St. Vincent 21, St. Pius 6
It’s hard for TGG to put his criticism of SPX coach Dan Oliver’s strategy in Week 7 down on bits-and-bytes. Oliver made a pre-game decision that cast Friday night’s Homecoming Game in a very different mold than Mississippi Magazine anticipated, a decision that probably doomed Hill Valley’s boys to lose from the outset. But it was, in many respects, the hardest choice Oliver has ever had to make as the skipper at St. Pius, and it could also very well be that there was no “correct” decision that the skipper had to call on.
Dabrein Moss is the Varsity Lancers’ fastest and most punishing runner, and also the team’s tallest/best pass-catcher in the open field. In short, he plays a dual role that’s comparable to Al Young’s versatility when the SEMO alum starred for Cape Girardeau Central. Where to place Moss on the field against St. Vincent was Oliver’s most important problem.
The Geek thought there was no way St. Pius would prioritize its ground game to any level close to the 80%-20% ratio shown against St. Vinny’s. Herculaneum’s running game was stunted in the Penalty Bowl vs SPX, but was stone-iced by the Indians in a scrum that Herky hung around in by throwing complete passes.
SPX coaches seemed to decide that Moss was their only tailback option who could move the chains against St. Vincent. They were probably right. Moss plunged for 80+ yards on 19 carries against the best D-line that the Lancers could wind up facing all year, while everyone else in the Lancer backfield was held to under 3 yards-per-carry. Moss did his best to work toward the outside or get open downfield when split-out, but without the foremost receiver on the team playing wide receiver, the passing game couldn’t produce drives against the Indians quite like Herky did. QB Brennan Ervin finished with 65 yards and no interceptions, but wasn’t surrounded by enough open WRs to significantly add to the Lancers’ paltry yardage total on the night.
The St. Pius defense fought. It fought, and fought, and fought again to hold St. Vincent off the scoreboard in the 3rd quarter, preserving a 7-6 deficit that might have allowed SPX to win its Homecoming Game (and the title of an expanded league) with so much as a field goal in the final frame. Alex Moises (known as “Moisses” or “Mosses” in the presumably botany-obsessed STLToday) followed up his regional-record threatening 5 sacks against HHS with 6 total tackles, and Moss (the Dabrein variety) was fresh enough to help on defense for a majority of the scrum. But the gamble of putting the Lancers’ own version of “Deebo Samuel” in the backfield instead of out-at-WR on a majority of snaps had the ironic effect of producing an NFL-style battle. Stubborn defense can last a while, but the bough’s going to break if drives aren’t happening, and St. Vinny’s simple, easy method of scoring on its final 2 Red Zone trips indicated that the mighty SPX front was getting gassed.
The Geek’s preference – which should be obvious by now – would have been to make Dabrein Moss into a “lonely end” who could be targeted downfield or whip around through the backfield on every play, giving the upperclassman a chance to take over the game and scare the Indians’ front-7 into backing off. But that advice, should Oliver have taken it, might have led to a 30-point defeat. The head coach appears to have felt that with a sophomore QB getting his feet wet, the Lancers absolutely had to generate positive yards on the ground, or Ervin would be taxed with too many risky 3rd-and-long scenarios. It’s true that the “Chuck It To Moss” plan could have led to a feast or a famine, while as it stands, we can confirm SPX had a chance to win.
Problem is that the teams St. Pius faces from here-on-out are better at offense than defense for the most part, making it imperative that the Lancers get the bean to their best play-maker on the flank, and score enough points to beat underdogs and bother favorites. Week 8 and Week 9 opponents Bayless and Perryville respectively are each better on offense, and not only does Hill Valley’s playoff bracket include Brentwood, Duchesne, and CCHS, but teams like the Crystal City Hornets and the Duchesne Pioneers have too much speed and elusiveness on the gridiron to successfully run-block on long drives with a role-playing QB. Crystal City’s young, scrappy defensive backfield can be attacked by the deep ball – but few quarterbacks have had success trying it yet. Ervin, a higher-velocity passer than most of the overwhelmed QBs facing the Hornets in 2022, deserves to get at least 5-10 deep downfield shots at his big man in a match-up like that. Otherwise, the Lancers will be playing away from their strength…a syndrome that also hampered CCHS in its faltering Homecoming win over Van-Far.
