University of Delaware Athletics
Blue Hens Rewind: Gannon Leads Delaware to 34-31 Victory over Maine
9/19/2020 3:52:00 PM | Football
Blue Hens Rewind: 1986 Delaware at MaineÂ
1986 was a monumental year for Delaware football. After playing as an independent for the previous 16 seasons, the Fightin' Blue Hens were in their first season as a member of the Yankee Conference, competing against some of the best teams in Division I-AA (today known as the Football Championship Subdivision).
It was also the senior season for Rich Gannon, the Delaware quarterback from Philadelphia who went on to have a nearly two-decade career in the NFL, highlighted by four Pro Bowl appearances, winning Most Valuable Player honors and making the Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders during the 2002 season.
But before he was drafted in the fourth round by the New England Patriots in 1987, and before he led the NFL in passing yards deep into his career in 2002, Gannon was the leader of head coach Tubby Raymond's famed Wing-T offense.
The Wing-T, rarely seen in modern college and professional football but still widely used at the high school level, utilized three backs and a heavy dose of misdirection.
"A lot of it's about illusion and disguise, we create the sense that there's a lot of volume. We did a lot of pre-snap motion. We'd set the formation one way and we'd motion the other way. We got you thinking this way, we'd come back with some misdirection this way," Gannon said. "It's interesting because when I went to the NFL, a lot of the core concepts that we worked on and we installed and we coached and we talked about, really carried over at the next level. You saw some coaches in the NFL trying to incorporate some of those same runs and same sweeps and same play action plays that we ran at Delaware, which I think speaks volumes about how respected Delaware football was under Tubby Raymond's direction and also how impressive the Delaware Wing-T was."
On Nov. 3 of 1986, Delaware traveled to remote Orono, Maine to take on the Maine Black Bears in a crucial Yankee Conference match-up. With two conference losses earlier in the year to New Hampshire and William & Mary, the Blue Hens needed a win to keep their conference title and playoff hopes alive. The trip was also a bit of a homecoming for Raymond, who had coached the Black Bears' offensive line in the early 1950s before joining Dave Nelson's staff at Delaware and eventually taking over for Nelson as head coach in 1966.
Although the University of Maine is tucked away in the far northeast corner of the country, and the Black Bears' Alumni Field had a relatively small capacity, Maine was still a formidable team. The Black Bears redshirt freshman quarterback, Mike Buck, was a sixth round selection in the 1990 NFL Draft by the New Orleans Saints. While few of the 3,500 people in attendance that day may have known it, they were about to witness an instant classic college football game, and a duel between two future NFL quarterbacks.
The Delaware Wing-T was on display from the opening whistle with Fred Singleton rushing for a first down on a counter play on the first play from scrimmage. Moments later, Gannon showed off his playmaking ability, rolling out to his left, waving at running back Bob Norris to cut back inside, then delivering a sidearm throw around a leaping Maine defender to Norris for a first down. A screen pass to Norris got the Blue Hens down to the doorstep of the Black Bear end zone before Singleton dove over the offensive line to punch in the opening score. In a must-win conference road game, Delaware had a 7-0 advantage right out of the gates.
The Blue Hens doubled their lead at the beginning of the second quarter when, at the end of a deliberate 76-yard drive, Gannon kept the ball himself after a fake hand-off and cut inside for a two-yard touchdown run. A key to the success of the Wing-T was that Gannon was just as effective using his legs as he was throwing the ball.
"I think Delaware was just the perfect fit for me, especially when you look at the Delaware Wing-T," Gannon said. "It was an offense that was tailor-made to a quarterback that had some mobility that could throw from different body angles and different launch points."
While the offense was clicking in the first half, the defense was suffocating the Black Bears, forcing several three-and-outs. Maine responded right after the Gannon rushing touchdown, but had to settle for a field goal after a goal-line stand by Delaware, highlighted by a sack from strong safety Kevin McCown. McCown came up big again on the next Maine drive, sacking Buck from the blind side for a 16-yard loss and forcing the Black Bears to punt from the shadow of their own end zone.
