With Jack Elliott having graduated and taken his talents to Vanderbilt, this season has been Emmett Dowling’s opportunity to show what he can do as Mount Carmel’s first-string quarterback.
As Loyola found out firsthand on Oct. 24, Dowling can do a lot of things very well.
In guiding the Caravan to a 35-24 CCL/ESCC Blue road victory, Dowling scored on pair of runs while also throwing for two touchdowns.
“Our senior class, we were 0-3 against them all-time,” Dowling said. “We had a little bad taste in our mouths going into the week and a chip on our shoulder.
“But we’re 9-0 and we’re CCL Blue champs and that was one of our two goals coming into the season.”
In an odd twist, the teams will meet again in the first round of the Class 8A playoffs at Mount Carmel.
The Caravan (9-0, 3-0) began the scoring at 8:29 of the first quarter as Dowling (22-of-32 passing, 298 yards) connected with Marshaun Thornton (six catches, 75 yards) on a 13-yard TD pass for a 7-0 advantage.
“We had to cut the head off the snake,” Thornton said. “That’s something that was preached all week in practice. We had to go hard and go fast.
“We had to finish them and give them no hope, basically. That’s what we had to do.”
At 6:39 of the second quarter, Dowling used his legs on a 3-yard scoring run, widening Mount Carmel’s lead to 14-0.
The Ramblers (4-4, 1-2) scored the next 17 points of the game, going up 17-14 on Dom Lamoney’s 13-yard TD pass to Joe Haughey with 10:28 remaining in the third quarter.
Nearly nine minutes later, the Caravan regained the advantage at 21-17 on a 2-yard run from Nathan Samuels. Samuels carried 18 times for 112 yards as Mount Carmel piled up 402 yards of total offense.
With 8:01 remaining in the fourth quarter, the Caravan increased their lead to 28-17 as Burrell (seven receptions, 133 yards) pulled in a 31-yard scoring pass from Dowling.
“We’ve worked a lot on this (with Dowling),” Burrell said. “As a first-year starter, we give a lot of confidence to him and we try to help him as best as we can. But at the end of the day, he’s just a great football player and a great quarterback. He makes it easy on us more than we make it easy on him.”
Dowling’s 2-yard run with 1:59 remaining in the game gave Mount Carmel a 35-17 lead. Loyola scored the final points of the game on a 5-yard pass from Matthew Lee to Brendan Fitzgerald with 0.3 seconds on the clock. Fitzgerald is the son of former Sandburg great and Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald.
“We knew we had to cut the head off the snake,” Burrell said. “… We lost to them the last two years and that left a bad taste in our mouths. We knew that we had to come out and get one.”
The stat information is incorrect. Marshaun Thornton had seven catches 135 yards Burrell had 75 yards.