BOULDER — Who’s having more fun than Johnny Feauto?
Basically, Fairview’s senior quarterback is getting to do whatever he wants. He’s dropping back. He’s running bootlegs. He’s rolling to either side. He’s throwing out passes, routes across the middle and going deep whenever he spies one of his talented receiving corps getting a step on a defender.
On Thursday night at Recht Field in front of a sparse crowd and in a relative marathon that took 2 hours, 58 minutes, Feauto again did his thing, the Knights got just enough performance in some key areas and Fairview was able to outlast Rocky Mountain 44-28 in The Denver Post game of the week.
Now 6-0 overall and having advanced to 4-0 in the Front Range League, Fairview, ranked No. 4 in the Associated Press Class 5A media poll, keeps putting up the points. The Knights matched their average and have now won 15 consecutive games in the regular season.
And they did it with their usual style in 2014, as in turning in a variety of plays on offense, and benefitting from six Rocky Mountain turnovers, including four fumbles.
“The guys are making plays, we blocked well up front and the receivers were getting open,” Feauto said. “We played hard.”
And smart — Fairview protected the ball, executed on offense and didn’t panic when the 10th-ranked Lobos (5-1, 3-1) took the lead in the third quarter and seemed to seize control.
Junior Cade Hairgove scored on a 24-yard run to push Rocky Mountain to a 21-17 lead, but the Knights never blinked on the way to retaking control.
Emerging junior Carlo Kemp, who has turned into a legitimate threat on both sides of the ball, scored his second touchdown on a 2-yarder, Feauto tallied on a naked bootleg left, and Feauto followed with scoring tosses to David McWilliams and Jason Harvey to put it out of reach.
Their 20-point barrage in the fourth quarter deflated the Lobos, who ran out of answers and were haunted by fumbles, mostly involving exchanges between sophomore quarterback Tyler Hyland, his center and backfield mates.
One in particular loomed large — at the Fairview goal line, the Lobos fumbled into the end zone, and Fairview recovered at the 1-yard line, a huge swing in the third quarter.
“Like in any high-school football game, hanging on to the ball is big, you can’t give it away and we had way too many,” Lobos coach Mark Brook said. “(The Knights) are very talented and just made more plays than we did.”
Feauto finished with three touchdown passes. He has 19 on the season. He threw for 368 yards, and Tim Ryan had 13 receptions.
Rocky Mountain 7 7 7 7 — 28
Fairview 10 7 7 20 — 44
F — Ryan 34 pass from Feauto (Wakefield kick). F — FG Wakefield 34. RM — Rhead 4 run (Kinney kick). F — Kemp 1 run (Wakefield kick). RM — Neal 12 run (Kinney kick). RM — Hairgrove 24 run (Kinney kick). F — Kemp 2 run (Magno kick) F — Feauto 2 run (kick blocked). F — McWilliams 11 pass from Feauto (Magno kick). F — Harvey 27 pass from Feauto (Magno kick). RM — Rhead 2 run (Kinney kick).
Neil H. Devlin: ndevlin@denverpost.com or