Delaware used the great field position to get down to the goal line in just a few plays. Rolling to his right, and with great protection from his offensive line, Gannon heaved one downfield for tight end Jeff Jahrstorfer, who stepped inside a Maine defensive back, then stiff-armed another as he fought his way to the four-yard line. Two unsuccessful plays gave the Blue Hens 3rd and goal, where Gannon made a magical play that proved he was a bona fide professional prospect.
After a fake hand-off, three Maine defenders were immediately in the Delaware backfield. Gannon backpedaled, spun, and sprinted to his left. With Maine's Rob Sterling in pursuit along the left-hand sideline, Gannon spun again and doubled back towards the middle of the field, then spun a third time to put Sterling on the ground, by this point tracking back all the way to the 25-yard line. Gannon took off down the sideline and from the 15 fired a pass between several Black Bears to find Gregg Panasuk open at the back of the end zone. Midway through the second quarter, behind the brilliant play of their quarterback, the Blue Hens were cruising with a 21-3 lead.
Joe McGrail, a defensive tackle and captain on the 1986 team, recalls this game as when he knew his teammate would be going to the NFL.
"Being on the defensive side of the ball, you would come out of the game and we always had seats for the players behind the guys standing on the sidelines. So a lot of times I didn't get to watch Rich Gannon all that much. But I remember that game, I watched him a lot," McGrail said. "For me, he was a buddy, he was a peer, and I remember saying to myself: this dude is going to the next level without a doubt."
Maine would not go quietly, though. Right before halftime, Doug Dorsey, the leading rusher in the conference, punched in a three-yard touchdown to cut the Blue Hens lead to 21-10. Coming out of the locker room, the Black Bears dominated the third quarter, outscoring Delaware 13-0 in the period to take a 23-21 lead going into the final stanza.
Buck, who finished the game with an eye-popping 433 passing yards hit Steve Roth for a 27-yard touchdown on the opening drive of the second half, as Roth brought in a ball in tight coverage. Roth had a prolific day for Maine, recording 176 receiving yards. His cohort, Sergio Hebra, was in step with him with 172 receiving yards of his own.
Phil Atwell intercepted Buck in the third quarter, but the Delaware offense lost its momentum, punting once and failing to convert on fourth down in Maine territory twice. On the final play of the third quarter, Mike Walsh dove one yard into the end zone. Although Maine missed to PAT attempt, the Black Bears had taken advantage of the stalling Delaware offense and scored 20 straight points to take the lead.
After the teams traded punts to start the fourth quarter, Gannon and the Blue Hens offense got down to work, starting a drive from the shadow of the end zone. Gannon hit tight end Jeff Modesitt for a 20-yard gain up the middle for a first down, then ran for one himself, pump faking one way and sidestepping a defender to the other way before taking off up the sideline to the Delaware 35.
The Blue Hens drive looked to be empty as a Delaware field goal attempt sailed wide, but a roughing the kicker penalty on Maine gave Delaware a first down and new life. On third down, Gannon delivered yet another highlight reel scramble and throw, this time looping back to nearly midfield as Maine pressured him, then throwing across his body to find Norris wide open in the corner of the end zone to retake the lead 27-23 after a failed two-point attempt.
"I ran around for what would seem like a couple minutes, but that was a big play in the game and it was kind of a turning point for us," Gannon said. "I think it jumpstarted us to get us back in that thing."
The momentum back in the hands of the Blue Hens, the defense got a huge stop on the ensuing Maine drive. With the Black Bears at the Delaware 23, Tim Doherty delivered a big hit on Buck as he threw over the middle and linebacker Darrell Booker, arguably the Hens' best defensive player, stepped up and intercepted the pass at the 10-yard line.
"Next to me [on the defensive line] was Timmy Doherty, who was sort of undersized, but was just a madman…he was just relentless," McGrail said. "Darrell [Booker] was fun to play with and probably the best defensive player I ever played with."
The Blue Hens struggled to advance the ball after Booker's pick and Gannon was forced to punt away (yes, the future NFL MVP doubled as a college punter), but Maine muffed the kick and the Hens jumped on it. Given a second chance on the drive, Delaware fed the fullback Panasuk for big gains as the fourth quarter clock ran down. From two yards out, Gannon went left on a bootleg, dodging a Maine defender and tiptoeing along the sideline for his second rushing touchdown of the day to put the Hens up 34-23.
