By Craig Dunn
Logan Daily News

 GALLIPOLIS — Even on a night when they got off to a painfully slow start, the Logan Chieftains still managed to put up some unreal offensive numbers.
After hitting a two-run home run — er, sacking the Gallipolis quarterback for a safety and a 2-0 lead at the end of the opening quarter — the Purple & White scored touchdowns on their next eight offensive possessions to wipe out Gallia Academy 57-6 at Gallipolis Memorial Field.
Unlike last week, when they scored touchdowns the first six times they had the ball in a 49-7 rout of Hamilton Township, the undefeated (4-0) and state-ranked Chiefs failed to reach the Gallipolis end zone on any of their first four possessions although they were in GAHS territory three times.
However, once a host of Chiefs sacked Tyler Eastman in the end zone for a safety on the last play of the first period, it was like the proverbial dam burst on offense. They scored every time they touched the ball the rest of the night except for their final possession, when they just ran out the clock.
“Sometimes you're going to have starts like that, unfortunately, but if we can pick and choose the nights we have one, tonight we can get away with it,” Logan coach Dale Amyx said. “There might be games down the road where we might not get away with it.”
Absolutely true. But not on this particular night, as the Chiefs racked up a school single-game team record of 390 passing yards.
Senior Patrick Angle was 20-of-35 for 283 yards and a touchdown, and his understudy, junior Jordan Jurgensmier, went 3-for-3 for 107 yards and a pair of TDs.
Logan gained 564 total yards (good for seventh on the all-time list), scored a season-best five rushing touchdowns, and reached the 50-point plateau for the first time since doing so five times during the 2007 season. 
Even a lineman, senior T.J. McCray, got in on the act, scoring on a 2-yard run midway through the third period as the Chiefs were breaking the game wide open.
“I think we executed very well and had a very good game plan tonight,” said McCray after the game. And then, with a grin, he added: “and the best play of the whole game was power-right, 35-dive. Thank you, coach (Kelly) Wolfe.”
Logan capitalized on a Gallipolis offense that committed six turnovers, including four  interceptions. The Blue Devils were 1-of-8 passing, completing three more passes to the Chiefs than they did their own receivers.
Gallipolis (0-4) played a different defensive scheme than Hamilton Township, which basically sat back in a zone and let Angle and his talented receivers pick them apart. And while the final score was more lopsided than last week, the Blue Devils gave the Chiefs more problems... at least for awhile.
“They played real tight coverage on us. They have some real good athletes out there,” said Amyx. “They were blitzing a lot, and I thought our guys did a great job picking it up. They were playing some man coverage with a little bit of free safety or a linebacker sitting behind it.”
As a result, the Blue Devils picked off a pair of Angle passes in that opening quarter — his first such miscues of the season.
“(Angle) didn't see (the defenders) a couple times and tried to force the ball on one down the middle (that was picked off in the end zone),” Amyx said. “The other, he just flat didn't see the kid sitting out there.
“I think he was a little off tonight — I don't think he was on his game,” he added. “It got better as the game went on, but it seemed like we were out of synch (on offense).”
What is considered an off-night for Angle would be considered an exceptional game for most high school quarterbacks.
He threw for more than 200 yards for the fourth straight game this season, eclipsed the 1,000-mark (1,040) in season passing yardage, and threw a touchdown pass in his 14th-straight regular-season game. He had two other touchdown passes called back on penalties, and two other passes dropped that appeared headed for six points.
Angle and Jurgensmier threw the ball to eight different receivers, with Mason Mays, Dylan Cavinee and Isaac Lindsey all hauling in a touchdown pass.
“We finally worked our way out of it,” Amyx said, “but we can't have a start like that against a real good team. I thought once (Angle) got it going he played real well — but look at how many dropped passes we had tonight. We had one bad quarter, and once we got things going it worked out a lot better.”
Meanwhile, save for a 50-yard pass play early in the fourth stanza and a 20-yard scoring run by the Blue Devils' Brandon Taylor with less than five minutes remaining, the Logan defense bottled up the Gallia Academy offense.
