NAZARETH - The Nazareth Blue Eagles, one of the top teams in the Lehigh Valley, flexed their muscles Friday night against Pleasant Valley, shutting out the Bears 56-0.

Peyton Falzone had three passing and two rushing touchdowns and Mason Kuehner caught two touchdown passes and returned a punt 52 yards for a score.

Pleasant Valley (4-4) struggled to move the ball and the Bears rushed for 134 yards on a night when the team was without starting running back Alex Ecker.

“We had a lot of different guys,” Pleasant Valley head coach Blaec Saeger said. “We played four wings and (Aiden) Lollis is waiting his turn. He’s a tough kid and ready to go. He ran hard tonight and very proud of him. Ecker is a huge part of what we do and for us to be successful, we’re going to need him to get back.”

Lollis got most of the carries for the Bears and Nazareth was still able to out-rush Pleasant Valley. Falzone threw for 171 yards for the Blue Eagles (7-1).

The Bears tried some things out early in the passing game with senior quarterback Valentino Byers-Robinson who played the first half of the game. Backupup quarterback Jaxson Haines took over in the second half to get more snaps.

“We’re trying to protect him a little bit and work on some things and see what we can do by opening up the pass game a little bit,” Saeger said about Byers-Robinson. “Didn’t work real well, but we’ll continue to work at it.”

Hunter Scheffner got some carries for the Bears and had runs of 26 and 17 yards in the game. Scheffner’s 48 yards led Pleasant Valley.

Nazareth got out to an early lead after starting the game’s first drive on the Pleasant Valley 47-yard line. Two plays later, Falzone found Kuehner for the first score and under two minutes later, Falzone ran in another touchdown for the Blue Eagles. Nazareth scored 21 points in just over the first seven minutes of the ball game.

“First half, I think offensively we were clicking,” Nazareth head coach Tom Falzone said. “Defensively, we couldn’t get them off the field. They were able to run some clock on us and it’s difficult to defend against that offense. It took our guys a while to get used to it and get those stops that we wanted. Hats off to the job that Coach Saeger does. Those kids are disciplined and do a nice job of that. They pushed us around a little bit, so there’s a few things we got to fix and get better.”

Nazareth’s only loss of the season came was 31-24 to undefeated Parkland in week four and the Blue Eagles also beat Allentown Central Catholic by a touchdown in week six.

“We’re happy to be where we are right now,” Falzone said. “We’re working trying to get that second shot at Parkland. We were with them right to the end. If we play our cards, we’ll get a rematch hopefully.”

COACH-QUARTERBACK RELATIONSHIP ... Falzone talked about his relationship with his sophomore quarterback and son Peyton. “The big thing is we try to spread around and that’s hard to do sometimes in a game like this. We had to get everybody involved and that thing. We want to have a balanced attack and pass and run. We try to throw the ball a little early tonight. Peyton’s done a pretty good job. He’s got some nice weapons and got a great line in front of him that protects him and that makes your job a lot easier, especially as a young quarterback. It’s about everyone working together.”

BYERS-ROBINSON RECOVERING ... Byers-Robinson played the first half of the Nazareth game and the Bears face rival Pocono Mountain East next week for the Old Oaken Bucket game. “He’ll be OK, he’s been gimpy,” Saeger said. “He played Northampton and Nazareth back-to-back, you’re going to walk away with some bumps and bruises. He should be fine.”