TORONTO – It took Edison a couple of series to get its ground game rolling Friday night, but once it started, it did not stop.

After punting on its first two possessions, Edison scored on its next six drives, doing all of its scoring on the ground to pull away from host Toronto and improve to 6-0 with a decisive 42-6 victory at a packed Clarke Hinkle Field.

“I’m very proud of our kids, that’s a very good team that we beat,” Edison head coach Mike Collopy said. “They have very good athletes that are getting looked at (by colleges) from all over. We told our kids it was going to be a challenge and competitors step up to challenges, and our kids stepped up.”

The Wildcats racked up 340 yards on the ground on just 20 carries and the only drive not to end in the endzone after the opening two possessions was when the fourth quarter clock expired.

“As the game went on our kids started making plays,” Collopy said. “It’s a rivalry game, we knew we were going to get their best shot and I thought we gave them ours. We’re happy to come out of here with a W.”

Talan McClurg needed just nine carries to rack up 205 yards and four touchdowns, including explosive runs of 79 and 65 yards. Gage Cline had 138 yards and two scores, including a 63-yarder, on nine carries as well.

“We’ve got a lot of hard-working kids, and (McClurg) is one of them,” Collopy said. “He runs really hard. We have a couple guys that can run and I really like the way we’re playing as a team. Football is the ultimate team game and some days it’s (McClurg) and some days it’s someone else.”

For the Red Knights, who drop to 4-2 with their second-straight loss at home following a 4-0 start, it was the second consecutive week their opponent’s ground game found holes going up the middle for long scoring runs.

“We have to take a look at that, they were running the counter trey on us and they ran it effectively,” Toronto head coach Josh Franke said. “They weren’t doing anything we didn’t expect them to do, we saw that on film and practiced all week for it. We’re going to have to take a good look at the film and see what was happening there.”

Toronto seemed poised to strike first when it went on an 18-play march to inside the Edison 5 on which it converted three fourth downs and took nearly nine minutes off the clock, but the drive ended with a turnover on downs on fourth and goal, then McClurg broke free for a 79-yard score on the ensuing possession and the momentum stayed on the Edison side the rest of the way.

“This has been a problem for a couple weeks now, we get down to the red zone and just stall out,” Franke said. “Against good teams you can’t afford to have that happen. We feel like if we punch it in there and take the lead, it might be a little different story. At that point it was 0-0 in the second quarter, you have to punch those in.”

McLurg went in from 6 yards out on the next drive, then Cline scored from 13 yards away with less than a minute before the halftime break after a Toronto fumble to make it 21-0 Wildcats after two quarters.

Edison forced a Red Knight punt to start the second half, leading to a Cline 63-yard scoring run, then, a bad snap sailed over the head of Zeb Kinsey and was pounced on by the Cats, setting up an 18-yard McClurg score to enact the running clock.

Kinsey, who threw for 189 yards in the loss, connected with Dom Bouscher – who had 92 receiving yards – for a 28-yard score early in the fourth quarter to temporality halt the clock, but a 65-yard McClurg run on the next offensive snap quickly got it rolling again until the end.

“Frustration definitely became a part of it,” Franke said. “We beat ourselves early in the game and once the game started getting away from us and momentum was clearly on their side (it snowballed).

“We just can’t keep beating ourselves. We had penalties, botched snaps, it seemed like anytime we got something going, something bad happened, so we have to correct those errors and get out of our own way and we’ll see better things happen.”

UP NEXT

Edison: Returns home to host 1-5 East Liverpool next Friday.

Toronto: Will face another tough task when it travels to unbeaten Barnesville next Friday.

Edison 42, Toronto 6

Edison 0-21-14-7 – 42

Toronto 0-0-0-6 – 6

SCORING

First Quarter

None

Second Quarter

E: McClurg 79-yard run (Watson kick) 7:10

E: McClurg 6-yard run (Watson kick) 4:49

E: Cline 19-yard run (Watson kick) :32

Third Quarter

E: Cline 63-yard run (Watson kick) 6:41

E: McClurg 18-yard run (Watson kick) 6:06

Fourth Quarter

T: Boucher 28-yard pass from Kinsey (pass failed) 9:22

E: McClurg 65-yard run (Watson kick) 9:03

RUSHING: Edison 20-340-6TD (McClurg 9-205-4TD; Cline 9-138-2TD; Waggoner 1-(-4); Hayes 1-1); Toronto 24-49 (Bouscher 7-32; Kinsey 17-17)

PASSING: Edison 3-7-52 (all by Cline); Toronto 18-33-189-TD (Kinsey 18-31-189-TD; Boucher 0-1; R. Dickinson 0-1)

RECEIVING: Edison 3-52 (Vangosen 1-22; Lancaster 1-8; Hayes 1-22); Toronto 18-189-TD (R. Dickinson 6-54; N. Dickinson 4-36; Boucher 7-92-TD; Filby 1-7)

FIRST DOWNS: Edison 7; Toronto 13

PENALTIES-YARDS: Edison 7-70; Toronto 5-25

FUMBLES-LOST: Edison 1-0; Toronto 6-2

PUNTS-AVG: Edison 2-31.5; Toronto 3-37.6