If the Parkland football team plays like it did the first 24 minutes of last Friday night’s win against Nazareth, the Trojans will surely struggle with Friday night’s opponent. Penalties, a turnover and lackluster defense at times kept Nazareth in last week’s game until the final quarter.

If Parkland starts this week’s contest the same way, Liberty could very well earn its second victory in two years over the four-time defending district champs.

“We had committed too many penalties, and made too many mistakes,” said Parkland head coach Tim Moncman. “We threw an interception. We had enough opportunities to put the game out of reach, but we shot ourselves in the foot over and over with the penalties and everything. The second half we cleaned it up and ran the football well. I reminded the kids that you can’t just walk into a stadium and think you’re going to walk to a win. That certainly won’t happen Friday night.”

Both teams come into the early-season showdown undefeated at 2-0. The Hurricanes edged Easton last weekend 28-21, scoring the only touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Liberty boasts a balanced offense. Gunner Anglovich (120 yards, touchdown), and Nasir Legree (75 yards, touchdown) spurred last week’s Hurricane running game, while quarterback Todd Erney went 7-for-12 for 208 yards and two touchdowns. His favorite target was senior wide receiver Darian Street, who made four catches for 176 yards and two scores.

“We know they have great skill kids,” said Moncman. “Two good running backs, and a very good receiver in [Darian] Street. We’re going to have to look at our coverages and adjust to stopping him. Most teams will just play one-on-one, but we are going to try and avoid that because he has been burning the defensive backs. You may see us in more of a stack formation to get a little bit of pressure going.”

The Liberty defense gave up yardage in bunches to the Red Rovers running backs last Friday. Four of their backs rushed for a combined 265 yards.

Nick Suriel (159 yards, 1 touchdown) and Jahan Worth (75 yards, 2 touchdowns) had big nights against Nazareth, so that could be an area of focus for Moncman and his offensive coaching staff.

“That’s the philosophy we have,” Moncman said. “We want to be able to throw the football, but we also want to run it well too. It will take the clock away and keep an up-tempo offense like theirs off of the field.

“Nazareth only ran 42 plays. Usually they run 80. We can hopefully wear on people with our type of offense. The less reps we take on defense, the better.”

Expect a higher scoring game than the first two weeks of the regular season. Revenge for last year’s loss, the only blemish on the state semifinalists regular season record last year, may be in the backs of the minds of the Parkland players, but staying unbeaten is another.