Hillsboro 79, DeSoto 0
There are few box-score details available from the Georgia Tech vs Cumberland Hillsboro at DeSoto massacre on Friday night. Head Coach Sucharski’s post-game presser on Regional Radio was pretty vanilla too. Apart from knowing that the surging HHS defense scored a couple of early TDs to help get the Turbo Clock rolling, there’s no reliable resource from which TGG can draw to recap a truly astounding blow-out.
But at the very least, we can try to imagine just what went down in the Hillsboro dressing room, and later, on the visiting sideline:
(Pregame)
Jaxin “Jax” Patterson: The Geek thinks this is the least watchable game all year in the county. We are the undefeated District favorites, and that is unacceptable.
Austin “Fresh” Romaine: He already said that we would blow-out DeSoto.
Patterson: Yeah, but it’s supposed to be boring. What if we really blow-out DeSoto? I’m talking about a Turbo Clock in the 1st quarter. That can’t be boring.
Romaine: But even if we get the 8 yards-per-carry average from the Friday Night Predictions, and they only get 1 yard-per-carry, that still won’t add up to a 40-point lead until after halftime.
Patterson: I will average 32 yards-per-carry, making Mississippi Magazine’s prediction wrong by a factor of 4. You will make 20 consecutive tackles-for-loss and set a new state record.
Romaine: Why not?
(Late 1st Quarter, Hillsboro Leads 35-0)
HHS Offensive Coordinator: Everyone is scoring TDs, coach. The offense. The defense. Special teams. Cheerleaders. A spotted bass from Joachim Creek just swam onshore, suited up, and got a 12-yard gain for us.
HHS HC Bill Sucharski: That’s 20 yards less than what Jax is getting.
OC: Well, okay, but what should we do to keep it respectable?
Sucharski: Put the sophomores in.
(Start 4th Quarter, Hillsboro Leads 65-0)Â
OC: The JV just drove 90 yards for a touchdown. Then they drove 50 yards up the hill behind the end zone, just for the hell of it. Now they’re all itchy from rolling on the Zoysia grass, and we’re running out of Benadryl.
Sucharski: Good. We should take the JV out anyway. I am counting on you to slow our scoring down. I don’t want to wind up as the bad-guy in a YouTube documentary.
OC: This is already streaming on YouTube.
Sucharski: Put the freshmen in.
(4:34 Remaining in 4th Quarter, Hillsboro Leads 72-0)Â
Sucharski: Listen. Put our slowest freshman in at running back. Give him a shovel-pass and tell him to turn 90 degrees, run in a straight line, and go out-of-bounds for no gain if he’s not tackled first.
OC: Got it.
(4:25 Remaining in 4th Quarter, Hillsboro Leads 79-0)Â
OC: We threw him a lateral by mistake, and he turned and ran for a TD.
Sucharski: You’re going to pay for this.
Crystal City 37, Van-Far 14
Oh, snap, what a powerhouse team is brewing at Sunken Place. In the next season-and-change, we’re about to see a local small-school defense develop into a unit with the type of speed and tackling Jefferson High’s defense showed in 2020, and as the dear departed Brodie Lee said about Wednesday-night wrestling, you know what that means.
CCHS played its worst game of the year with the football in hand, and still handily beat an Iron Man squad that had its own barn-burner against Russellville earlier this season. The Hornets took the field with “Homecoming Blues” stamped on their foreheads, taking weird penalties on what would have otherwise been game-breaking runs, getting caught in the backfield on busted plays, and kicking hosel-rocket punts out-of-bounds. Crystal City’s defense was sloppy in its pursuit lanes, allowing Van-Far a pair of TDs despite the Indians getting nothing on the mid-line dive play, a fatal weakness that would’ve led to a shut-out from a veteran D.
Crystal’s presentation of big games needs work too. Van-Far coach Lucas Gibson is to be praised for not losing his cool completely (The Geek sure would have) when CCHS drove a noisy old-fashioned tractor all the way around the end zone during live action, drowning out all hope of team communications as the Indians tried to score. Maybe Gibson knew it was merely his bad luck to have had the ball in the Red Zone just as the “Friday-Friday-Friday!” tractor-pull event started (it isn’t like CCHS planned it out as a ploy to foil an opposing TD drive), or just figured he’ll blow a barge-horn at Crystal’s offense when the Hornets visit Vandalia next October.
