UPDATE (10 A.M. SATURDAY): Just received word that junior Tyler Somerfield, who was taken off the field by ambulance after a 25-minute delay Friday night due to a late hit, is stable and back at home after having his CT scan and X-rays come up negative. He did suffer a concussion though. More when we know more.
The big-picture way of looking at Palm Harbor University’s football loss to Steinbrenner is to acknowledge that the 2023 season isn’t over. Is the path to the postseason a bit trickier now?
Yes.
But are all playoff hopes dashed because PHU lost Friday? Hell no. More on that situation later in the story.
The more immediate picture of what transpired Friday night at Hurricanes Stadium is uglier. In a game that early on looked like PHU (5-2, 1-1) would handle with ease, momentum turned on several key moments as the Warriors (2-5, 1-1) pulled away late and won 32-22 in a critical Class 4M-District 6 matchup.
In the other district game on Friday, East Lake (2-0 in 4M-6 play) beat Sickles (0-2). When Steinbrenner and East Lake played two weeks ago, East Lake won in overtime.
After PHU held a 14-6 lead with less than three minutes remaining in the first half, Steinbrenner senior RB Andrew Diaz — who had just two rushing TDs his entire career coming into the game — rushed for four touchdowns in the final 26 minutes of the game.
There were injuries, some rough calls and non-calls by the officials, and even a scuffle or two between the two district opponents. It wasn’t pretty. PHU head coach Mike Mullaney can’t talk about how he felt about certain topics, as he may get fined by the state for derogatory statements — so you can use your imagination.
“I was very proud of the boys tonight,” Mullaney told PalmHarborSports.com after the game. “We were out multiple starters, and guys just stepped out. We missed too many chances and were too sloppy in too many phases. We are a better team than that team (Steinbrenner), we just didn’t get it done tonight.”
PHU faithful were as ticked off as they’ve been in years, mainly towards the referees and Steinbrenner — as the game did get chippy at times. By the game’s end, PHU’s staff — which had kept its composure the entire game while its fans exploded in the stands — could no longer hold back its frustration.
So what happened to draw this ire? Put simply — it truly didn’t have anything to do with the scoreboard. In the third quarter, tensions rose between the two sides enough after a couple of personal foul penalties that the refs stopped the game and pulled the teams together to cool things down.
The only problem was, just a few snaps later, PHU junior Tyler Somerfield was leveled late away from the ball (and apparently out of the view of many) while on the Hurricanes’ punt cover unit, and 25 hushed minutes later left the field in an ambulance. There were concerns about his neck being injured, so nobody rushed.
Luckily, Somerfield was conscious and moving his limbs — and the ambulance was more for precaution than anything. But the flow of play wasn’t calmed down by the referee conference just moments prior to Somerfield being hit.
The Hurricanes really couldn’t catch a break in the second half. They were already without WR/DB/P and captain Alex Schmid who was out with a non-season-ending injury. Early in the game, starting QB Will Seibert strained an AC joint in his throwing arm and needed to leave the game after prepping for Steinbrenner for two weeks (last week was an open date).
Backup QB Matt Gunn once again stepped in and performed admirably, but it changed the offense and also forced Gunn to play heavily on both sides of the ball when the coaches have tried very hard in 2023 to limit overextending the players.
Despite all of the above, Palm Harbor pulled to within three points with 9:38 remaining in the game — behind 25-22. It had managed to drive 86 yards — with key runs by Gunner Fodor and Mykehl Boebert — and do-everything sophomore Alex Malyszko scored his second touchdown of the game by punching it in from the 1-yard line just moments after picking up a key first down on a 3rd-and-short play.
Malyszko also caught a 47-yard touchdown from Gunn in the second quarter, lining up out wide. Whether he has been called on with the defense, in the backfield, at H-back, or lining up out wide, he’s been clutch, scoring his 4th and 5th TDs of the year. Fodor added the other TD in the first quarter.
Steinbrenner senior QB Ty Robinson, who surpassed 5,000 career passing yards Friday after needing just 19 to do it, was held under his season’s average of nearly 200 yards per game, throwing for 165 and no touchdowns. He was also intercepted by PHU’s Patrick Iaconis, who played exceptionally well overall.
PLAYOFF SITUATION:
Obviously, Palm Harbor University can’t afford any more slipups in the final three weeks of the season. The home district game against East Lake (4-3 overall, 2-0 in district play, on a 4-game win streak) on Oct. 27 is obviously massive, as it usually is. The non-district games against Seminole (4-3) on Oct. 20 and Dunedin (1-6) on Nov. 3 are also critical.
If Palm Harbor knocks off its age-old rivals at East Lake in two weeks, it would very likely set up a three-way district tiebreaker where the FHSAA state rankings (released each Tuesday) would determine who moves on in which spot.
When you consider that just this week in the Oct. 10 rankings, PHU was ranked No. 2 out of 17 regional teams, it bodes well for the Hurricanes if they win out. Now, the ‘Canes will drop some in the ranking after losing to Steinbrenner Friday, but finishing with three straight wins this year would undoubtedly bump PHU back toward the top of the region.
PHU came into Friday controlling its own destiny 100 percent. In some ways, it still does, but more in terms of getting an at-large berth. To still win the district in a tiebreaker scenario, PHU is going to have to hope it will end up being ranked ahead of both East Lake and Steinbrenner after the final ranking is released after the Dunedin game — and again, PHU must beat East Lake.
Cross-eyed yet?
If PHU beats East Lake and Steinbrenner beats Sickles on Oct. 27 (likely that Steinbrenner would), then PHU, East Lake, and Steinbrenner would all be 2-1 in league play — which would force the tiebreaker to come down to that damned computer poll.
Lovely. But hey, at least it’s not your old man’s FHSAA Kansas Tiebreaker system. For those of you born in the 1990s onward, you don’t want to know what that is. You may as well just flip a coin. All it ever caused was pain.
But again — is PHU out of the postseason picture? Absolutely not. But it still has a lot of work to do to get there for the first time since 2012 (not counting the CoVID year when every team in the state made it to the “playoffs”).
