For the four-year seniors on the 2009 St. John’s football team, the Wisconsin-River Falls Falcons might as well have been an MIAC team. For the fourth straight season, the Johnnies will take on the Falcons as part of their non-conference schedule and, while UW-River Falls hasn’t exactly been competitive in the ultra-tough WIAC conference, they have proven to be a worthy early adversary for St. John’s.
If the Falcons football team were a movie, they’d probably be Groundhog Day—the team is coming off its fifth straight 3-7 finish, including four straight 2-5 records in conference play. The then-#4 Johnnies welcomed the unranked Falcons to Collegeville in the second week of the 2006 season with a 41-9 drubbing, but the last two meetings between the teams have been much more competitive.
In the 2007 matchup in River Falls, the unranked Falcons held a 10-0 halftime lead over then-#3 St. John’s. The Johnnies rallied to score two offensive touchdowns and a defensive score in the third quarter to win 21-10, but they were outgained by UW-River Falls that day, 344 yards to 315 yards.
The two teams met in Week 2 of the 2008 season on a miserable afternoon in Collegeville. The cool, rainy weather grounded both teams’ passing attack, which proved to be a major problem for the Falcons, who typically relied on quarterback Storm Harmon and star receiver Michael Zweifel for much of their offense. Still, unranked UW-River Falls was able to score a touchdown with just over 13 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter to pull with 4 points of the then-#7 Johnnies at 10-6. St. John’s used two late rushing scores to make the final tally 22-6, but the score wasn’t indicative of how close the game had been.
Once again, the Johnnies come into their showdown with the unranked Falcons with a lofty spot in the polls, currently ranked #13 by D3Football.com. The Falcons were picked by the WIAC coaches to finish 7th in the 8-team conference. UW-River Falls returns 8 offensive starters and 6 defensive starters, including senior safety Ben Arata, a 2008 second-team All-WIAC selection.
On offense, the Falcons have two enormous holes to fill. They lost their leading passer, Storm Harmon, to graduation. In his place is junior signal caller Ryan Luessenheide, who attempted only 4 passes as Harmon’s backup next season. He will need to contend with an experienced, aggressive St. John’s defense featuring 9 senior starters. Also missing is the offense’s playmaker of a year ago, receiver Michael Zweifel, who left the program to transfer to the University of Dubuque. While the Johnnies were able to limit his production last season (he had just 2 catches for 38 yards), Zweifel totaled nearly 1,000 receiving yards on the season and his 79 catches were more than 3 times as many as any other Falcon. He had 4 of the team’s 9 receiving touchdowns. Senior Eric Brewster and freshman Wade Schlichting are expected to flank senior tight end Ryan Hanson on Saturday. The trio combined to contribute 10 catches and 110 receiving yards to the Falcons’ cause last season.
The Falcons are also expected to start a newcomer at running back, sophomore Taylor Edwards, though the second leader in all-purpose yards from 2008, sophomore running back/kick returner Greg Klingelhutz, is with the team and should see action as well. While the Falcons are starting a bevy of new offensive skill position players, and they certainly will miss Harmon and Zweifel, the team wasn’t an offensive juggernaut in the first place—they only scored 20.2 points per game in 2008 and were outscored in every quarter on the season.
As mentioned above, senior free safety Ben Arata keys a defense that returns its two leading tacklers from 2008. Arata lead the team with 4 interceptions and was tied for the team lead with 66 tackles. The other co-leader in tackles, senior Cole Lowell, returns to lead the linebacking corps. The Falcons had a lot of difficulty getting to the quarterback last season, only recording 13 sacks—and their projected starters on Saturday only recorded 4 sacks all of 2008. They shouldn’t prove to be much of a test for a Johnnie offensive line that had issues last year and needs to get off to a good start this year.
Last season, the UW-River Falls defense allowed 28.2 points per game and nearly 400 yards of total offense. This should be one of the softer defenses the Johnnies see this season.
While the Falcons have given the Johnnies a scare early in each of the last two seasons, they appear to be a team without an offensive identity and a pourous defense. No WIAC team should ever be taken lightly, but the UW-River Falls Falcons appear to be a manageable season-opening foe on what should be a beautiful, sunny afternoon in Western Wisconsin. If the Johnnies are able to get a big lead early and sort through some of their young unknowns at running back, wide receiver, and defensive back, it just might be a perfect start to the season.
