It would have been a pity touchdown. The most garbage of all "garbage time" touchdowns.
But Hampton couldn't even get into the red zone.
Nothing worked. It was just the second series in which the Pirates had run a play on the Bobcats' end of the field. The farthest Hampton got was the Ohio 37-yard line.
The only problem was that Hampton still had its starters in. Ohio's third-team defense was in as the rain drifted away and the scoreboard read "59-0," the eventual final score.
“I thought that would be tough to do, to be very honest with you,” coach Frank Solich said of the shutout with a smile.
Ohio suffocated Hampton's offense throughout the misty evening Saturday at Peden Stadium. It wasn't ever close.
The Pirates earned just 108 yards of total offense on the entire night. Hampton also had 67 penalty yards, making their penalty yards equal to 60 percent of the team's total yards on offense — and they were only penalized 10 times.
"To not allow points to be put on the board as they did was a great accomplishment for those guys," Solich said.
The revamped defensive line allowed just 68 rushing yards. Hampton's quarterbacks, Delmon Williams and Brendan Greene, combined for a statline of 6-of-24 through the air with just 40 yards passing.
"I feel like we prepared ourselves," defensive tackle Cleon Aloese said. "We came in with one mindset, one goal. We did what we had to do, everybody did their jobs."
Aloese's job started on the first play of the game, when he leveled Pirates running back Yahkee Johnson for a loss of four yards. That hit set the tone for the remainder of the game, which turned into a blowout before anyone knew what happened.
The defensive line, which lost three stalwarts — two of whom went to the NFL — to graduation looked as sharp as ever in the shutout win.
"We lost a couple guys, but it’s time for our younger players to step up and learn something from the older guys," Aloese said.
Those younger players were the players that kept the shutout intact at the end of the game, the unit that kept the Pirates not even out of the endzone, but the red zone entirely.
It was Ohio's first shutout since 2015, aided by the fact that the offense scored the most points it had since last year's home opener — which went to triple overtime.
The Bobcats offense could have let up after the second drive of the game, with just 9:23 left in the first quarter, when Papi White toed the sideline to put Ohio up 7-0. That was all the defense needed.
"What helped us was that the offense was able to stay on the field as long as they did," Solich said. "That gave our defense a break, we didn’t have to worry about shuffling too many guys on the defensive front, which was a big plus for us.”
Instead, the offense bludgeoned the Pirates' defense throughout the night, an effort that was just barely topped by the Bobcats' defense.
The Bobcats rushed for seven touchdowns, and Quinton Maxwell added a passing touchdown for good measure.
Ohio's record book will only list this as the most recent shutout — nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't a performance that will list an insane sack-record, or yards-record, or anything of the sort.
Rather, this was a performance that will be remembered as pure domination. Hampton was befuddled, lost and helpless. And Ohio didn't let up.
