In just looking at the numbers, one wouldn’t know that the Northwestern football team had to pull out a touchdown late in the game to pick up a 13-12 win over Palmerton in week one of the high school football season.

Trevor Cunningham set the new single game receiving yardage record, catching 184 yards worth of catches from freshman quarterback Deven Bollinger. The old record, held by Payton Bachman (2010) and Cam Richardson (2013), was 135 yards.

As for Bollinger, he is now second on the school’s list for passing yards in a game, throwing for 241 yards and completing 13 of 21 passes in his high school debut. No Tiger quarterback had thrown for more than 240 yards since Mike Heintzelmann in 1975.

So why did the Tigers have to score late for a win and how did all of that yardage come up to just 13 points?

“I think there were some first-game jitters,” said coach Josh Snyder. “As much as you game plan and prepare, it’s different when you’re out there on a Friday night and everybody knows that it counts. The big thing is that we fought through it and I think that’s not going to be a factor from here on out.”

Northwestern will have to pull things together for week two when they go up against a Salisbury Falcons (1-0) team that downed Catasauqua 38-24 last week. The game wasn’t as close as it figured to be for much of the game, but the Rough Riders put together three touchdowns in the game’s final five minutes to quickly close the gap. With some potential holes on their defense, Snyder might have some places to attack.

“There might be some opportunities for us to do some things offensively, but they also showed some good things that we have to be aware of,” Snyder said. “Offensively, they looked good and their quarterback can do a lot of things with both his arm and his legs.”

Like Northwestern, Salisbury is committed to a new quarterback in junior Cameron Vaka, who started his first varsity game last week against Catasauqua. It’s been a while since the Falcons had a quarterback that could hurt a defense with both the pass and run, but Vaka seems to be able to handle both roles without a problem.

“He didn’t really look like a kid in his first varsity start,” said Snyder. “He’s poised and seemed like he commanded things well, so he’ll definitely present a challenge.”

Another key will be tightening up their hold on the football. The Tigers fumbled four times against Palmerton, but were able to recover three of them. Bollinger was also picked off twice in the game, but Snyder believes a lot of that comes back to the jitters of a young team.

“We have a lot of guys who were making their first start or even playing their first varsity game,” said Snyder. “I’m not too worried about it, but it’s something that we have to address and we have to work on or it’s going to hurt us down the line.”

One area that the jitters didn’t hurt Northwestern in week one was in penalties. The Tigers were penalized just three times for 25 yards in the game.

Much of what Salisbury is looking to do offensively fits in well with what Northwestern looks to do defensively. The Falcons, which installed the flexbone offense for this season, are much more of a run oriented offense than in years past and the Tigers have a ferocious reputation for stopping the run. Last week, they held Palmerton to 120 net yards rushing on 37 carries.

The Salisbury offense will test the young players on defense, but if all goes as planned, the defense will be able to force Salisbury into some long yardage situations. Combine the perennially tough defense with a calmed down offense and Snyder believes that things will go a little easier for Northwestern.

“Right now, you don’t really know what to expect from teams, but we should be able to get some things under control and that’s going to give us a better result,” said Snyder. “It’s just a matter of getting better week after week with young players.”