It’s too bad that the universal yell for a monster-truck rally is “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday,” while the 2022 Seckman Jaguars are scheduled to play ball on Friday-Friday-Friday. That’s because The Geek lied when he said there would be 12 Jefferson County pigskin teams to blog about on Mississippi Magazine this season.
There are 11 Jefferson County football teams. Then there’s Seckman…an unholy beast-on-wheels.
Call it Bigfoot. Call it Gravedigger. Call it Godzilla. Call it what you want, but it’s coming. Cole Ruble and the Seckman Jaguars have been gaining steam for 3 seasons behind a behemoth Class of 2023 and the best rushing QB in within an hour of the water. Now, it’s time for the Jaguars to take a kick at the can – or a run over the Crush Cars – and try to Ruble-rumble their way to a championship.
Just looking at the Seckman’s roster on HUDL is enough to intimidate an opponent. The Varsity Jags’ offensive line is littered with 275+ lb. veteran blockers such as Luke Johnson, Zach Hudson, and Matthew Zeller. Only a handful of players have graduated off a defense that’s already bedeviled the Fox Warriors and Poplar Bluff Mules, and held Ladue quarterback Beau Dolan to less than 50% passing in a hard-fought 35-27 loss to the Rams last season. Ruble is such a great runner that his “option” plays are mostly called just to keep defenses honest, leading to pale statistics for RBs in the unit, but returning tailbacks like Tommy Gibbar have posted excellent YPC marks. Most of all, the Jags’ roster numbers are astonishing, with 32 seniors and nearly 50 total upperclassmen.
If that doesn’t convince you, check out this Regional Radio training-camp vid of the ’22 Seckman Jaguars, and a few of the “big grown men” (as ESPN analysts would say) rehearsing for head coach Nick Baer’s team.
Readers who clicked on that clip may have noticed that Ruble, Baer, and a good chunk of the Varsity Jaguars’ standouts are spending a lot of time talking about the Jackson Indians, a team that the Jags lost to by 6 touchdowns in the 2021 playoffs, whom Seckman hasn’t got scheduled for a rematch during the 2022 regular season, and which the Jaguars could conceivably never meet at all this autumn. Is it a good idea to call-out the most dominant Class 5 program in eastern Missouri? More about that on scroll.
The only thing stopping SHS from setting all kinds of scoring records this year is that the Jaguars’ style of offense is old-fashioned. Seckman spends a lot of time going “hey, diddle diddle, right up the middle” and waiting for Mr. Ruble to shoot out of the pile and gallop downfield. It leads to a lot of “1990s Herky” type triumphs that are really a lot more lopsided than scoreboards may illustrate. For example, Seckman’s playoff win over Cape Girardeau Central last year went down in the books as “25-0.” But a then-junior Ruble plowed for 203 yards on 25 carries, producing so many time-consuming drives that the Tigers barely got a turn.
Seckman’s next playoff game, in which Poplar Bluff rallied to cut a deficit to 35-34 and then missed a potential winning 2-point conversion with 1:19 left, was (gulp) closer than the score illustrated.
Any discussion of Seckman High’s “problems” has to be weighed with a steep sense of perspective in 2022, since the Jags’ only real “problems” in the short-term involve staying healthy and preparing to hurdle a District bracket that’s been insurmountable to local Class 5 teams due to the presence of Jackson, and to an extent Poplar Bluff. Some of the ’22 squad’s shortcomings aren’t likely to surface in a plurality of regular-season games. Ty Kitchen’s graduation deals a big blow to Seckman’s WR corps and potentially the defensive backfield, but 2022’s out-of-division and OOC foes like Pattonville and University City respectively won’t be able to pass-protect well enough against the Jags’ mighty front-7 to give their QBs time to pick apart a blue-collar SHS secondary. In fact, the only reason Seckman’s inconsistency in pass coverage – exemplified by more than a half-dozen meaningful pass TDs allowed last November – could come into play before the leaves turn is because of Valle University’s presence in Week 1.
The Geek is not too concerned with the prospect of Seckman losing to Valle U. For one thing, Valle’s defense has never faced anything quite like the ’22 Varsity Jaguars, at least when it comes to fighting blocks and not getting blown off the ball. The Hayti Indians had serious size, solid speed, and a dominant RB in the late 2010s, trading playoff blow-outs with the Warriors in an intense 2-year feud at the top rung of Class 1. Hayti, however, had less serviceable linemen and LBs on its whole squad than Seckman now has available from the senior class alone. If all else fails, the large-school teams on Valle U.’s new Class 3-level schedule, like Seckman, Park Hills Central, and Festus, can attempt to hang close to Valle for 3 frames and then overwhelm the Warriors’ “starting 18” with sheer numbers by 9 PM. Lastly, the Hayti Indians of 3 years ago ran an NFL-style offense and liked to spread the pigskin around just for the hell of it. Seckman High will line up and pound Dex R. Stacky’s squad relentlessly, leading to what should be an entertaining Regional Radio funeral service postgame show, as Stacky slams the unfairness of Valle having to meet bigger, faster athletes every so often, and pines for the good ol’ days of defeating 200 “fairly matched” teams in a row.
However, there’s no question Valle U. will connect on downfield passes and move the ball in Week 1. Valle’s top 5-10 seniors in 2022 could start (and shine) for a large majority of the schools in MSHSAA. How the Seckman defense adjusts and works to shut-down any comeback bid from the Warriors will be an important litmus test for battles to come.
There’s a duality at work when a fast-improving team plays a similar schedule all over again. Suddenly, a slate that always felt too hard now begins to feel too easy. Baer observed what happened to Hillsboro and Fox last season, talented rosters that burned themselves out and didn’t play up to standard when everything was finally on the line. HHS could have conceivably stayed in-form if anyone on the October schedule had threatened the ’21 Hawks, but Borgia and Poplar Bluff’s porous defenses led to Hillsboro getting a dangerously easy ride, and then a serious shock once the District Semifinals arrived. In some respects, the Varsity Hawks had gotten too prolific on offense for their own good, and like the West Plains Zizzers of 2018, didn’t know what to do with an opponent that they couldn’t simply drive 90+ yards against. The Seckman Jaguars wouldn’t be immune from dealing with the same weak-schedule syndrome this year, especially since SHS will be so well-oiled on offense as to make most of its rivals look bad. If Seckman gets past Valle U. without taking an upset loss, then the next significant challenge could come against Fox in late September. If the Jags beat the rival Warriors to stay unbeaten, they’ll be a win over Pattonville away from getting to 9-0.
Maybe that’s why Baer encourages his kids to daydream of a scrum that’ll (probably) happen 3 months from now. If the Imperial boys can keep the blow-out Jackson loss of 2021 firmly in mind, they’ll spend the lopsided 4th quarters of ’22 thinking about how somewhere out there, there’s still a Class 5 kingpin that could very well knock them out again. Cole Ruble’s team may have the defects of its virtues when preparing to win tight games later on, but at least they can wrap their heads around it right away.
This SHS offense will get pretty good at pushing defenses around unless any Warriors, Mules, or Indians can come along to slow them down. We should expect Baer to grade Seckman defense as a stand-alone operation whenever the Jags score 50 or 60 points on Friday night. Opponents will be opening-up often while trying to come back, and the secondary will be under pressure to stump QBs cold in the passing game. If that happens, 2022’s new-look Jackson Indians may indeed have a whole lot to worry about.