Mississippi Magazine also knows that the gigantic red-flashing light in the end zone came from the Crystal City Fire Department, a vintage, treasured organization that’s such a booster of CCHS Hornets pigskin, they could probably enter their own float at Homecoming if they wanted to. That fact, however, doesn’t mean it was a great staging idea. From 50-75 yards away, the flashing light looked those fictional “Nuclear Alert” alarms on YouTube, and may have been unsettling to the team aimed at it. In the playoffs, be warned, such kinds of S-T-U-N-T-S often spell F-O-R-F-E-I-T.
When all was said and done, though, there were the Varsity Hornets rumbling away with another lopsided win. CCHS defense bailed-out the Sunken Place with a terrific overall performance, stopping Van-Far time and again on short-field opportunities. Our praise for Gibson aside, Crystal City outcoached Van-Far too, taking better advantage of the Indians’ mistakes than the guests were able to capitalize on CCHS’s blunders. (A member of Van-Far’s staff sarcastically blamed a student-athlete for the unfriendly score, loudly enough to be heard throughout the subdued stadium…a cardinal sin when your job is to get boys to play hard for you.)
Why has Crystal’s team has only scratched the surface of its potential? Forgetting the vast number of freshman and sophomore standouts for a moment, the Hornets still haven’t utilized their best weapon – a defense that’s fast enough and good enough to create points-off-turnovers as often as it allows long drives for touchdowns. About halfway into the game, there was a funny sequence in which Van-Far and Crystal City each badly needed field position – in a tight defensive battle that could’ve been decided by 1 or 2 TDs – and like Missouri and Auburn and “winning,” neither team was interested. Crystal City tapped a worthless, unrecoverable “onside” kick to the 50-yard line. Van Far tried for a 4th-down conversion at midfield and failed. Crystal City tried for a 4th-down conversion at midfield and failed. Van Far finally drove the length of the field, then on its next kickoff…tapped to the 50.
CCHS later kicked-off down the field with a knuckle ball, which Van-Far fumbled away to set up a commanding 30-14 lead for the Hornets. That’s more like it. Put some opposing teams in bad field position against this Crystal City lineup, and bad things will happen to them. HC Dan Fox is coaching as if he thinks his fine defense is still shaky, and that he has to maximize the offense’s snaps-from-scrimmage to score TDs. Or, he isn’t comfortable enough with a sour punting game (or kickoff game) to think taking a chance makes much of a difference, the logic behind Pulaski Academy “money-balling” 4th downs and on-side kicks in the 2010s.
But the Pulaski Academy Bruins, unlike their “Gomer Pyle USMC” announcing crew, are respectable, refined artists from a finesse team, not a power-rushing Goliath killer such as CCHS wants to become. 30 yards of field position may not be a big deal to the point-a-minute Bruins, but it would be enormous for a Flexbone club with a far, far better defense (relative to competition) than we associate with Army, Navy, and The Citadel.
If Fox doesn’t like his traditional punt game, that’s easy – scrap it and do something else. As John Madden told the All-Pro punter Ray Guy, “Kick the damned ball as far as you can, and if (my coverage team) can’t cover it, I’ll just get new guys.” Fox can’t “get new guys” on special teams, of course, and wouldn’t want them if he could get them, given how special the ’22 Hornets already are on all 3 units. But to imitate an old NHL commercial, if you don’t have a Ray Guy, use whatever you’ve got around the house.
Coach Fox has an “option” team, and there are always options besides handing the ball over. The Geek suggests that a rugby-punt strategy would be the trick, in which the punter/QB wings to the sideline on a simple “student body” play, having an option to run (which would scratch Fox’s itch to grab a big gain on 4th down once in a while) or boot a low line-drive that bounces down the hash mark. You only average 30-35 yards on a rugby punt, but opponents are scared to touch them, and they’re hard to screw up.
On-side kicking is fine if the team lines up on a side and goes after it, otherwise, CCHS can also do better than 10 yards per kickoff – it’s been scientifically shown. A regular ol’ squib kickoff is 100% safe for a fast, responsible roster with plenty of depth (it’s a new day, after all).
