Buzzer beating touchdown lifts Warner Robins over Veterans in scrimmage

WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — When you think of buzzer beaters, you’re probably imagining a basketball player rising above his defender to knock down a three as time expires. Friday night’s buzzer beater against Veterans looked a little different.

Entering the fourth quarter, Warner Robins trailed Veterans 21-14; they hadn’t scored since late in the second quarter when senior wide out Isaiah Canion muscled his way through a defender for six.

They broke that silence with 5:48 left in the fourth as they handed it off to tie it up at 21.

Veterans had the ball with two minutes left but the Warner Robins defense buckled down, pressured the quarterback and forced Veterans to give the offense another chance.

The offense did have to give up a down spiking the ball, but those seconds saved proved to be invaluable.

Warner Robins managed to hurry their way to the red zone, and with four seconds left they gave it to senior tight end Xavier Felder who ran it in for the score just after the buzzer sounded.

Felder celebrated with his teammates in the end zone, certainly a moment worth celebrating, but head coach Shane Sams had his mind on other things following the scrimmage.

“We’ve got a lot to work on,” Sams said on the final drive and scrimmage as a whole. “That’s what I take from that. You can count the touchdown at the end; but the biggest thing from the film right now is we’ve got a lot to work on, a lot to clean up and a lot of little details. We’re a little bit younger, and we’ve got to clean those things up going into the next game.”

While Warner Robins did pull it out in the end, it wasn’t pretty for big stretches of the game.

The defense, replacing a lot of starters from the previous year, struggled with penalties for much of the game.

“Right now you replace nine starters on defense, we’re very young in that aspect,” Sams said. “Right now it’s just calming down. We’ve been putting them in very stressful situations, and we knew there were going to be some things that we had to fight. As we move forward we’ve just got to keep fighting those and keep working on the discipline aspect.”

The big fight right now is finishing drives defensively, and not giving the opposing offense a fresh set of downs by committing a penalty on third down.

The offense had their fair share of struggles too, however.

It was clear both teams were knocking off some rust from the off-season, as there were countless overthrows to streaking receivers or balls put just out of reach to a receiver on a slant or out route.

Warner Robins cycled through three or four quarterbacks throughout the game, something Sams plans to do until one can prove they’re the starter both on and off the field.

“Right now we’re trying to set a standard at Warner Robins about what you do. Showing up on time and doing the right things,” Sams said. “We’re going to keep rotating until guys show up on time and do all the little things right. Once that guy is found to do those things, that’ll be the one that’s going to be the starter.”

Warner Robins starts their regular season at Lee County on Aug. 18.

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