Essex's Tutt finds his niche in Richmond backfield

Tutt finds his niche in Richmond backfield

Date published: 10/19/2005

By KURT NICOLL

EXPERIMENTS SOMETIMES provide football teams the intended boost. Often, though, the coach is left scratching his head and saying to himself, "What was I thinking?"

Richmond's Dave Clawson was caught in the latter circumstance but was bright enough to correct matters. He switched senior Stacey Tutt (Essex) back to quarterback after the Spiders showed little offensive punch in an 0-2 start with Tutt playing wide receiver.

Tutt was in fine form on Saturday, completing 16-of-25 passes for 212 yards and one touchdown and running for another in the team's 20-10 victory over 22nd-ranked Delaware. The win boosted the Spiders to first place in the Atlantic 10's South Division.

"We knew coming in that he was one of the best pure athletes in the league," Delaware defensive back Kyle Campbell said about Tutt.

"We want the ball in Stacey's hands on critical downs," Clawson commented on the Spiders' Web page. "I think the thing about Stacey right now is how much he has improved from a year ago.

"I think he is throwing the ball away when he needs to. He is keeping his eyes downfield and when he gets flushed from the pocket he continues to look for receivers down the field."

Particularly pleasing for the Spiders' coaching staff was Tutt's third-down effectiveness. On those plays, he connected on 9-of-11 passes for 124 yards, enabling the Spiders average 9.7 yards per play on third-down conversions.

Tutt needs 496 passing yards to move into fourth on the Spiders all-time list ahead of Buster O'Brien (1966-68) with 4,424.

Safety Josh Baldwin (North Stafford) gave Christopher Newport a 21-0 lead five minutes into the second quarter when he returned a blocked punt 29 yards for the score as the Captains routed Chowan, 47-26.

Seven other athletes from the Fredericksburg area play for Christopher Newport: running back Mark Kratzer , offensive lineman Billy Keating , tight end Scott Keeven and defensive lineman Zachary Wilson (all from North Stafford); running back Ramarcus Baylor and defensive back Josh Beamer (both from Essex), and linebacker Chris Salas (Colonial Forge).

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Date published: 10/19/2005