-yard touchdown run by Javonte Delce, and then picked up two more points on a safety when the Rams snapped the ball over punter Corbin Farrar’s head and out of the back of the end zone.
By halftime, the Odessa lead had ballooned to 36-0 as Odessa’s sophomore star wide receiver Ivan Carreon finally got going.
Standing at 6’ 6”, Carreon followed up an impressive varsity debut last week with a better showing against Del Rio. Though he dropped a pair of potential touchdown passes in the first quarter, he made up for those miscues in the second quarter.
He and quarterback Diego Cervantes connected on a 21-yard touchdown strike to make it a 16-0 lead 18 seconds into the second quarter.
A few minutes later, the duo struck gold again, this time finding the end zone on a 20-yard touchdown pass that saw Carreon catch the ball, then evade several Rams defenders through the middle of the field on his way to score.
Meanwhile, Del Rio’s offense couldn’t get out of the starting blocks.
Playing without starting running back Emiliano Lopez, who rushed for more than 100 yards last week, the Rams’ run game wasn’t it’s same powerful self. Elian De La Paz found some running room, but couldn’t break away for big gains. Bernie Esquivel was given a chance to carry the ball in the second half, but he, too, couldn’t string together enough big runs to keep the Rams moving.
Quarterback Zack Taylor struggled to hold onto the ball, turning it over three times for the second week in a row. He threw a pair of interceptions, including one that put an end to Del Rio’s best drive of the first half, and fumbled once on an all-out blitz by the Broncos.
A four-yard run by Dajuan Green and a one-yard run by Cervantes, which came following Taylor’s second interception, built the Odessa lead to 36-0 by halftime.
Cervantes would throw two more touchdown passes in the second half. His first was a 29-yard strike to Adrian Madrid that made the score 43-0. The second was a two-yard loft to Carreon near the left corner of the back of the end zone.
The Carreon touchdown was set up by a fumble by freshman Zane Hughes on a kickoff following the Madrid touchdown.
Del Rio heads to Laredo’s Shirley Field Thursday, Sept. 9, to face the Laredo Martin Tigers (0-2) at 7 p.m. Martin lost to Zapata, 49-14, Friday night.
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Contact the author at drnhsports@gmail.com
