New offense led to Rebels' first state title
BY TIM MORRIS Staff Writer
You can trace the roots of Howell's state championship football season back to 2005. That's when head coach Cory Davies chucked the option for the spread offense.

"We wanted to do something different and get away from the option," recalled Davies. "We decided to make the move to the spread offense because we thought we had the kids to do it."

He thought correctly. Over the past three years, the Rebels have had as potent an offense as any team in the Shore. Throwing on virtually every down, the Rebels have not only been a fun team to watch but a winning one as well. It all culminated in Friday night's impressive 46-13 rout of West Windsor-Plainsboro South (WWPS) at Rutgers Stadium in the Central Jersey Group IV championship game. It was the first football state championship in school history.

In 2005, the first year they put the new offense in (which uses as many as five wide receivers on a play), the Rebels won a school record eight games (8-3) and the first playoff win in school history. Last year (7-5), the team made it to the state final for the first time ever and completed its mission last Friday night.

Howell's offense reached new heights in the state playoffs, scoring 95 points in its last two games, beating Montgomery, 49-20, and WWPS, 46-13. They were downright unstoppable with quarterback Tim Lamirande picking defenses apart at will. He had as perfect a game as a quarterback could have in the state final, completing 16 of his 19 passes for 246 yards and four touchdowns. The WWPS defense had no answer for the Howell offense.

Lamirande's passing was just the start of the nightmare for defenses. Once they got their hands on the ball, the team's bevy of talented receivers - Chance Carrick, Jason Amato, Brian Battaglia, Rob Handy - could all make plays. They could turn a short pass into a touchdown, breaking tackles and running away from defensive backs, or go deep and catch a long pass from Lamirande.

Defenses have been caught between a rock and a hard place defending the Rebels. Do they sell out and rush everyone, leaving too many receivers for two free backs, or drop back, try to disrupt the receiver's patterns and make the tackle on the short pass? That approach, however, gives the quarterback time to locate an open receiver.

With Howell averaging 40 points a game in the playoffs and more than 30 on the season, no one effectively slowed them down.

Howell has been fortunate to have two great quarterbacks in charge of the offense the last three years. Each one, Sean O'Reilly and Lamirande brought something different to the table. O'Reilly, now playing for Wagner University, was more of an improviser out there. He could make it up as he went because of his running talent. Lamirande throws the deep ball and is a very accurate passer. One thing both could do was make sense of what was happening downfield with their receivers.

Either style worked as they both passed for more than 2,000 yards in a season.

O'Reilly quarterbacked the team in 2005-06 with Lamirande as the understudy who was more than ready to step in when his time came.

"Tim was always a part of it," said Davies. "We learned a lot from what Sean did."

Davies said that the quarterback in his spread offense has to be intelligent, know the offense inside and out, know what patterns the receivers are running and read defenses.

Before the season began, Davies called his receiving corps the best he'd had as the school and there is no arguing that. Seniors Carrick, Amato and Battaglia not only were sure-handed and made plays, they understood everyone's role as well. Davies said it was not unusual for any of his receivers to tell him or Lamirande what receiver would be open in a certain defensive set. They added new meaning to getting everyone involved.

What has made the Howell offense so formidable?

"I think it's a combination of things," said Davies. "The system is very good the way we run it and we've had pretty good people running it."

This year, the spirited running of Dave Hayes (more than 1,000 yards rushing) gave defenses something else to worry about. Howell had a running game as well.

"The idea of our offense is to have six different kids touching the ball," explained Davies. "We had a balance with who touches the ball."

Everyone it seems had the magic touch as Davies, the head coach at Howell for 17 years, got his and the program's well-deserved first state championship.