Herculaneum Blackcats at Windsor Owls

Just about any Class 4 crew with a confident new lineup would salivate over hosting Herculaneum, the least experienced team in the area, to begin the 2023 season. A young replacement cast is especially vulnerable to losing in summer football games, and it’s also Windsor’s edge to be out for revenge this time.

But the Blackcats may not prove to be the luckiest draw for Imperial in Week 1. If senior A.J. Patrick’s hosts were playing a slower Class 3 roster that’s light on its feet, like Fredericktown in a crummy year, then the Albino Birds’ big, deep front could really push its opponent around on Friday. Against the visiting Felines this week, Windsor’s run game will have slow-going once again in a rivalry with a history of tight contests. Herky’s underclass “bigs” are its best trait in 2023.

Windsor will have to pass the egg nimbly, to distribute touches on a hot day and take advantage of pedestrian speed in the Herky defensive backfield. That’s easier in Week 1 if you’re already a grooved-in passing offense that was averaging 30+ points the season before. PREDICTION: ALBINO BIRDS 27, BLACKCATS 0

St. Genevieve Dragons at Festus Tigers

Friday’s forecast of another 100-degree day gives TGG no choice but to bring up his first-ever Festus Tigers assignment 10 years ago. Black & Gold had traveled to Westminster that day, a gorgeous STL-area campus run by friendly people. After the Tigers got tired and lost by 3 touchdowns, some Westminster players came over to The Geek and a group of Black & Gold athletes who were walking to a parking lot, and they were consolatory and kind along with everybody else.

Then again, if the Westminster kids had ran and jumped around on the 50-yard line to celebrate, they might have been dragged off on stretchers after having heat strokes. The game was played on a Saturday afternoon of searing sun not unlike Jefferson Countians have been enduring each day this week. A few of the residents from gated communities near the field had succeeded in shutting down Friday Night Lights, telling local police “no noise from students after 5 PM.” (We’ll take a quick pause so that readers can growl if they want to.) So instead, the Festus-Westminster tilt happened on a dangerous pitch with a 120+ Heat Index.

This year’s kids who live next to doodie-heads Saturday afternoon teams will be lucky, for the forecast calls for cooling skies as early as overnight Friday. It won’t even be nearly as hot when Week 1’s scrums kick off on Friday at 7 PM. The worst humidity has been burned away, and temperatures will drop into the 80s by sunset, making the games feel much like Oklahoma’s prep football late in summertime.

But there’s a chance to get that “weather loss” back, 10 years after the fact, with what would be – and could be – a fortunate win over the St. Genevieve Dragons.

St. Gen is about the toughest Class 3 bid that anyone wants to handle in 2023, with 10 returning starters on defense, and the nucleus of an offense that terrorized Midmeadow Lane (albeit on the road) last season. If “Week 1” was somehow played in cold weather, or if physical rushing yards were otherwise the key to the outcome, TGG would reluctantly have to favor St. Genevieve over Festus.

The game plan of out-rushing Black & Gold stops looking so effective when the warm-up temperature is 95 degrees. Hot days are made for teams that spread the egg around, using 4-5 substitutes in each wide-open package, and platooning at every turn. St. Genevieve relies on Iron Man performances from its best backs and blockers, which means the Dragons must find a formula to complete 15-20 short passes and keep skill players fresh without leaning on any tailback. That’s a hard assignment, since former signal-caller Aiden Boyer has moved on. St. Genevieve’s absolute best 12 players can give Festus’ best dozen kids all kinds of headaches, but what happens when the heat forces each team’s next 12 names into action?

If coach A.J. Ofodile is planning to use QBs Jeremiah Cunningham and Essien Smith at separate positions this year, he could consider hitting pause on that (and hitting “play” on The Weather Channel) and utilizing the dual-QB system for just one more game. That gambit would potentially allow either Smith or Cunningham (whoever was lucky enough to come in second) to gallop down the field like a player who didn’t have to sweat through a volcanic 1st quarter already.

