South River's Drum voted GMC Week 8 Football Player of the Week

As it has done much of this season, the South River High School football team came out throwing in last weekend’s 41-14 victory over South Hunterdon before head coach Rich Marchesi altered his offensive philosophy.

“We need to work on some things, and after we completed some balls, we settled down into our running game,” Marchesi explained, noting the Rams will need to be multi-dimensional if they are to make a deep postseason run.

“Once we get into the playoffs, you can’t just sit back there and throw. These (playoff teams) will have four good pass rushers. We need to keep teams honest, spread the field out and run the ball inside.”

One of the running backs to get some work was junior Billy Drum, who actually opened the scoring with a 28-yard touchdown jaunt, and later found the end zone on a defensive touchdown from his weak-side linebacker position with a 46-yard interception return.

“On that play, he dropped into the flat, where he is supposed to be between the hash and the boundary,” Marchesi said of the interception, noting the opposing quarterback made a misread. “Billy’s got good speed. Once he got out (in the open field), nobody was in front of him.”

Drum was voted MyCentralJersey.com’s Readers’ Choice Player of the Week for Week 8. He received 18,537 votes or 51.1 percent of the total 36,342 votes cast on a ballot featuring eight nominees.

“Billy is the No. 1 back,” Marchesi said. “I have four pretty good backs that rotate. He brings a different style. He accelerates through the hole, gets to the second level and makes a cut. He follows his blocks extremely well. He gets extra yards by reading his blocks well.”

South River enters this weekend’s action with the second most power points in Central Group II and appears locked into that position. Should the current power point standings remain unchanged and should the Rams win a first-round game, they might draw A.L. Johnson of Clark in the semifinals, creating a matchup of opponents that are familiar with one another although they have never played.

Drum and his junior classmates were part of a Central Jersey Pop Warner midget team that lost a regional championship game to Clark. The junior class has been instrumental in South River’s 8-0 start.

The Rams can clinch their first Greater Middlesex Conference Blue Division championship since 2013 with a victory over Dunellen on Friday night.

“It’s never easy playing those guys,” Marchesi said about the run-oriented Destroyers, adding Dunellen’s defensive scheme will dictate his offensive strategy. “I think it depends on what they do against us. That will dictate what we are going to call.”

Marchesi described Drum as “a great kid” who “doesn’t say much during practice but comes to play every day.”