One-hundred sixty of those points on the left side of the hyphen have been yielded over the last three games, and the score of Saturday's non-league affair with Roman Catholic, played in snow - yes, late-October snow - at Northeast High, was 50-0.
As much as possible, McTague remains Mr. McSunshine.
"We just come out and play," he said, simply. "We can't really do anything about the scores. It's just a fight.
"At practices, to make sure we're not uptight about all this, our coach [Jack Techtmann] has been trying to make things more enjoyable. We're doing a lot more live stuff. Scrimmage kind of things. And we're doing some fun things with the conditioning drills."
Such as?
"In the 40-yard sprints," he said, "we'll do races between the linemen and the backs. I am one of the faster linemen, but the backs are a lot faster than I am."
One of those backs, a projected top rusher, Chaz Cason, broke his collarbone in Week One. A star linebacker, Dan McLaughlin, is also out with an injury. The Eagles are dressing roughly 30 players and many are freshmen and sophomores.
Around the Archdiocese, rumors are strong that C-E, probably among other schools, will be shuttered come June.
McTague believes the school will be given 1 more year, and the idea it could soon disappear, as he put it, after first biting his tongue, "would not be too good."
Saturday night, McTague and teammates got their first (only?) thrill just running and screaming through the snow to prepare for pregame warmups.
The opening kickoff was fumbled (recovery to Michael Boccelli) and star wideout William Fuller, out of a WildCahillite formation, scored for Roman two plays later on an 18-yard run. Roman's second possession produced a 78-yard scoring run for Marcus Kelly (11-189).
