Jimmy McNamara was as surprised as anyone at Clifton Schools Stadium. There he was, making an instinctive play and staring at 70 yards of green in front of him. The senior just went with it in the moment.

His interception and return for a touchdown broke a 13-13 tie and became the game-winning points as Ridgewood overcame injury losses to knock off Clifton, the top-ranked team in the North Jersey Public Top 20, by a 20-13 score.

McNamara stepped in front of an out-route and took it 73 yards with 10:37 left in the game. The Maroon defense forced a pair of Mustang punts before the depleted backfield got a big lift from Tahir Kenyatta and Preston Stott to be able to run out the clock and send third-ranked Ridgewood to 2-0 on the young season.

The Maroons got off to a quick start with an 80-yard touchdown march on their first possession. It culminated with a Red Kossick 3-yard TD run. Clifton tied it up 14 seconds into the second quarter on a 9-yard touchdown pass from Romelo Tables to Nate Ceneri.

Clifton took a 13-7 lead into halftime courtesy of a Devon Stroble 4-yard scoring run, but Ridgewood put together another long drive, going 75 yards to knoe it up again. Jack Foerch’s quarterback sneak from a yard out came with 3:08 left in the third quarter.

Clifton’s stay at the top of the North Jersey Top 20 will come to an end, while Ridgewood can make a case for that top spot.

From a postseason standpoint, it is a huge victory for the Maroons. Like the Mustangs, Ridgewood has a very difficult schedule. A potential playoff rematch could end up in Ridgewood.

Ridgewood lost Kossick on the play prior to the Foerch score with a knee injury and started the game without fullback Bobby Kuenzler, out with a concussion.

Both could potentially miss some time, beginning with Ridgewood’s next game against Northern Highlands.

Easily, it was the McNamara pick. The play was set up by a false start penalty on the ‘Stangs, turning a third-and-1 into a third-and-6. He dodged a Clifton player near the 10-yard line and cut back to the inside and scored his first-ever varsity touchdown.

“I was just in the moment,” McNamara said. “I’ve been coached to read the route and the quarterback and I backed up, saw the cut and made the jump. The quarterback was looking right at him. I’ve never made any kind of play like that before, it was surreal as I was running.”

SCOREBOARD:North Jersey high school football scores for Week 2

Clifton had a sluggish first quarter in their opening win over East Orange, and they were slow to react on the opening Ridgewood TD. They grabbed control for the rest of the half, but as the Maroons were moving to their second touchdown, you could see Clifton start to wear down.

“That’s one of the things when you’re a young team,” Clifton coach Ralph Cinque said. “We have a lot of guys going both ways and Ridgewood is pretty much a two-platoon team. That’s something we’re going to have to look at, seeing if we can get guys to set up and get closer to a two-platoon team. For example, maybe we sacrifice a wide receiver to have a better corner. That’s for us as coaches to figure out.”

Conversely, Ridgewood played much better defensively in the second half and it was a case of controlling their emotions.

“We were all over the place in the first half,” sophomore linebacker Jack Frers said. “We just had to slow down, get together and trust each other. We were much more focused in the second half.”

Kossick was having a big game for two-and-a-half quarters. He ran 16 times for 115 yards and had a pair of catches for 22 yards, though he did cough up two fumbles on big Mustang hits.

Tahir Kenyatta, the lone starting back remaining after Kossick went out, picked up the slack with 13 carries for 90 yards and Stott, in for Kuenzler, had runs of 11 and 9 yards in the final drive to help Ridgewood run out the clock. He picked up 23 yards on 5 carries.

Foerch was a modest 3-of-5 passing for 37 yards, but his lone completion of the second half was a 15-yarder to Zach Kranz on a third and 9 to the Clifton 3 that set up the Foerch score.

Stroble was again the workhorse for Clifton, running 26 times for 124 yards, but he was held to 27 yards on 12 second half carries as Ridgewood closed down the inside gaps. Tables was 5 of 13 passing for 33 yards, and just 1 of 6 for 4 yards in the second half.

“You never like to lose, but this will be a wake-up for us. We need to learn how to overcome a game like this, and we will. We have no break in the schedule so there’s no feeling sorry for us. We’ll see who we are.” – Cinque

“We didn’t put our best brand of football out there in the first half, and we were only down one score. The emphasis was 'slow it down, concentrate, focus on your job.' Once we did that, the effort was more rewarding.” – Ridgewood coach Torre Watson