Unwilling to go quietly into the night, Buck led Maine down the field, threw a two-yard touchdown to Hebra, then converted the two-point attempt to cut the lead to 34-31 with under a minute remaining. Maine's onside kick bounced off a set of Blue Hens hands and the Black Bears fell on it, rapidly turning what looked like a comfortable Delaware victory into a crucial defensive drive to save the season.
"For me as the captain, you're like 'holy cow, this is the whole season.' My senior year now is going down the tubes here," McGrail said. "So, my God, I was like a madman trying to get to [Buck]."
Under heavy pressure on first down, Buck overthrew his man with under 30 seconds left on the clock. On the next play, the pressure came again, and Buck put a little too much on it for his receiver Venditto, and McCown grabbed a leaping interception to seal the game.
The Blue Hens finished the regular season 8-3 and earned a share of the Yankee Conference championship and a playoff berth. In the first round, they avenged their earlier loss to William & Mary, defeating the Tribe 51-17 before falling to an excellent Arkansas State team (who would advance to the national championship game that year) 55-14 in the quarterfinals.
"It was pivotal. I mean that was actually the game that I think sort of turned us around," McGrail said of the dramatic win at Maine. "This game, being a conference game, if we had one more loss we were done."
The Blue Hens got key contributions from up and down the roster on both sides of the ball, but Gannon still stood out as the star of the game. He completed 23 of his 41 passes for 354 yards and two touchdowns without an interception, and ran for an additional two scores. He was named the Yankee Conference Player of the Week for his efforts, and at the end of the year was honored as the conference's Offensive Player of the Year. Just the beginning of a long career of accolades for one of Delaware's most outstanding sons.
"It's a team that I'm very proud of," Gannon said. "We had a great captain in Joe McGrail. We had great senior leadership as a team that cared about one another. A team that worked hard to create pride in their preparation and performance each week. You know, what's amazing is I played 17 years in the NFL, but my closest and dearest friends are my teammates at Delaware."
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1986 was a monumental year for Delaware football. After playing as an independent for the previous 16 seasons, the Fightin' Blue Hens were in their first season as a member of the Yankee Conference, competing against some of the best teams in Division I-AA (today known as the Football Championship Subdivision).
It was also the senior season for Rich Gannon, the Delaware quarterback from Philadelphia who went on to have a nearly two-decade career in the NFL, highlighted by four Pro Bowl appearances, winning Most Valuable Player honors and making the Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders during the 2002 season.
But before he was drafted in the fourth round by the New England Patriots in 1987, and before he led the NFL in passing yards deep into his career in 2002, Gannon was the leader of head coach Tubby Raymond's famed Wing-T offense.
The Wing-T, rarely seen in modern college and professional football but still widely used at the high school level, utilized three backs and a heavy dose of misdirection.
"A lot of it's about illusion and disguise, we create the sense that there's a lot of volume. We did a lot of pre-snap motion. We'd set the formation one way and we'd motion the other way. We got you thinking this way, we'd come back with some misdirection this way," Gannon said. "It's interesting because when I went to the NFL, a lot of the core concepts that we worked on and we installed and we coached and we talked about, really carried over at the next level. You saw some coaches in the NFL trying to incorporate some of those same runs and same sweeps and same play action plays that we ran at Delaware, which I think speaks volumes about how respected Delaware football was under Tubby Raymond's direction and also how impressive the Delaware Wing-T was."
On Nov. 3 of 1986, Delaware traveled to remote Orono, Maine to take on the Maine Black Bears in a crucial Yankee Conference match-up. With two conference losses earlier in the year to New Hampshire and William & Mary, the Blue Hens needed a win to keep their conference title and playoff hopes alive. The trip was also a bit of a homecoming for Raymond, who had coached the Black Bears' offensive line in the early 1950s before joining Dave Nelson's staff at Delaware and eventually taking over for Nelson as head coach in 1966.