If the Herky-Crystal City game is a high-scoring slugfest, then by all means, Crystal should give Cohen Compton and its other out-of-the-woodwork rookies every chance to score points and cause problems for HHS on 4th down. But if the game is tied 12-12 with 9:00 to go, a successful 30-yard kicking play could make the difference between the Hornets defeating Herculaneum on a pick-6 and Lucas Bahr catching the winning TD.
Festus 55, Pacific 24
Festus enjoyed its best game of the season on offense in Week 7. Essien Smith and Jeremiah Cunningham are learning that looking off a check-down option can be as important as looking off “Ghost To The Post” or another variety of home-run ball. Smooth execution on short throws helped the Varsity Tigers turn all kinds of short-yardage plays into fireworks, and obviously wear down a formidable Pacific defense by the end. Out-scoring a team that threatened to come back is a big step for an offense that’s been under pressure, and that badly needed a confidence boost.
But should the Black & Gold need to out-score an offense as poor as Pacific’s? PHS’s touchdowns weren’t mop-up scores in the 2nd half, in fact, the Indians raced down to the 20-yard line almost every time they had the football. Pacific lived in the FHS Red Zone and could have scored 2 or 3 additional times…its most prolific show of ’22 against a marquee team.
It’s good that the Tigers are making goal-line stands again. That was a precursor to last season’s excellent defense in the District playoffs. But the boys are also faring so badly without the ball that they’re “waking up” dormant offenses. Pacific was shut-out of meaningful TDs in 3 out of 6 prior games before gaining close to 400 yards of offense on Friday night. North County struggled to score in the 2nd half at HHS and even against DeSoto, but sure looked alive in the latter half at Midmeadow Lane this year.
If this trend continues, we could bottle the 2022 defense and market it as a pick-me-up energy boost for long-suffering patients. An old man in a rocking chair would say, “I got to take one of my Playing The Festus Defense pills now,” and then jump right up and run down to the 20-yard line.
FHS’s chance in the District playoffs is to do something unexpected on defense in the opening half, hoping that the offense will generate a 14-0 lead in the meantime, and put the opponent in a pressure-packed scenario for a change. But that can only work in 1-2 games. Festus must build on its Red Zone success and begin forcing punts as well, or Smith and Cunningham may have to combine for 3 perfect games in a row for FHS to win a title.
Seckman 50, Pattonville 48
As Pat McManus used to put it, “Geezy Cripes.” The Gridiron Geek has no creativity left with which to suitably recap an OT classic after dishing on just 4 other scrums from Week 7. That’s what happens when Hillsboro goes ballistic, St. Pius goes cold, Crystal City goes for 10 wins, and alma mater’s offense begins rounding into shape all right at pumpkin-season.
But we will create a wide gap (just like Seckman’s offensive line) in this week’s Power Poll to recount the Jaguars’ important close-shave win over a Pattonville team that specializes in coming-out ahead in dramatic endings. Seckman will now be ranked a “High #2” in the Power Poll instead of languishing near the Fox-Festus tier, as the Jags have shown – if nothing else – that their offense is on par with the dynamite HHS Hawks in ’22.
North County 55, Windsor 12
It’s official – Windsor is going to upset a good large-school team at some point over the next dozen-or-so games. You can tell because Windsor’s blow-out losses have the feel of a Saturday afternoon “Florida vs South Florida” game rather than a typical Friday Night Lights demolition. The Albino Birds rushed for 6 yards-per-carry against North County, answered NCHS point-scoring early in the 1st and 2nd quarter alike, boasted a 100-yard game from the talented junior receiver A.J. Patrick, and fell by a 40-point margin thanks to turnovers and penalties, not any kind of patsy-level deficiency in good athletes.
TGG has done plenty of complaining about Festus’ form in 2022, but gosh, it’s exciting to have 4 lively teams in the Mississippi Conference again.
Fox 58, Hazelwood West 6
A nice blow-out led by the Arnold defense, which scored on a fumble recovery in the 1st quarter, and allowed a lot of rushing yards in garbage time…but was ALL over the field on opposing pass-plays when the chips were down.
Jefferson 41, Grandview 12
The injury problems at Grandview are underscored by the Eagles plowing-ahead for some ball control in Friday’s loss, but also falling apart on the front-7 against a less-dynamic-than-usual JHS option attack. giving up over 400 rushing yards to the Jefferson Blue Jays. Obviously, GHS still has 3-4 strong, healthy linemen available…but you need 9 or 10 of them to beat Jefferson.