Chelmsford vs. Marshfield

Call it an improbable Super Bowl. The odds were stacked against both teams.

Marshfield, heading into its Thanksgiving Day game, needed Plymouth North to lose to Plymouth South. Just as the Rams were handing Duxbury the knockout blow, South pulled off the upset that punched Marhsfield's ticket to the postseason.

Meanwhile, Chelmsford, which won the MVC outright, was barely standing after a playoff bout with defending Bowl champion Wayland.

On Saturday, Chelmsford and Marshfield will meet for the first time ever.

While the Lions and Rams are an unfamiliar and unlikely matchup, they are not unlikely Super Bowl contenders and both are very deserving champions. Chelmsford returns to the big game for the fifth time in the new millennium but has came up empty in 2000 and 2002-04, falling to rival Acton-Boxboro on each of those last three occasions. The Lions were also league champions in 2001 but were eliminated in a tiebreaker, and haven’t celebrated a Super Bowl title since 1994. Previously, they won in 1987 and 1991.

Marshfield can certainly relate to Chelmsford’s success and its shortcomings in the Super Bowl. The Rams won back in 1998 against Wellesley but have since lost in 1999, 2003 (vs. Everett) and 2006 (vs. Wayland). Coincidentally, the Rams and Lions share the distinction of three consecutive Bowl losses.

“We won the first three [Super Bowls] and lost the last three,” said Silva, whose Rams have been bounced around from the region's top four divisions in recent years.

In a discussion of Chelmsford and its recent success in reaching the Super Bowl, there must be mention of the Rich family and its tradition, which seems to peaks this year at Gillette Stadium. Senior quarterback Tim Rich will be playing the final game of his high school career looking to get what his two brothers, Bruce and Eddie, were unable to attain: a Super Bowl title.

“Timmy’s goal is to one-up his brothers,” his father, Bruce, said. “That would be nice, to do it at a venue like that.”

When it came to comparing his three sons, Rich talked about the similarities and differences but did not indicate who was best: "Tim is more similar to Bruce, size-wise. Athletically, they are doing a lot of the same things and making the same kinds of decisions. Statistically, it is amazing how close they are. Eddie’s a bigger, stronger kid, a prototype drop-back QB. He could fire the ball, so he brought something different.”

Although the brothers have yet to reach their ultimate goal, they certainly enjoyed much success.

“All three could lead and people like playing with them," said Bruce Rich Sr. "They all won league championships. That was most impressive, that they went undefeated in one of best leagues in the state.”

Both brothers will be on hand Saturday afternoon, watching, hoping, and maybe secretly jealous as Tim gets one last chance to redeem the Rich family, not for its failures, but for its lack of Super Bowl trophies.

For Bruce Sr., tomorrow’s game will be special not just because of the importance of the game itself, but because it will signal the end of the Rich quarterback tradition that has reigned in Chelmsford. Still, father says he will continue to coach for a long time.

“I have been very fortunate to coach my boys because that’s the position I coach for the team," said Bruce Sr. "It was a real treat and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything. My daughter’s coming up and she can throw a pretty good ball.”

“I love [coaching]. I’d like to keep coaching as long as I’m healthy and my wife will allows it. It’s not work.”

Gillette Stadium was the goal for Chelmsford from the day the venue was announced as the Super Bowl location.

“Our goal in the beginning of the season was to go to Gillette Stadium, so we’ve set new goals,” said Bruce Sr. “When they announced the plans, we just automatically made that our goal and now that we are going there, it doesn’t seem like it’s quite enough. Now we want to be a little bit selfish and win the game.”

“It’s going to be awesome,” said Tim Rich. “I can’t really explain it.”

For the coaching staffs, this game represents a unique challenge because the teams have never met, and the only familiarity comes from the game film that Rich and Silva exchanged Thursday morning at the pre-Bowl meeting.

“That’s our scouting report, the two films we exchanged,” said Silva. “[It’s strange] because usually you have a live scout. We didn’t know who we were going to play or if we were going to get in in the first place. We will do the best we can.”

“We have very little time to get ready for this team,” said Bruce Sr., late on Thursday night. “I just got back from a wake and it’s just so hectic, and we're coming down from that (Wayland) game. We were all done, we were cooked. The kids made good. We’ll try to do it one more time.

“They run some wing-T and a little bit of the spread. I like every matchup for us. I think we’re a pretty good football team, so whoever comes out to play [should win].”

Despite the lack of a full scouting report or any past experience with Chelmsford, Silva cited several reasons why he thought the game would be an evenly matched contest.

