It was turning into a rough afternoon for Jackson Failla.
The Nazareth senior quarterback was having a bad day at the office on Nov. 15 in the Class 6A quarterfinals in LaGrange Park. He was benched early in the fourth quarter and it looked like the Roadrunners might suffer their first postseason loss since Nov. 13, 2021, against Fenwick.
Little did he know that everything was going to wind up just fine as he was a key in a wild turnaround and helped the Roadrunners beat Lake Zurich 24-21.
Nazareth (11-1) trailed 21-9 with 3 minutes, 27 seconds left when Failla came back into the game.
“You know, there was some doubt in my mind,” he said.
But all doubts were erased when he led a drive and threw to Charles Calhoun for a 7-yard touchdown with 2:36 left. Kicker Frankie Nichols executed an onside kick and the Roadrunners cashed in when Cash Coleman came up with it at the Nazareth 48 with 2:35 left.
“That’s unbelievable,” Failla said of the onside kick. “It was perfect. Frankie is special.”
Failla led another scoring drive, hitting receiver Trenton Walker three times for 41 yards including a 15-yard score with 1:23 left. Failla ran in the 2-point conversion, the defense held strong and the Roadrunners are going to the semifinals to play, coincidentally, Fenwick (9-3) on Nov. 22 in LaGrange Park. They will try to win their fourth straight title after winning three in a row in Class 5A.
The Failla-Walker combination was huge in the final two Nazareth drives. Failla hit Walker five times for 65 yards.
“I told my quarterback that he could trust me in the late stretch and that’s what he did,” Walker said. “Whenever he tried to throw me the ball, I tried to catch it. He kept doing it and that’s how it ended up.”
Walker admired how Failla took his brief benching.
“That says a lot about his character,” he said. “He’s a very composed person. So just being able to come back in after being benched and leading the offense down the field with those scores is the big part.”
Nazareth coach Tim Racki said he was looking for a little spark in the offense when he made the QB switch.
“I told him to be ready,” Racki said of Failla. “After that didn’t work out, I said, ‘OK, kid, do your thing.’”
And the kid did his thing.
“That was crazy,” Failla said. “I was struggling early on, and I wasn’t ready to quit. Neither was anybody else. But we really just came together. We believed in ourselves and we just made it happen.”
Failla finished with 145 yards, completing 12 of 25 passes. Walker had six catches for 75 yards. Justin Watson ran 13 times for 74 yards and a touchdown.