No Surprise

On anniversary of breakout, Pats’ Kelly won’t sneak up on anyone

Posted 9/11/14

A year ago at this time, the Smithfield football team and coaching staff had very little idea of who Pilgrim running back Owen Kelly was.

They probably wish they’d never found out.

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No Surprise

On anniversary of breakout, Pats’ Kelly won’t sneak up on anyone

Posted

A year ago at this time, the Smithfield football team and coaching staff had very little idea of who Pilgrim running back Owen Kelly was.

They probably wish they’d never found out.

Playing in his first-ever varsity game, Kelly – then a sophomore – took his second carry 72 yards for a touchdown, paving the way for a three-touchdown, 165-yard performance.

The Pats won that game 36-6 for their first victory in two years. Though the rest of the season didn’t go nearly as well, Kelly continued his torrid pace, as he emerged as the team’s best offensive weapon and the player that opponents circled as the man they needed to stop.

One year later, Kelly and the Pats will open this season on Friday and will meet Smithfield again. The team thinks it’s improved, and is hoping for another strong, foundational start to its season.

But Kelly won’t be sneaking up on anybody this time. A junior, Kelly’s one year of varsity football has put him squarely on the radar of every opponent on Pilgrim’s schedule right from the start this year, including the Sentinels.

“I think everyone knows about him this year,” said Pilgrim head coach Tom O’Connor. “You watch our film from the past, he was close to breaking a run every time he touched the ball. There’s always chance he’s going to go the distance. He’s a focal point for the defenses.”

Combined with the team’s move down to Division III, uncharacteristic continuity and the emergence of a few new weapons in the preseason, Kelly’s big-play ability and presumed step forward in varsity year two is the biggest reason why Pilgrim thinks it can be a playoff team for the first time since 2004.

He’s put on close to 10 pounds since last season to get to 160, and he’s no longer the new, breakout star in the backfield.

He’s the starting point for success.

“Last year it was kind of getting the nerves out,” Kelly said. “This year, it’s time to go.”

Kelly, who began playing football at age five at Warwick PAL and has been a running back every step of the way, represents a change in both philosophy and potential for Pilgrim backfields of the recent past.

O’Connor has routinely found a big body to handle the bulk of the workload since he took over as head coach, using bruisers like Jon Stevens and Andrew and Alex Leddy to grind out yards.

While that was a choice O’Connor made in part because it’s a style he prefers on the football field, it was also out of necessity.

It’s not necessary anymore.

O’Connor remembers a scrimmage this preseason against Palmer, Mass., in which he saw exactly how good Kelly can be.

“Since I’ve been coaching here as the head coach, he’s the first real running back,” O’Connor said. “Usually we go with a power set, a power back – someone who is able to take the abuse and able to dish it out. We scrimmaged Palmer, Mass. He juked three or four people, and then the last guy angled him off to the sideline. Owen put his head down and ran over him. He’s developing into being able to do more than just make people miss.”

It’s a luxury Pilgrim is glad to have. Positional changes have been common during the season over the years, with players moving just about anywhere to help plug holes.

Assuming Kelly’s health, for the second straight year, there will be no holes in the backfield.

But Kelly isn’t taking anything for granted.

“You just have to come out and work hard this year,” Kelly said.

The path to another solid season will undoubtedly be challenging for Kelly, simply because of the attention he’ll be paid by other teams.

That was evident even last year, as both Warwick Vets and Toll Gate put a spy on him, and Kelly had to work much harder than he had in the Smithfield game to get his yards.

With his added physicality, though, stopping him won’t be easy.

“The games where they didn’t know about him, it didn’t take but a quarter before they started keying on him,” O’Connor said. “As a sophomore, getting spied hurts the numbers. He’s a little better equipped to deal with it this year.”

Kelly was held in check for the most part during the one quarter of Injury Fund football he played against Moses Brown last week, but he came close on multiple occasions to breaking the big one. On a play called back by holding, he flew threw the middle of the line, cut to his left and darted up the sideline for a 16-yard gain.

There should be plenty more of that this season, on plays that count.

On Friday, against the team that he torched in his first career game, Kelly’s presence won’t be a surprise for Smithfield.

But he’ll still be just as hard to slow down.

“We came out and did good and executed,” Kelly said of last year’s Smithfield game. “We kind of got down in the second half and I think we need to finish the game this year. All four quarters.”

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