“We’re both kind of multiple. We play a lot of kids. We are not that big, play pretty good defense and move the ball on offense. There’s a lot of similar things between the two schools. “

“Although they play a lot more kids. They have only one kid that plays both ways. I think we have four. They throw the ball more than we do and move their QB around a lot.”

“We play a lot of kids,” admitted Bruce Sr. “I think we played like 46 or 47 kids in that (Wayland) ballgame. That was a game that came right down to the wire. We think that’s the way to go, instead of playing the best 11 on each side, we dig a little bit deeper.”

Star running back Brad Poirier agreed with his coach. “I think it’s pretty evenly matched. I think we both have the same amount of weapons.”

That may be the case, but as Tuesday’s games indicated, Chelmsford’s offense is very capable of striking quick and coming from behind, while Marshfield may run into trouble if it finds itself down early.

“[My concern] is that we might not be able to touch the ball,” said Silva. “We need to keep the ball away from them. Their offense more explosive than ours. We are steadier and like to grind it out. To win, we have to score some points and keep their offense off the field.

Bruce Sr. knows that stopping the run and scoring on the highest-ranked defense in Division 1A will be the key to success.

“They like to run the football and that’s our objective, to stop the run,” said Bruce Sr. "Their defense gives up about five points a game, so were not sure what were going to do, just doing what we’ve been doing all year. Why change?”

The Rams will need to contain Tim Rich, who had his back up against the wall several times on Tuesday but never seemed to panic.

“He’s one tough kid,” said Silva. “And he’s been around that system all his life so he probably knows it like the back of his hand. He could call it in his sleep. He can make all the adjustments and will be like another coach on the field.”

Against Weymouth, Marshfield was able to limit the Wildcats on first and second downs, and neutralized the run game that had been Weymouth’s bread and butter all season long. It is the second consecutive year Marshfield has shutout Weymouth, now by a combined 36-0 margin.

“We’ve been really fortunate to do that," said Silva. "We were playing the percentage, holding them to very few yards [on first down] forced the hand a little bit and allowed us to blitz our linebackers.”

Brad Poirier was the star in that game, rushing for three touchdowns and accumulating around 170 yards, but coach Silva also credited Brad’s brother, Luke, for blocking on the opposite side to create those opportunities.

“That enabled us to spring Brad," said Silva. "Luke was on the right side of the line doing heck of job blocking.

“Brad’s been doing it on both sides of the ball. He hasn’t missed a play on the defensive side and has been a three year starters. He’s just been immense on both sides.”

“He’s solid, runs hard and hits the holes fast,” said Bruce Sr. said of Brad Poirier. “He’s got very good speed. He’s legit. They do a nice job kind of disguising what they want to do with him. They’ll fake to him and then give it to another guy. It’s a deceptive offense. He’s slippery.”

Chelmsford didn’t have such an easy time against Wayland, falling behind 17-0 at halftime before storming back and winning on a last-second, 36-yard field goal by MVC co-MVP Chris Smart.

“We just really couldn’t get anything going [in the first half],” said Bruce Sr. “We made some adjustments in second half. We cut them off at the corner a little bit, stopped their option game and slowed down their real good RB Flynn. Offensively, we got going with our play-action pass and got Smart into the mix.”

Tim Rich seemed just as calm off the field as he did on the field Tuesday, down 17 points at the half.

“Our defense has been unstoppable," said Tim Rich. "We just had one bad half of football. I was glad we were only down by 17 points. I knew we could come back. We came out flat in the first half. If we were playing our best football, I would have known we were done. But we were playing awful in the first half. We just got pumped up at halftime and came out flying.

“We took a 45 minute bus ride, came out flat and weren’t ready to go. In the second half, our defense started to hit people and our offense started to click.”

Even when Rich threw the interception on fourth-and-15 on his own 39, still down by six points with around three minutes to play, he wasn’t phased.

“I actually didn’t even know what happened," said Tim Rich. "I thought it was just an incomplete pass and by the time I got up, Anthony [Iovino] had already recovered the fumble.

“We’ve got great athletes on our football team. I pretty much close my eyes, throw the ball up and they come down with it every time.”

It’s the first-ever matchup between the two teams on Saturday afternoon and the winner will snap its three-game Super Bowl losing streak and finish an improbable path to the big game.

“In one respect, they got in on that tiebreaker rule, but they made the best of their opportunity,” said Bruce Sr. “We got in winning outright and then had the fight of our lives Tuesday night, so go figure.”

“I guess one of us will be the team of destiny,” said Marshfield coach Lou Silva.