Kenyon Clay made sure that Jordan Wren got his first win as Union’s head football coach.
Clay threw for four touchdowns and scored two more on the ground as the Yellowjackets hammered visiting McAdams 51-8 on Friday night.
The Yellowjackets dominated on both sides of the football in Wren’s debut.
“I thought we came out and executed on both sides of the football,” Wren said. “On offense, we only had one drive where we really had some mistakes and turned it over on downs in the red zone. And on defense, we only had one drive where we were on the field too long. We will go back look at those things and teach on those on Monday. I thought the execution was better this week than last week. I thought the effort was great and the kids played hard and accepted the challenge of the week.”
The Yellowjackets scored first midway through the first quarter when Clay scored on a 3-yard run. Jaylon Buckley ran in the two-point conversion and Union led 8-0, a score that held through the remainder of the first quarter.
But the Yellowjackets started to get moving in the second quarter with 29 points. The first was a 17-yard run by Clay with 11:15 left in the second. Tristan Wallace ran in the two-point conversion and Union led 16-0.
Clay then got busy in the passing game with three starting touchdown passes. The first came with 7:52 left in the second on a 35-yard pass to Buckley. The second was a 23-yarder to Caleb Casey with 7:38 left in the quarter and the third one was a 5-yard pass to Markus Jones with 2:06 left in the second. Thornton booted all three PATs and Union led 37-0 at the half.
“I thought Kenyon played really well,” Wren said. “I told him going in that the challenge for him was throwing the ball and I thought he threw it well. He was 10-of-13 and threw four touchdowns to four different receivers. He should have been 12-of-13 because we had two drops. The for us is to be effective in the passing game so people can’t load the box on us. I thought Friday night was a great start for teams to try to figure out what they want to stop.”
The Yellowjackets added two second-half scored as Clay finished out with a 9-yard pass to Dylan Harrison with 6:00 left in the third. Thornton threw to Buckley for the two-point conversion as Union led 45-0.
McAdams only score came on a fumble recovery by the Bulldogs with 8:12 left in the fourth to cut the score to 45-8.
Union’s last score came on the ensuing kickoff when Cameron Jackson returned the kick 97 yards for a touchdown to make the final 51-8.
McAdams had just 129 yards of total offense with 122 yards rushing and just seven yards passing.
“I thought we played okay on defense,” Wren said. “We didn’t have the motor up front that we had last week. We were missing Robert Craft and had to play a freshman and a junior there that didn’t have a lot of experience. I thought the linebackers played well and Ky’Yon Harris had an interception that got us off the field.”
Union had 274 yards of total offense with 162 passing and 112 rushing.
Carlos Hickmon and Peyton Posey led the Union defense with five tackles apiece while Christopher Chamblee had four tackles and John O’Neal added three stops. Tank Harrelson, Jacolby McGee and Alec Pientowski each had two tackles apiece.