The Blue Devils were held to 134 yards of total offense (64 not counting those two aforementioned plays) and only one other time had a double-digit gain from scrimmage.
“Defensively I thought we played pretty well,” Amyx praised.
Once the Chiefs got their offense on track, it looked just like that opening sequence last week at Hamilton Township. Although Angle didn't complete each and every pass like last week, he still gained huge chunks of yardage to continually drive the Big Purple Machine (clad in white Friday night) downfield.
Angle personally capped off the first two scoring drives with touchdown runs of four and 12 yards to stretch the Logan lead to 16-0. Then, after Zach McDaniel picked off a pass at the Logan 1-yard line — it looked like his momentum had carried him into the end zone for a touchback, but the officials didn't see it that way – Logan was 99 yards and three minutes away from paydirt.
They got those 99 yards with 44.8 seconds to spare.
Logan went with a power backfield to wedge the ball out of the shadow of its own goal line, with McDaniel coming up with a pair of big runs and catching a 20-yard pass over the middle from Angle to get the ball near midfield.
A 12-yard pass over the middle to Jordan Rutter and a 9-yarder to McDaniel set up a perfectly-executed middle screen to Mays who, as he so often does, made potential tacklers miss as he took the ball 36 yards to the GAHS 3. Two plays later, Mays scored on a 3-yard run for a 23-0 halftime lead.
“That was a good call by (offensive coordinator) Kelly to bring power (formation) out and get us out of the hole,” Amyx said, “then we ran some nice pays and took advantage of what they were giving us.
“They were blitzing a lot, and we caught a couple things over the middle — that little dump over the middle and that screen over the middle was a big play, too — so we took advantage of their over-aggressiveness and made some good adjustments to what they were doing,” he added. “That was a nice drive. It got us jump-started, got us out of that funk or whatever it was we were in early. Then we pretty much played the way we expected to play all night.”
The starters played two more series in the third quarter, with Angle leading an eight-play, 53-yard scoring drive capped off with a 4-yard scoring pass to a diving McDaniel in the end zone; then, after Mays brought a punt back 34 yards to the GAHS 22, the Chiefs scored just three plays later, with McCray doing the scoring honors.
Jurgensmier then took over. He and the reserve unit tacked on three more scores, with Jurgensmier scoring on a 2-yard run and connecting with Cavinee (35 yards) and Lindsey (74) on nifty catch-and-run touchdown passes.
Cavinee, a 5-11, 160-pound junior, took a short pass from a scrambling Jurgensmier and turned it into six points by making a couple terrific moves to elude would-be tacklers before cutting against the grain to the middle and outrunning the Gallipolis defense to the goal line.
Then Lindsey, a 5-11, 165-pound sophomore, turned into a one-man highlight reel.
Early in the final period, the Blue Devils burned the Logan defense with a pass-and-run over the middle that looked like it was going to go for six points. However, Lindsey caught the receiver, Joe Jenkins, from behind at the Logan 5-yard line to keep Gallipolis off the scoreboard. Two plays later, Lindsey picked off a pass in the end zone for a touchback.
On Logan's third ensuing play from scrimmage, Lindsey took a pass from Jurgensmier in the right flat and sped down the right sideline, nearly untouched, for 74 yards and Logan's final TD.
Logan's 564 yards of total offense included 174 yards on the ground, the Chiefs' second-best effort of the season following up 256 yards last week at Hamilton Township.
“We need to establish our run a little more,” Amyx noted. “Once we did start running, I thought the kids ran the ball hard and the guys blocked really well, too.”
The Chiefs now turn their attention to the game everyone's been looking forward to all season: next Friday's Southeastern Ohio Athletic League showdown at Ironton, a meeting of the two teams presumed to be the league's best.
And while the Chiefs remained undefeated Friday night, Ironton didn't: the Fighting Tigers (3-1) were shocked by Ashland, Ky., 26-12.
“Overall, I'm very pleased with the win, the score and all that tonight,” Amyx said, “but we just didn't come out like we usually do. You can't get up every week, so hopefully we'll be ready next week. And we know we will have to be ready, because Ironton's going to come out angry and be ready for us.”