Matanzas is 2-8 against Flagler Palm Coast since August of 2014 but they'll have a chance to close the gap a little bit on Friday. The Matanzas Pirates will venture away from home to challenge the Flagler Palm Coast Bulldogs at 7:00 p.m.
Matanzas is coming in off a wild two-game stretch: after soaring to 35 points two weeks ago, they were much more limited against Menendez on Friday. They fell 21-10 to the Falcons.
Meanwhile, Flagler Palm Coast waltzed into their matchup on Friday with two straight wins... but they left with three. They walked away with a 50-39 victory over the Hawks. That's two games straight that the Bulldogs have won by exactly 11 points.
A big part of Flagler Palm Coast's win came down to the chemistry between Hayden Hayes and his top target Mikhail Zysek. Hayes threw for 362 yards and six touchdowns while completing 72.7% of his passes while Zysek picked up 187 receiving yards and three touchdowns. With that strong performance, Hayes is now averaging an impressive 3.1 passing touchdowns per game. Braylyn Simmons also helped out as he racked up 108 receiving yards.
Flagler Palm Coast's defensive line made their presence known, laying out the QB seven times. Colby Cronk was especially locked on to Spruce Creek's QB and sacked him 3.5 times. Cronk has been hot for a while, having also posted seven or more total tackles the last nine times he's played. Another thorn in Spruce Creek's side was Zaiden Greene, who picked up 0.5 sacks and made 11 total tackles (1.0 for loss).
Matanzas now has a losing record at 4-5. As for Flagler Palm Coast, they pushed their record up to 7-1 with the victory, which was their fourth straight at home.
Matanzas lost to Flagler Palm Coast on the road by a decisive 28-9 margin in their previous meeting back in September of 2023. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Flagler Palm Coast's Marcus Mitchell, who rushed for 288 yards and four touchdowns while picking up 11.5 yards per carry. Now that Matanzas knows the damage he can cause, will they be able to stop him this time? There's only one way to find out.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
