Defensive line has Warren feasting on its opponents

For Warren's defensive line, opposing offensive lines have often been like a plateful of Mrs. Mellican's chocolate chip, M & M and sugar cookies.

Overwhelmed and eaten up in a New York minute.

"We love Mrs. Mellican's cookies," Warren defensive lineman Willis Singleton said. "Especially Ronnie (Belfort). Ronnie can eat a whole plateful of them. Like 15 cookies in a row. And this is after a full dinner."

The Warren defensive line, led by starters Zack Pelland, Seamus Mellican, Singleton and Belfort, and also including a few of the reserves, get together every Thursday night for a homemade dinner, usually hosted by the Mellicans or the Pellands.

They polish off brats, burgers, pasta, brownies and, of course, the cookies, like it's nothing. But what else would you expect from the biggest defensive line in Lake County, if not the entire state of Illinois?

Pelland, Mellican, Singleton and Belfort are all hungry ... not to mention, tall and built like trucks, and they are the big, burly anchors of a Warren defense that has been putting up eye-popping numbers all season.

The 7-1 Blue Devils have pitched 5 shutouts in eight games and are allowing a measly 5.9 points per game, fewest in Lake County. On average, they are giving up only 7 first downs per game and held a powerful Stevenson offense to 5 first downs in a 21-0 shutout for the North Suburban Conference championship last week.

Meanwhile, the sack count for the Blue Devils, who could run the table in NSC play with a win over Mundelein Friday night, is at 33, or more than 4 sacks per game.

"We are definitely the biggest line I've seen this season," said Pelland, a senior who has 5 sacks on the season. "No one else has four guys who are all above 6-feet, who are all really strong, really big and who have really long reaches.

"We haven't run into any offensive lines in which we are getting moved. We have dominated every offensive line we've played."

Belfort is the shortest of the core bunch of four linemen at 6-foot-1 while Pelland, who has Division I offers, is the tallest at 6-foot-4. Mellican, who is 6-foot-3, is the "lightweight" at 215 pounds while Belfort checks in as the heaviest at 295 pounds.

Singleton, also getting Division I offers as a junior, is 6-foot-2, 285 pounds and Pelland is 255 pounds.

"We have overmatched offensive lines all season," Belfort said. "Actually, our offensive line at Warren is pretty big and I honestly think it's actually harder for us going against our own offensive line in practice than it is going against the (opposing) offensive lines in games.

"We don't see any (offensive) lines that are as big as us. Some of it is good fortune. We came in together and we were pretty big as freshmen and sophomores. But it's also that we've grown a lot together as a unit. We've put the time in. We've worked really hard in the offseason."

The linemen, who also put the time in with Xs and Os and watch game film during their Thursday dinners, say that they and the rest of the defense made a huge commitment to the weight room, and 6 a.m. workout sessions, in the offseason.

The four linemen bench as much as 350 pounds, squat as much as 500 pounds and dead lift as much as 550 pounds. They love to push each other to lift more and more and more.

But the lifting wasn't enough.

The linemen also worked on speed and agility just as much this summer, in order to make themselves even more lethal as big men who can actually move, too.

"I'm not quite as big (weight-wise) as the other guys so I try to use my speed to my advantage," Mellican said. "But all of our guys up front are pretty quick, especially for their size. We do a lot of drillwork (footwork) and we're always working on technique and keeping our leverage. I think, just overall, we are stronger and faster than most other linemen."

That certainly explains the high number of sacks for the Blue Devils, as well as the low number of points and yardage that other teams accumulate. Even speedy skill position players like quarterbacks and running backs have been shut down by the Warren front four.

"This group causes a lot of problems for people," Warren defensive line coach Brandon Schild said. "It's definitely a special group with their size and speed. These guys are unique. They are more the kind of kids, people who are 6-foot-2 to 6-foot-5 and 250-plus pounds, that you see as defensive linemen in college."

Schild would know the look.

The 6-foot-5 Schild played on the defensive line at Warren in the early 1990s and was about 240 pounds in high school. He wound up playing on the defensive line in college at Eastern Illinois and trains his guys the way he was trained at the college level.

"The number one thing coach Schild has taught us is to go hard every play," said Singleton, who leads the team in sacks with 7 on the season. "Before I met him, I might have taken a play off here or there. But I've learned that every play is important.

"It's all about maximizing potential and never letting up and I think that's how we all play on the defensive line. We always keep coming."

It's like that on Thursday nights, too.

Warren's big defensive linemen keep coming and coming ... for the food. Especially for those cookies.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

Follow Patricia on Twitter: @babcockmcgraw