STONY BROOK, N.Y. — It’s not often that Patrick Ricard is mesmerized while watching an opposing football player.
But when that player is your older brother, your batterymate from Little League baseball and your offseason weightlifting partner, you view the game through a different prism.
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MAINE (2-3, 1-1 CAA) AT STONY BROOK (2-4, 1-1)
WHERE: Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium, Stony Brook, N.Y.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday
WHEN MAINE HAS THE BALL: Inexperienced running backs Nigel Beckford and Isaiah Jones will get their stiffest test against a Seawolves defense that yields rushing yards grudgingly. They’ll also need to be ready to pick up the numerous blitzes Stony Brook employs in order to buy time for quarterback Dan Collins to find his receivers.
WHEN STONY BROOK HAS THE BALL: The Seawolves have finally settled on junior Conor Bednarski as quarterback, although his statistics have been underwhelming. Sophomore running back Stacey Bedell has 452 yards on the ground. But Stony Brook is averaging only 13.5 points per game because of 13 turnovers and 54 penalties.
KEY MATCHUP: Maine RB Nigel Beckford vs. Stony Brook defensive line. The Black Bear freshman must try to find room against a defensive front allowing only 2.4 yards per rush.
KEY STAT: Just 229.8 yards per game allowed by the Stony Brook defense, tops in the nation.
OUTLOOK: Two top defenses and two teams with unsettled situations at quarterback likely means this will be another low-scoring affair. But Black Bear sophomore Dan Collins has been looking better each week at QB, and if his blockers can keep the Stony Brook blitzers at bay, he could make enough plays in the passing game to pull out another narrow road win.
OF NOTE: Maine has won two of its three meetings against Stony Brook, but the home team has been victorious in each.
DID YOU KNOW?: Wide receiver Damarr Aultman needs one catch to tie Gene Benner for 10th on Maine’s all-time list with 135 receptions.
– Mark Emmert
So Ricard found his eyes drawn to No. 39 in a Stony Brook uniform last season during a Nov. 2 game against his Maine Black Bears.
What he saw surprised him.
“It was weird seeing him in a different uniform. When I actually saw him play on defense, it was something special because he was a lot better than I thought he was going to be,” Ricard said of his brother, Christian.
“When I see him run, I kind of see myself running, just the way our form is. Our body language is very similar and I think our effort is pretty similar. We just love football and we love competition.” They’ll be loving it again Saturday, when a Ricard will line up for each defense as Maine (2-3, 1-1 Colonial Athletic Association) visits Stony Brook (2-4, 1-1).
Both quarterbacks will need to be on the lookout. The Ricards live for sacks, and they’ve both proved to be adept at getting into the opposing backfield.
Christian is a senior who plays roving linebacker in the Seawolves’ 4-2-5 defensive scheme. He leads the team with 45 tackles – 14 of them behind the line of scrimmage, including six sacks. He would have had a seventh, but it was nullified by a facemask penalty, an occurrence that still rankles him.
Not bad for someone who wasn’t allowed to play football until the sixth grade, who stood only 5-foot-2 as a high school freshman and weighed a mere 168 pounds when he walked on at Stony Brook five years ago.
“Mom wouldn’t let me play ’til sixth grade. I remember balling my eyes out. She said I was too small,” said Christian Ricard, who is now 6-foot-1, 205 pounds and a team captain.
The Ricard brothers have four other siblings. But it was Christian and Patrick who excelled on the baseball fields while their father, Paul, coached them. One would pitch and the other would catch.
Christian hit a growth spurt as a high school sophomore. As a senior, he led David Prouty High in Spencer, Massachusetts, to its first Central Massachusetts championship in football, scoring 16 touchdowns and making 56 tackles as a two-way standout. Patrick was a sophomore linebacker. The two cherish the memory of winning together.
But no colleges came calling for Christian. He enrolled at Stony Brook, redshirted one year, played special teams the next and then opened eyes by making 53 tackles as a sophomore backup. After that, the Seawolves gave him a scholarship and moved him to safety.
He responded with a team-high 91 tackles and second team all-conference honors while playing out of position.
Moved closer to the line of scrimmage this year, Christian is wreaking havoc for the league’s top defense. The Seawolves are surrendering only 13 points per game and have 72 tackles for loss. They blitz often, with Ricard coming after quarterbacks from all angles.
“I was kind of motivated to try to prove that it wasn’t a fluke year,” Ricard said of his junior campaign. “It’s just hard work, honestly. I’ve kind of always been doubted from the beginning, so I always knew I had to put in that extra rep of film and just be prepared.”
Said his coach, Chuck Priore: “He’s our best defensive player. … He’s a great blitzer and he’s got great ability to track things down from behind.”
Patrick inherited his father’s size. At 6-2, 255 pounds, he starts at defensive end for the Black Bears and is second on the team with 21/2 sacks.
He was more touted than Christian in high school, drawing interest from schools such as Boston College. Maine offered him a scholarship; Stony Brook did not.
“I always thought they knew about him,” Christian said of his coaches.
“I never really wanted him going here, though. I wanted him to do better. I felt he was good enough to go to those (Football Bowl Subdivision) schools.”
Christian would come home from college and drag Patrick along to his workouts. Little brother learned two things –what it takes to be a Division I college player, and that his big brother had a tremendous drive.
“He showed me how to work hard. He’s probably the hardest-working kid I know,” Patrick said.
“He made sure I was ready to come here and understand everything about Division I football, like camp life and all the team meetings, what a college workout was like. I already knew all that (by the time I got to Maine).”
The brothers are both soft-spoken and don’t engage in much trash talk when it comes to Saturday’s showdown. Patrick’s Maine team beat Stony Brook 19-14 last year. He made sure to mention that a few times when they returned home for the holidays.
Having a son on each team is difficult for their parents, the brothers said. But both think their mother, Judith, will be pulling a little for Christian on Saturday, since it’s his last season.
“Christian said they pretty much have to win out to make it to the playoffs,” Patrick recalled. “I said, ‘Well, it looks like you’re not making the playoffs.’ “
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