Murphy helps Indians race past unbeaten Owls

Franklin’s Ja’mon Murphy hadn’t played a down on offense all season. Friday night, he made up a lot of ground.

The junior ran for 219 yards and scored the final two touchdowns to polish off a 37-14 win for the Indians over Dundalk, which came into the game undefeated.

Murphy carried the ball just 10 times but he had five rushes of more than 23 yards in a Baltimore County Division I game filled with big plays.

“We saw him on the scout team and he was killing it,” Indians coach Anthony Burgos said. “If he was doing that to our defense, let’s get him on offense and he’s a special exciting player.”

The Indians (4-1, 3-0 Baltimore County) took a 24-14 lead into the fourth quarter against the Owls (4-1, 3-1), who had won just one of the past 10 meetings between the schools.

Dundalk coach Matt Banta said his team was close enough for a comeback trailing 24-14 at the half, but they didn’t score another point.

“Franklin’s ability to capitalize on our mistakes every year has been the difference in these games,” Banta said. “Little mistakes and we don’t capitalize and they jump on mistakes. And our lack of being able to finish…. We’re unable to finish the game.”

Murphy made sure of that. He scored on a 38-yard run with 9:54 left in the fourth quarter and added his longest run, a 75-yard run where he made several moves to shake Owls defenders.

He wasn’t the only Owls to make big plays.

In the third quarter, sophomore Daniel Yarborough scored on an 88-yard punt return. Just before that, junior quarterback Vernon Brown hit junior receiver Mekai Felton with an 80-yard touchdown pass. Those back-to-back scores boosted Franklin’s lead to 24-7

Brown was 10-for-22 passing for 191 yards with two touchdowns and one interception.

“We went through some adversity in the offseason and the preseason,” Burgos said, “some guys deciding to go different places and people not buying into what we want to do. So we lost a couple kids in transfer situations, so right now this team is finding their identity and sticking together. They could have got down on each other, but they refuse to and we have young guys stepping up and making big plays and we we hope they’ll continue doing that.”

Franklin took a 10-0 lead on Elijah Solomon’s 25-yard touchdown run and Simon Spath’s 37-yard field goal in the first quarter.

For Dundalk, Ronnie Brown had 57 yards rushing include a 30-yard touchdown as well as 75 yards receiving. Quarterback Treshawn Ray was 8-for-21 passing for 217 yards, including a 12-yard touchdown pass to Malik Lindsey.