FHS will stop itself on early-season drives – that train’s never late. But it might prove impossible for the Dragons to hold onto any single-digit lead, unless a friendly storm delays the kickoff to a date on which those Iron Man kids can dominate for all 48:00. PREDICTION: TIGERS 29, ST. GENEVIEVE 20

Sikeston Bulldogs at Hillsboro Hawks

There was a time when a visit from the Sikeston Bulldogs was a nervous occasion for even the biggest schools in Jefferson County. These days, the Bulldogs are a regrettable den of mediocrity, a handy “test” opponent for Week 1, not unlike playing the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in an ordinary year of college football.

How will Hillsboro do on the “test?” Spectators probably expect a “B-minus” considering all the changes on defense, and the Hawks’ new, less fantastically gifted corps of A-backs on the field. The Geek, however, has a hunch that Hillsboro’s more balanced style under Coach Sucharski will help HHS polish off Sikeston yet again. Hillsboro’s run-run-run teams often slogged through Weeks 1-4 and began to come into their own as the leaves turned. But when a quarterback is capable of completing 15+ passes to 5+ receivers, Week 1’s quirks create a crisis for the opposing defense, which doesn’t have any of Hillsboro High’s new wide-receiver routes on video. PREDICTION: HAWKS 42, SIKESTON 7

Chaffee Red Devils at Crystal City Hornets

TGG’s first prediction on a 2023 Crystal City score came already, when we joked in October that a team like Chaffee should be ready to lose to the Hornets by “26 touchdowns” the next time around.

There’s a lot of reasons not to stick with that, starting with the blog’s responsibility to never help a far-away brand get fired up to beat Jeff County. It was Chaffee’s dreadful mistake to get chesty on social media at this time last year, prompting Crystal’s fine upperclass to lay a real whooping on the Red Devils in Week 1.

Chaffee made strides late last football season, bothering the Hayti Indians and nearly spoiling Senior Night at Grandview. The Red Devils’ senior class includes a formidable set of athletes in place of 2022’s 15-man senior contingent. Chaffee knows what it’s dealing with in Crystal City after the shock of last August, and cannot be unaware of how St. Pius X made the Crystal City Hornets look vulnerable all over again at this summer’s Jamboree.

Then again, the forever mistake of pigskin pundits is to only think about the home team. If Crystal City’s offense is feast-or-famine under HC Dan Fox, that means defenses have been feast-or-famine while playing CCHS too. Why is that?

Crystal asks its QBs and RBs to attack the line-of-scrimmage so aggressively on run plays that Hornets’ top drawback is the big number of “busted” snaps, in which the penetrating defense is all too happy to body-slam a Hornet ball-carrier who’s dangerously late for where he needed to go. It happened a lot at the St. Pius Jamboree, when Crystal City was working its frosh linemen into the mix. But the Jamboree’s spectators noticed that Lutheran South couldn’t force Crystal into any busted plays. You’ve got to get the Hornets’ option attack right where it starts, or else. It takes a front-7 of the quality that Chaffee isn’t able to field in this era.

Besides, the Red Devils’ playbook on offense is a crummy idea in TGG’s opinion, since an NFL split-back style makes it a mano-a-mano scrum at the edge of the line and on passing downs. Chaffee needs a devious playbook that at least generates more T-O-P and takes pressure off its overwhelmed defense.

Aw, what the heck. Chaffee’s players probably won’t see this until riding the bus to Sunken Place. They can’t post it in the team weight room to drive 6 days of intense workouts. It’s been said that the famous Georgia Tech vs Cumberland blow-out was out of revenge for a baseball game. PREDICTION: HORNETS 27 (TOUCHDOWNS), CHAFFEE 7 (POINTS)

St. Pius Lancers at Clayton Greyhounds

Fee-Figh-Foh…Fumble? Mississippi Magazine has mulled over this mysterious battle between a sleeping Class 4 giant (Clayton) and a Class 1 lineup that was full of (deleted) “pee” and (deleted) “an apple-cider substance” on Jamboree Friday, not to mention gangs of dressed-out boys in Gold and Blue who could actually outnumber the Week 1 host Varsity Greyhounds in roster size.

