Albany State football gets one more game, faces Shorter in Rome

ALBANY, Ga. — If Cameron Watts had just played his last game for Albany State, he’d given people plenty to remember. He took the opening kickoff 93 yards for a touchdown. Then he stepped in front of a Fort Valley State pass and ran it back 53 yards for another. Forty-seven seconds had come off the clock. Watts had scored twice.

By the time the Golden Rams walked off the field in Columbus with a 49-0 win, some of their seniors figured that was it.

On Sunday, they found out they had another game.

“Now we get to play another game,” Albany State coach David Bowser said on Coaches Corner. “You don’t have to, but you get to.”

Albany State (5-5, 5-3 SIAC) will play Shorter (3-7, 2-4 Conference Carolinas) at 1 p.m. Saturday at Barron Stadium in Rome. A scheduling agreement between the two conferences made the game possible. Bowser said it felt a little like going to a bowl game. What he had in mind was the week itself, when some players are getting ready for kickoff and others are turning in their gear.

“Think about all the other teams in our conference and other conferences who right now, they’re doing inventory,” Bowser said. “They would love to be in our position.”

Shorter has a reason to welcome another Saturday, too. Four of the Hawks’ seven losses came by seven points or fewer. One was a 24-20 loss to Benedict, the team that beat Albany State 29-6. Shorter quarterback Jeb Walls threw three fourth-quarter touchdown passes that day, and Benedict gained exactly one more yard than the Hawks. A late interception return for a touchdown helped Benedict get out of Rome with the win.

Then there’s David Hill. He’s 50 yards shy of 1,000 for the season, and last week he scored every Shorter touchdown in a 23-20 loss to Chowan. He ran 28 times for 182 yards and two scores and caught a 17-yard pass for the third. Albany State’s defense had eight sacks and three interceptions against Fort Valley State. Hill gives that defense a different job Saturday. First, get him on the ground.

The Rams have their own reason to keep handing off. Bowser said all five starting offensive linemen were together against Fort Valley State for the first time since the Allen game. Albany State averaged nearly 7 yards per carry and gave up no sacks. Roderick McCrary broke a 95-yard touchdown run in the second quarter and scored again from 9 yards out in the third.

“For us to be the kind of football team we want to be, we’ve got to effectively be able to run the football,” Bowser said.

Bowser expects to trade some practice time for more film work this week. He wants his players to study Shorter on their own, take notes and bring questions to meetings. A win would give Albany State a winning record in his first season.

Before the Fort Valley State game, Bowser had asked his players how they wanted to be remembered. Watts gave his answer in 47 seconds. On Saturday, the seniors who thought they’d said goodbye in Columbus get four more quarters.