Although the University of Maine is tucked away in the far northeast corner of the country, and the Black Bears' Alumni Field had a relatively small capacity, Maine was still a formidable team. The Black Bears redshirt freshman quarterback, Mike Buck, was a sixth round selection in the 1990 NFL Draft by the New Orleans Saints. While few of the 3,500 people in attendance that day may have known it, they were about to witness an instant classic college football game, and a duel between two future NFL quarterbacks.
The Delaware Wing-T was on display from the opening whistle with Fred Singleton rushing for a first down on a counter play on the first play from scrimmage. Moments later, Gannon showed off his playmaking ability, rolling out to his left, waving at running back Bob Norris to cut back inside, then delivering a sidearm throw around a leaping Maine defender to Norris for a first down. A screen pass to Norris got the Blue Hens down to the doorstep of the Black Bear end zone before Singleton dove over the offensive line to punch in the opening score. In a must-win conference road game, Delaware had a 7-0 advantage right out of the gates.
The Blue Hens doubled their lead at the beginning of the second quarter when, at the end of a deliberate 76-yard drive, Gannon kept the ball himself after a fake hand-off and cut inside for a two-yard touchdown run. A key to the success of the Wing-T was that Gannon was just as effective using his legs as he was throwing the ball.
"I think Delaware was just the perfect fit for me, especially when you look at the Delaware Wing-T," Gannon said. "It was an offense that was tailor-made to a quarterback that had some mobility that could throw from different body angles and different launch points."
While the offense was clicking in the first half, the defense was suffocating the Black Bears, forcing several three-and-outs. Maine responded right after the Gannon rushing touchdown, but had to settle for a field goal after a goal-line stand by Delaware, highlighted by a sack from strong safety Kevin McCown. McCown came up big again on the next Maine drive, sacking Buck from the blind side for a 16-yard loss and forcing the Black Bears to punt from the shadow of their own end zone.
Delaware used the great field position to get down to the goal line in just a few plays. Rolling to his right, and with great protection from his offensive line, Gannon heaved one downfield for tight end Jeff Jahrstorfer, who stepped inside a Maine defensive back, then stiff-armed another as he fought his way to the four-yard line. Two unsuccessful plays gave the Blue Hens 3rd and goal, where Gannon made a magical play that proved he was a bona fide professional prospect.
After a fake hand-off, three Maine defenders were immediately in the Delaware backfield. Gannon backpedaled, spun, and sprinted to his left. With Maine's Rob Sterling in pursuit along the left-hand sideline, Gannon spun again and doubled back towards the middle of the field, then spun a third time to put Sterling on the ground, by this point tracking back all the way to the 25-yard line. Gannon took off down the sideline and from the 15 fired a pass between several Black Bears to find Gregg Panasuk open at the back of the end zone. Midway through the second quarter, behind the brilliant play of their quarterback, the Blue Hens were cruising with a 21-3 lead.
Joe McGrail, a defensive tackle and captain on the 1986 team, recalls this game as when he knew his teammate would be going to the NFL.
"Being on the defensive side of the ball, you would come out of the game and we always had seats for the players behind the guys standing on the sidelines. So a lot of times I didn't get to watch Rich Gannon all that much. But I remember that game, I watched him a lot," McGrail said. "For me, he was a buddy, he was a peer, and I remember saying to myself: this dude is going to the next level without a doubt."
Maine would not go quietly, though. Right before halftime, Doug Dorsey, the leading rusher in the conference, punched in a three-yard touchdown to cut the Blue Hens lead to 21-10. Coming out of the locker room, the Black Bears dominated the third quarter, outscoring Delaware 13-0 in the period to take a 23-21 lead going into the final stanza.
Buck, who finished the game with an eye-popping 433 passing yards hit Steve Roth for a 27-yard touchdown on the opening drive of the second half, as Roth brought in a ball in tight coverage. Roth had a prolific day for Maine, recording 176 receiving yards. His cohort, Sergio Hebra, was in step with him with 172 receiving yards of his own.
