Phil Anastasia: Still smarting, Red Devils roll

These guys from Penns Grove, they move pretty well with chips on their shoulders.

They block, tackle, break loose for punt returns, jump on about a dozen fumbles - OK, it was only five - and overwhelm the defending sectional champions despite all that extra baggage.

Or maybe because of it.

"We're over that," Penns Grove coach Kemp Carr said of last season and his team's disqualification from the South Jersey Group 1 tournament.

Nobody believed Carr as he stood on his team's home field after Saturday's 54-0 rout of Glassboro in the season opener. Especially since he spent the next few minutes conceding that the Red Devils' banishment "still is in the back of our minds" and noting that "it's natural" to remember when you've been "scarred" by something.

"It doesn't matter how or where or when you've been scarred," Carr said. "You are going to remember it. We put it in the back of our minds. Our frontal lobes, that's all about what's ahead of us this season."

This game was a perfect storm of bad weather for a young and inexperienced Glassboro team - six turnovers, shaky special teams, and an opponent that has been carrying a grudge for a year.

Penns Grove looks like a team on a mission. It's one thing to toss around some of the weaker squads on the Red Devils' schedule, which they did with regularity in 2010. It's something else to manhandle one of the best Group 1 teams in the state.

This was Glassboro, a program that has won three of the last four South Jersey Group 1 titles. Of course, one of those titles came last season, when Penns Grove was forced to sit and stew on the sideline during the state tournament after three players were disqualified from a regular-season game.

"I think about it every day and every night," said Penns Grove junior quarterback Nick Elmer, who tossed 22 touchdown passes as a sophomore. "It's terrible what happened to us last year. We've got to come back 20 times stronger this season."

Penns Grove has never won a South Jersey title. The Red Devils surely had a shot last season, as their only loss was by 13-12 to Glassboro on opening night.

Penns Grove won its next eight games by a combined score of 422-13. The Red Devils topped 60 points four times. They pitched six straight shutouts.

That team played with a serious edge, especially after the NJSIAA barred it from the tournament. This team appears to be bringing the same mentality to the field.

The Red Devils swamped Glassboro with speed and athleticism. They pounced on five fumbles, one in the end zone and another on the 7-yard line. They returned an interception 80 yards for a touchdown, and had punt returns of 44 and 37 yards that led to two more touchdowns.

"That's a heavyweight team, and we got the early knockout," Penns Grove senior defensive end/fullback TayShon Hayward said.

That's an aggregate score of 476-13 in Penn Grove's last nine games.

That's an average score of 52.9 to 1.4.

Good thing the Red Devils aren't angry. They really could make it tough on some of these teams.

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