**Dayton hands Stewart 100th Bronco win**

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**Dayton hands Stewart 100th Bronco win**

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By MIKE GEORGE

Published: 09.01.08

The 2008 Dayton Bronco football team, courtesy of their 35-7 defeat of the Bay City Blackcats Friday night, gave their head football coach, Jerry Stewart, elite membership in a league of coaches who have won 100 games at a single school.

However, Stewart felt that more than an individual accomplishment, Dayton is the benefactor of this feat.

“This 100th win thing doesn’t belong to just me,†said Stewart. “It’s great for Dayton and this football program and should be shared by all those players from 1996 through last year’s team, who we’ve been talking about during the past few weeks that set the table for this year’s team to pick up the check. Not only the players, but there’s a group of coaches out there in the other room and others who have come and gone that were all part of this accomplishment, so let’s not forget about them.â€

That was pretty much all the coach wanted to talk about his 100th win, only to say that it was special and didn’t happen everyday and had never happened to a coach at Dayton before. That pretty much said it all.

Having dealt with that, the coach did want to talk about the win that provided that milestone he’ll always remember. The game was against a nemesis of sorts, Bay City, a team that had defeated the Broncos in two previous playoff games, the last in 2003 and the teams had not met since.

“We came out last night thinking we could score on them right away, but they fooled us,†said Stewart. “They went into a totally different defense, playing our defense against us. They don’t play it as well as we do, but it had us off for that first series, but other than that it was okay because we also practice against that defense.â€

Stewart went on to say that offensively, the Broncos felt like they’d be able to move the ball on Texas City and they did. There were a couple of drops, but outside of that the coach praised his quarterback.

“Cody (Green) had a great ball game and A.J. (Dugat) had his usual. Now a lot of times A.J. found himself getting triple-teamed and that’s going to happen a lot this year, but then that opens positions up for others and Damian Berotte and Payton Ploch took advantage of it and had good ball games. Payton had a monster game last night and did a really good job. They get open and Cody gets the ball to them and that’s that. Terry Asson had a good first half and B.J. Jones ran the ball well for us.â€

The coach was very impressed with his offensive line and feels like right now it’s a key strength of his team’s offense.

“Caleb Lang stepped in at center and did an outstanding job,†stated the Bronco boss. “We got good line play out of everyone up front and that was key to our success last night.â€

On defense, the coach wasn’t nearly as complimentary saying that the team still hadn’t found its niche. The offense Bay City was throwing at Dayton is known as the John Tyler offense named after Tyler John Tyler High School’s former offense where everybody bangs into the line and the big old linemen just wallow into the defensive front, get in the way and no one can find the ball. The coach also bemoaned the fact the Broncos missed some tackles the night before.

“All the kids gave great effort, but we’ve got nine kids out there playing defense that have never played defense and that’s hard,†admitted Stewart. “It’s really hard on them. They’re doing the best they can. Our entire secondary is made up of kids that haven’t played. Otherwise, we felt like Jordan Baxter did a good job for us in there last night, and Xavier Edwards had a good game on the line and N.L. Hines made a lot of plays coming in from behind. We got good games out of those guys and they did a good job. Aaron Jenkins played really well but then he hurt his ankle. We hope it’s not broken, but we’ll find out about that later after they run an MRI.â€

The coach really bemoaned the possibility of Jenkins being out for an extended time saying that he really couldn’t afford to lose him. He then went on to talk about special teams – an area that’s going to get a lot of work this next week.

“Our kickoff coverage was not good,†Stewart stated. “We’re not a good striking team – we can’t find four people that will run downfield and hit you. They’re catching people, but you’ve got to go out and hit! So we’ve got to find some gunners and Cody has got to kick the ball. He’s got to quit toying with it. He kicked the last one, but the first ones he didn’t do Jack with, and he’s highly capable.â€

[B.M.F.]

Congrats Coach!  Thank you for all you do for the people of Dayton.  The need to name it Stewart Field!