You can only bite your tongue so much. After a while, if you value honesty at all, you have to be square with people and hope that everybody understands that your reputation and your dignity count for something.Marblehead High football coach Doug Chernovetz faced this epiphany Saturday after his team lost, 41-13, to Saugus at Stackpole Field.Before we go on, let’s understand something. It’s quite possible, given that Saugus brought its A-double-plus game to the field, that a collection of all-time Marblehead greats, all in their prime, would have had trouble with the Sachems on Saturday. Saugus played with a purpose, and to be frank, coach Mike Broderick deserves a credit for keeping his troops focused amid the maelstrom of off-field events leading up to this game.But it certainly didn’t help Marblehead’s cause that its starting quarterback and placekicker were not in uniform (and won’t be on Thanksgiving either) ? themselves caught up in the same maelstrom. And while, as human beings, we want to give these kids the benefit of the doubt that they were victims of little more than bad judgment and bad timing, you can’t get around the fact that they weren’t on the field, either.”It really hurt not to have them,” said Chernovetz.But it hurt more that just when it looked like Marblehead was going to get back into the game, Brandon Lee’s electrifying punt return was called back due to an illegal blocking penalty (a call that mystified even a few Saugus followers).Here, Chernovetz, who’s seen his share of trouble over the past year, bit his tongue and chose his words carefully.”That really took the wind out of our sails,” he said, pausing several times to make sure he didn’t say something he’d regret later. “We had a chance to go into the locker room at halftime down 13-7 and feeling good about ourselves, and that killed us. That was (at this point, he paused again, and actually turned away) ? that was ? that was bad.”When he was asked about the status of his suspended players for Thanksgiving, he tried to be careful again. He tried to say all the right things. Then, he just gave up.”Look, they’re done,” he said. “I’m tired of playing games and not being honest with you guys. They’re done. It was a violation of a school rule.”There’s no doubt that Warren Zevon might have been talking about Chernovetz when he wrote the song “Excitable Boy.” The man wears his heart on his sleeve, and, yes, he’s had his share of troubles for it. But whatever mistakes he’s made, they’ve been because of unbridled passion, and because he cares deeply about what he’s doing. And at the end of the day, that has to count for something.It has to be killing him that his team, even with yesterday’s loss, is going into the 100th Marblehead-Swampscott Thanksgiving game with a chance to actually win the league and go to the playoffs, and all anyone can talk about is off-field disciplinary matters.”But,” he said, “we’ve dealt with adversity since after Thanksgiving last year. I’ve dealt with it ? they’ve dealt with it.”To his credit, he didn’t try to blame the loss on the suspensions, and he didn’t throw sophomore quarterback Matt Perlow (“who hasn’t taken a varsity snap all year”) under the bus, either.”We didn’t play like we’ve played for the past four weeks,” he said. “And that’s all there is to it.”If he’s looking for a positive spin on this, the loss did not affect his team’s chances to win the Northeastern Conference-South title. Also, Perlow got a game under his belt, and played decently – especially early in leading the team right down the field on its opening drive. I would also submit that even with a conference title at stake on Thanksgiving, he’s already cleared his most difficult hurdle. At least, a week from Thursday, he won’t be thrown into the fire with only three days of preparation.Whatever your rooting interests are on Thanksgiving, you’d have to be some kind of a subhuman subspecies not to root for these kids to step up and play well next Thursday