Falcons near perfection in 48-14 spectacle

Foothill wasn’t perfect in Friday’s season opener at Bonanza.

But other than a few early long balls, the Falcons were as near as complete as any team would want at the start of the year.

Quarterback Parker Riggin threw a pair of first-half touchdown strikes, the Falcons had a pair of 100-yard rushers, and its defense tallied two scores en route to a 48-14 road win over the Bengals.

Foothill coach Martin Redmond said the performance was nearly everything he had hoped.

“I’m extremely pleased with how we played,” Redmond said. “I thought our offense was a little more physical than they were up front, and we executed pretty well for the first game.

“The kids did a nice job of executing on both sides of the ball.”

Riggin flirted with perfection early on, nailing all 5 of his first 5 passes for 100 yards and a touchdown.

Riggin pump-faked, then lofted the ball to Darius Gates, who raced up the left sideline and sprinted 71 yards to give the Falcons a 14-7 lead midway through the first quarter.

Riggin then hit Gates in the end zone with a nine-yard pass early in the second quarter, and Foothill was in control 21-7.

Gates had three receptions for 87 yards, including the two scores, while Riggin completed 10 of 16 passes for 152 yards — all in the first half.

“He’s really composed. He is definitely the leader of the offense,” Redmond said of Riggin. “He gets things rolling, and is very accurate and a very smart kid.”

Riggin’s prowess in the passing game helped feed the Falcons' ground attack, with Connor Afoa and Kyle Keplinger leading the way.

Afoa rumbled for 115 yards and a TD on 13 carries. Keplinger had scoring runs of 8 and 13 yards, and finished with 100 rushing yards on eight carries.

“When we are balanced, we can do a lot of things,” Redmond said. “There are a few things we can fix on offense, but I felt like they never really stopped us. We just stopped ourselves a couple of times.”

The Falcons finished with 412 yards of offense, while limiting Bonanza to 162, and only 28 yards in the second half.

On defense, Cole Lancaster recovered a fumble in the end zone in the first half, and Ryan Call added 29-yard pick-six in the second half. Keegan Buck added a pair of sacks for the Falcons.

“Our defense played solid all night,” Redmond said. “We had two busts but we will fix that kind of stuff.”

The two “busts” both came from Bonanza’s Dasean Martin, who led the Bengals with 54 yards on six carries.

Martin had a 56-yard touchdown run on the Bengals’ first offensive play of the season to tie the game at 7-7.

He also hauled in a 70-yard touchdown strike from Sterling Sprau in the second quarter that cut it the deficit to 28-14, but Bonanza failed to find the end zone after halftime.