Phil Atwell intercepted Buck in the third quarter, but the Delaware offense lost its momentum, punting once and failing to convert on fourth down in Maine territory twice. On the final play of the third quarter, Mike Walsh dove one yard into the end zone. Although Maine missed to PAT attempt, the Black Bears had taken advantage of the stalling Delaware offense and scored 20 straight points to take the lead.
After the teams traded punts to start the fourth quarter, Gannon and the Blue Hens offense got down to work, starting a drive from the shadow of the end zone. Gannon hit tight end Jeff Modesitt for a 20-yard gain up the middle for a first down, then ran for one himself, pump faking one way and sidestepping a defender to the other way before taking off up the sideline to the Delaware 35.
The Blue Hens drive looked to be empty as a Delaware field goal attempt sailed wide, but a roughing the kicker penalty on Maine gave Delaware a first down and new life. On third down, Gannon delivered yet another highlight reel scramble and throw, this time looping back to nearly midfield as Maine pressured him, then throwing across his body to find Norris wide open in the corner of the end zone to retake the lead 27-23 after a failed two-point attempt.
"I ran around for what would seem like a couple minutes, but that was a big play in the game and it was kind of a turning point for us," Gannon said. "I think it jumpstarted us to get us back in that thing."
The momentum back in the hands of the Blue Hens, the defense got a huge stop on the ensuing Maine drive. With the Black Bears at the Delaware 23, Tim Doherty delivered a big hit on Buck as he threw over the middle and linebacker Darrell Booker, arguably the Hens' best defensive player, stepped up and intercepted the pass at the 10-yard line.
"Next to me [on the defensive line] was Timmy Doherty, who was sort of undersized, but was just a madman…he was just relentless," McGrail said. "Darrell [Booker] was fun to play with and probably the best defensive player I ever played with."
The Blue Hens struggled to advance the ball after Booker's pick and Gannon was forced to punt away (yes, the future NFL MVP doubled as a college punter), but Maine muffed the kick and the Hens jumped on it. Given a second chance on the drive, Delaware fed the fullback Panasuk for big gains as the fourth quarter clock ran down. From two yards out, Gannon went left on a bootleg, dodging a Maine defender and tiptoeing along the sideline for his second rushing touchdown of the day to put the Hens up 34-23.
Unwilling to go quietly into the night, Buck led Maine down the field, threw a two-yard touchdown to Hebra, then converted the two-point attempt to cut the lead to 34-31 with under a minute remaining. Maine's onside kick bounced off a set of Blue Hens hands and the Black Bears fell on it, rapidly turning what looked like a comfortable Delaware victory into a crucial defensive drive to save the season.
"For me as the captain, you're like 'holy cow, this is the whole season.' My senior year now is going down the tubes here," McGrail said. "So, my God, I was like a madman trying to get to [Buck]."
Under heavy pressure on first down, Buck overthrew his man with under 30 seconds left on the clock. On the next play, the pressure came again, and Buck put a little too much on it for his receiver Venditto, and McCown grabbed a leaping interception to seal the game.
The Blue Hens finished the regular season 8-3 and earned a share of the Yankee Conference championship and a playoff berth. In the first round, they avenged their earlier loss to William & Mary, defeating the Tribe 51-17 before falling to an excellent Arkansas State team (who would advance to the national championship game that year) 55-14 in the quarterfinals.
"It was pivotal. I mean that was actually the game that I think sort of turned us around," McGrail said of the dramatic win at Maine. "This game, being a conference game, if we had one more loss we were done."
The Blue Hens got key contributions from up and down the roster on both sides of the ball, but Gannon still stood out as the star of the game. He completed 23 of his 41 passes for 354 yards and two touchdowns without an interception, and ran for an additional two scores. He was named the Yankee Conference Player of the Week for his efforts, and at the end of the year was honored as the conference's Offensive Player of the Year. Just the beginning of a long career of accolades for one of Delaware's most outstanding sons.
"It's a team that I'm very proud of," Gannon said. "We had a great captain in Joe McGrail. We had great senior leadership as a team that cared about one another. A team that worked hard to create pride in their preparation and performance each week. You know, what's amazing is I played 17 years in the NFL, but my closest and dearest friends are my teammates at Delaware."
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