By Andy Loigu

Coming off their most successful football season in a decade, the Hackettstown Tigers kick off the 2018 season at Jefferson Township on Thursday evening (7 p.m. start) with hopes of building a modern tradition of excellence. You can’t win them all if you don’t win the first one.

Last year’s 8-4 record under head coach C.J. Robinson, in his fifth season, was the Tigers’ best since Tony Villante’s 2008 squad finished 6-4. That unit lost a nail-biter at Governor Livingston in the first playoff round. Last year’s Tigers tasted success in the playoffs for the first time since 2005, when Hackettstown won a thriller diller at West Essex under coach Art Piancone.

Simon and Garfunkel would sing, “And here’s to you, Mr. Robinson.”

On the wings of a five-game win streak in October and November, the Tigers reached the championship final of the North 2 Group 2 section and the players and fans got the excitement of taking part in a game at Met Life Stadium, with the NFL logo displayed at midfield. Nice.

Although graduation has taken some key performers out of the mix, Robinson’s sixth edition aims to get back to the section final and win it this time.

With the quarterback who ran the dynamic triple-option offense returning, why not? Nick Gagliardi is back at the helm making instinctive decisions on the run and explosive running back Tim Ervey offers him a most viable option. Although graduation has taken the 1,300 rushing yards T.J. Sciaretta and Christian Maciak gained last year, out of the picture, it simply means that junior running back Zach Jastrzebski has the opportunity to be harder to stop than he is to spell and that senior fullback Matt Castro will play a bigger role as a power runner.

It always comes down to the offensive line creating openings, and returning senior starters Jake D’Ambola and Alan Hatten anchor a mobile, agile and hostile front that has quickness from edge to edge.

The execution of the triple-option offense has improved each year of Robinson’s coaching tenure. Last year the Tigers’ persistence paid off, as everyone on the field knew his assignments and the offense dictated a fast tempo. Quick, surgical play execution makes it that much harder on the defenses. The triple-option is a challenging offense to learn, but once the players master it, it produces many explosive jailbreak plays and wears the defense down. It is a tough system for an opponent to simulate in its practices, especially when everything moves so quickly. With little time between the snaps at scrimmage, to make adjustments, the defense is bewildered time after time, because it is simply too hard to pick up where the ball went. Oh, the wonder of it all.

On defense, the Tigers lack size but make up for that with their ability to swarm to the ball. Last year’s defense was flexible, handling both the run and pass, and the fans hope to see more of the same with Ervey and Castro in the middle of it at their linebacker positions.

The Jefferson Falcons are a worthy opponent, not to be underestimated. They have a veteran senior core coming back from a team that played many close games and was just a play away in three losses. They have a solid inside/outside duo of running backs in speedy tailback Joe Batelli and rugged three-sport athlete Justin Randzio at fullback. Randzio was a state wrestling qualifier in Atlantic City at 182 pounds, an indication of what a tough customer he can be.

This game is a meeting of two teams in the nation’s largest football conference, the Super Football Conference (SFC) which consists of 113 teams. Hackettstown plays in the American White division while Jefferson is a member of the Patriot Red division. This writer remembers covering a Jefferson victory over Phillipsburg in the 2002 playoffs in Group 3. Not many New Jersey teams boast playoff wins over the Stateliners.

The game is being played on a Thursday night simply because it is hard to find adults who can work a game on Labor Day weekend. This is the earliest official start of a football season I can remember in over 50 years of involvement with New Jersey high school sports. Starting this early has been necessitated by a new state playoff system.

Back in the day, the official date for New Jersey teams to start football practices was September 1, with the games starting the third weekend of the month. The times, they are a changing.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.