Raiders can’t catch speedy Lutheran St. Charles, suffer third consecutive defeat

QUINCY — Al Davis, the Hall of Fame general manager and owner of the Oakland Raiders, based his philosophy of football on speed.

“Speed kills. You can’t teach speed. Everything else in the game can be taught, but speed is a gift from God,” Davis once said.

The speed of the Lutheran St. Charles football team killed Quincy Notre Dame on Friday night.

The Cougars scored three touchdowns of 60 yards or longer, racked up 540 yards of total offense and outraced the Raiders in a 49-7 victory at Advance Physical Therapy Field. QND has lost three straight games for the first time since 2018, when it opened the season with four consecutive losses.

Lutheran St. Charles needed just three plays to score the game’s first touchdown in just 56 seconds. Kaleb Mays caught a 25-yard touchdown pass from Aaron Coffey.

Coffey connected on a 79-yard touchdown pass to Mays later in the first quarter. After Mays intercepted a Calvin Lavery pass and returned it to the QND 2-yard line, the Raiders appeared to have dodged a bullet when a bad snap cost the Cougars 20 yards on first down. However, Arlen Harris Jr. scampered 22 yards on the next play for a touchdown to put the visitors ahead 21-0 with 23 seconds to play in the first quarter.

Harris, who has verbally committed to Stanford, added a 19-yard touchdown run in the second quarter. He then raced 74 yards with a screen pass on third-and-16 for his third touchdown midway through the third quarter. He finished with 87 yards rushing.

“Lutheran’s got a lot of really good football players,” Raiders coach Jack Cornell said. “Arlen Harris, Jr. is going to make a name for himself at the next level once he gets to Stanford, no doubt. Same thing with all the big guys up front. … What it boils down to is we’ve just got to play better, more inspired and with more enthusiasm. That just wasn’t the case for us tonight.”

Coffey, a 6-foot-5, 240-pound senior, completed just 11 passes in the game but finished with 394 yards and five touchdowns. Eight of his completions went for 23 yards or more. He threw a 44-yard TD to Aidan McClean late in the third quarter. He added a 61-yard touchdown to Mays early in the fourth quarter.

The Raiders avoided their second consecutive shutout when Lavery threw a 10-yard touchdown pass to Zach Friedersdorf with 1:37 remaining in the game. It was their first touchdown since the second quarter of the Breese Mater Dei game in Week 5.

QND had one other scoring opportunity in the third quarter. A fake punt led to a 41-yard run by Jackson Stratton to the Cougars’ 4-yard line. However, Lavery later threw an interception in the end zone to end the threat. The Raiders finished 157 yards of total offense.

The Raiders (4-3) have been outgained 1,375 to 539 and outscored 118 to 14 in the past three games against teams with a combined record of 18-2. They conclude the season against a pair of winless teams — Granite City and Alton Marquette. They will qualify for the playoffs with one more victory.

“For the third week in a row, we just came out not really excited to play, which was the most frustrating part,” Cornell said. “I try to pride myself on being able to motivate our football team and our coaches being able to motivate our football team and put them in a spot to succeed.

“We’re not even talking about (the playoffs) yet. We’ve lost three in a row now. Right now we have to focus on Granite City.”