Teams really need to think twice about whether they want to allow Northwestern Lehigh to have the ball first to start a football game. The Saucon Valley Panthers found out last week that the plan doesn’t always work as well as teams hope it will.

The Tigers are more than happy to send their offense out on the field first and last week’s opening drive was a perfect example of why.

On the first play from scrimmage, coach Josh Snyder didn’t like what he saw in the defensive alignment and changed the play at the line of scrimmage. The call changed to a flair pass to Cade Christopher, and it worked exactly as it was drawn up as the junior receiver maneuvered his way through the defense and scampered 61 yards for the first score of the game.

“That was a great call by the coaches, and it worked perfectly,” said Christopher, who made three trips to the end zone on the night. “I just had a couple guys to beat and when I got around them it was just a sprint to the end zone. It was exactly how we wanted to start the game on that first drive.”

Saucon Valley (4-5) decided to be aggressive with its offense and went for a fourth-and-one at its own 37 on its opening drive. Instead of getting a new set of downs, the Panthers got to send their defense back on the field to try to protect a short field.

The Tigers looked for another quick strike, but came up empty on a long pass attempt. It took them just three more plays to get to the end zone with Dalton Clymer covering 24 yards on two carries and then finishing off the drive by going 13 yards for the touchdown. Luke Benvin was perfect on the night in extra points and put the Tigers up 14-0.

Saucon Valley again turned the ball over on downs, this time at the Northwestern 24 after Taylor Wikert tipped a pass away that was intended for Ty Csensits in the end zone.

Northwestern put together a drive that carried through the remaining 5:04 of the first quarter and on the first play of the second quarter, Clymer again finished off the drive by rushing five yards into the end zone.

From there, Saucon Valley had trouble getting anything to work and turned the ball over when it lost a fumble on its first play of the second quarter. The fumble turned into a nice little pass from Justin Holmes to Christopher that put the Tigers up 28-0.

Saucon Valley didn’t want to risk turning the ball over on downs on their next possession, so they punted on a fourth-and-12 only to have Christopher again work some magic and run the punt back 58 yards for his third touchdown of the night and a 35-0 Northwestern Lehigh lead.

“I had a lot of great blocking on that play, the guys really opened things up for me and I saw the gap and just ran,” said Christopher.

In the second half, Austin Sosnovik took over at quarterback with Julian Schaffhouser, Eli Zimmerman and Landen Matson all getting carries for Northwestern. Schaffhouser led the young group with eight carries to pick up 25 yards. Saucon Valley continued to play many of its starters and was able to reach the end zone twice to close the gap slightly over the final two quarters.

“I thought they did a nice job for us,” said Josh Snyder of the young players who got to see plenty of time in the second half of the game. “They were facing more experienced players out there tonight and they did pretty well.”

The last time the Tigers were 9-0 was in 1996 and they lost their final game to finish 9-1 in the Colonial League that season and 9-2 overall. The year before they also finished 9-1 in league games. Before that, their only 9-1 season was in 1970.