Saugus football: no playoffs, but lots of growth in 2023

By Dom Nicastro

If we slice and dice the Saugus High School football team’s first eight games of the season, there are many paths to take.

They missed the playoffs, finishing 25^th out of 34 teams. Only 16 make the cut. They were streaky, with three straight wins to open the season, followed by three straight losses and finally a split over the final two games.

Or you could take the approach the Sachems seem to be taking. They’ve shown a heckuva lot of growth, winning four games so far with three games to go. They won one game in the last two seasons.

“We showed the growth that we made from last year being 1-10 and the year before being 0-11,” said Saugus coach Steve Cummings, whose team lost to Winthrop, 38-8, last week at Saugus High School. “We’re leaving something for these next groups to be able to take and run with. We can make that same jump next year as we made this year. Now where we are with these seniors, they’ve done a really nice job of leading for these younger guys, leaving the blueprints that they’ll follow for years to come.”

Saugus will now play two games in the consolation round for those teams who did not qualify for the postseason. It travels to Pentucket of the Cape Ann League on Friday, Nov. 3 at 6:30 p.m. The Sachems’ next opponent is yet to be determined. They finish up with Peabody on Thanksgiving.

Pentucket, which is a combined program with Georgetown, has won three out of four games and is 5-3 overall. It finished 21 out of 30 teams in the Division 6 rankings.

Saugus will be looking for more offense. It could only muster Jordan Rodriguez’s 25-yard touchdown pass to Ameen Taboubi in the loss to Winthrop last week.

Peabody ended up winning the Northeastern Conference Lynch Division title, or least clinched a share at 3-0 because they still have Saugus left on Thanksgiving before they can officially clinch it outright. Winthrop locked up second at 3-1, and Salem finished third at 2-2. Gloucester finished 1-3 and Saugus is at 0-3 heading into Turkey Day.

“It’s funny because you look at our league and there are three teams in our league between Peabody, Winthrop and Salem, who all have a very realistic chance at ending up at Gillette [for a Super Bowl],” Cummings said. “The league is loaded. We get a league like the GBL where Everett goes 7-1 and they don’t get the playoffs. Not one single team from the GBL made the playoffs and then we have three teams in our league that legitimately have chances to come up with a trophy. And it just speaks to the quality of the NEC. The other thing with Winthrop that’s hard is they run that Wing-T, and it’s so precise. You’re practicing against it with the team all week, but it’s not going to look the same in the game. … They don’t beat themselves; they don’t make mistakes.”

Saugus was able to move the ball at times against Winthrop thanks to the fine play of the offensive line. That included Ethan Malcolm, Larry Barrows, Amar Prkos, Braden Faiella and Koby Jette. Cummings also credited non-linemen Cody Munafo and Dylan Clark for their blocking.

“Our offensive line I thought did a really nice job in the run game,” Cummings said. “We were able to open some holes in the first half. We took two drives inside their 30, and then just some untimely penalties put us behind the sticks. But I thought the offensive line played really well and our running worked really well in between the tackles. That’s something we can try to build on for this week.”