Sports
Northfield Raiders Football Blanked by Farmington
Tigers reclaim Tractor Trophy with 27-0 homecoming victory.
The Northfield football team got its tractor repossessed in Farmington on Friday night.
The Tigers beat the Raiders 27-0 on homecoming night in Farmington, taking the traveling Tractor Trophy back for the first time in three tries in the process. The Tigers last beat the Raiders 21-7 in 2008, with Northfield winning the matchup the last two years.
This time around, the Raiders sputtered on offense and missed a number of early opportunities, which sealed their fate.
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“If we would have executed on offense, we had a couple opportunities to score early,” Raiders coach Bubba Sullivan said. “But we didn't execute, we didn't score and it snowballed from there.”
The Raiders turned the ball over on their first possession, then got stopped on downs inside the Tigers' 20 on their next try, allowing the Tigers to build a 13-0 lead over the game's first nine minutes.
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That score stood up until halftime, but the Tigers struck again less than a minute into the third quarter, then tacked on another touchdown with 2:22 left in the third quarter to go up 27-0.
And that was more than enough to knock off the Raiders, who managed just 182 yards of total offense on the night.
The Raiders had a few other near misses—a 37-yard field goal attempt with 4:42 left in the first half sailed just wide—but frequently got derailed by penalties or turnovers.
“That's been kind of the story of our year,” Sullivan said. “We put together three or four good plays, then something goes wrong and we can't recover. We get a third-and-nine or anything like that, and we can't recover.”
Things don't get any easier for the Raiders (2-4 overall, 1-4 Missota Conference) the rest of the way, as the only two games left on their schedule are against Shakopee and Holy Angels, the top two teams in the conference.
“We're really going to have to pull huge upsets (to win either of those games),” Sullivan said. “I think the key for us right now is to stay injury-free and see if we can't put something together to get ready for the playoffs.”