Clayton lost to Crystal City’s victim Gateway STEM during a 2-8 campaign in 2022. We’ve learned that large schools that toil at a Class 1 or Class 2 level need a special group of battle-tested kids to snap out of it. Windsor High School, and the aforementioned Gateway Jaguars, could have the magic formula this autumn. Clayton High, with just 4 seniors on an undersized squad, probably won’t. PREDICTION: LANCERS 39, CLAYTON 12

Grandview Eagles at Skyline Tigers

Grandview’s boys will travel to everyone’s favorite Bass Pro Shop on Friday, but that’s a nail-biter if your final destination isn’t Lake Taneycomo. The Springfield-area Skyline Tigers may not retain a winning roster from last year, but they’re in difficult circumstances down in the Ozarks, and appear stocked with bruisers of Russellville and Louisiana’s caliber along the line. Maybe if Skyline didn’t play western-Missouri football – the “glamor” conferences of MSHSAA – the Tigers would’ve posted a record more like Russellville’s and less like 2-8 last year.

Big blockers and short gains are a good, safe antidote for the bus-ride legs Grandview is sure to suffer from. This matchup is similar to the Birds of Prey’s heartbreaker at Father Tolton back in 2021, except that Grandview’s grown-up offensive line can potentially help protect a 2nd-half lead without the game transforming into Arena Football hijinks such as the loss in Columbia. PREDICTION: EAGLES 34, SKYLINE 14

Fox Warriors at Mehlville Panthers

The Mehlville Panthers threatened to play their way out of the “Meh for Mehlville” trope with nice performances in midseason of 2022, but later on, could only manage a slender W over the winless, hapless ’22 Northwest Lions.

Mehlville’s new senior class is larger than the last one in size and number, but Friday’s hosts are unlikely to catch Fox’s backfield on the run. PREDICTION: WARRIORS 28, MEHLVILLE 6

Valle University at Seckman High School

There’s no point in recapping last year’s 9 PM debacle now. What’s interesting is that Valle U’s 4 TD margin-of-victory in 2022 could turn into a slimmer margin in 2023, and not simply because the Warriors graduated an all-time senior class.

If the Valle kids expect a “ghost” Seckman team without its Class of 2023, it may be scared by a specter right out of the 1940s instead. SHS has doubled-down on a strap-leather style that mixes tight, plunging rush plays with tremendous “Student Body” sweeps to the outside, and crafty passes of the sort Cole Ruble was often too busy scoring rush-TDs to bother throwing. It’s not unlike Red Blaik and Vince Lombardi’s offense at Army West Point, except that Seckman’s is run by 21st century athletes who do not stop and start brawling after gaining 5 yards.

Strangely enough, the underdog Jaguars might have more success controlling the ball against Valle U’s point-scoring barrage this August, at least if Valle’s OL/DL corps has shrunk to the degree that summer’s online rosters would indicate.

Of course, according to Valle U. coach Dex R. Stacky Judd Naeger, they all weigh 125 lbs. and are too short to ride Thunder River. PREDICTION: VALLE U. 35, ACTUAL HIGH SCHOOL TEAM 21

Sullivan Eagles at Northwest Lions

Northwest opens up against a Class 4 State Semifinalist which graduated less than 10 kids, and almost no linemen, from last year’s team. That makes Sullivan a very bad draw for the laboring Lions…or anyone SHS happens to come across for that matter. PREDICTION: SULLIVAN 52, NORTHWEST 7

Fredericktown Blackcats at Jefferson Blue Jays

Jefferson’s solid chance to win Friday’s battle of inexperience-vs-inexperience is explained at the tail end of JHS’s I-55 Conference Preview scroll. But a slow start for the Blue Jays’ offense is all but guaranteed, so they won’t be going 1-0 via a shoot-out. PREDICTION: BLUE JAYS 14, FREDERICKTOWN 13

DuBourg Cavaliers at DeSoto Dragons

Bishop DuBourg has filled out its front line with a few more burly kids in 2023, giving the Cavaliers’ nifty RBs a chance and pleasing coaches like Russ Schmidt who do not believe in “thrash-for-cash” games as part of High School seasons. Still, it would be difficult for DuBourg to go on the road and defeat a Class 4 program that’s finally on the right track, with a lineup growing in number. PREDICTION: DRAGONS 34, DUBOURG 0