Windsor 7, Herculaneum 6

Herky Blackcats head coach Blane Boss is Mississippi Magazine’s unofficial “Coach Of The Week” for Week 1 after nearly leading HHS to a crazy upset of Windsor High. Herculaneum is outmanned, outgunned, and inexperienced in 2023, but you wouldn’t have known it from the opening half in Imperial. HHS stymied Windsor’s senior-studded lineup in spite of producing less than 100 yards of offense in its own right. WHS had to turn to A.J. Patrick as the Owls’  “Deebo Samuel”-style rusher just to crack 200 yards themselves, as the Blackcats also held the Owls to just 2 complete passes on 7 attempts.

Windsor HC Jeff Funston was the usual megaphone of good vibes after the Week 1 squeaker. Maybe too many good vibes. Funston told Regional Radio that the 7-6 victory was the payoff for seasons of blood, sweat, and tears in rebuilding the Albino Birds, and that all his lessons are now sinking in.

Uhh, really? Windsor’s best-chance-at-a-revival roster in 10+ years just scored exactly one TD against a greener-than-grass lineup from a school less than half of WHS’s size. If a 7-6 win over a team Hillsboro, Festus, or North County would have beaten 48-0 is really the sweet payday for everything Windsor has worked for to this point, we’d hate to see the bad days.

Players are fans too. That’s what Festus CEO A.J. Ofodile figured out before Friday night, when he gave the Varsity Tigers a canny pep-talk about washing their ears clean of “Class 4 vs Class 3” stuff, and expecting St. Genevieve to be the solid club that it is. Funston probably told the Owls the same thing about Herculaneum, and that’s fine, but he has to know that the Windsor student-athletes expected better things on offense against a rebuilding team. Funston missed an opportunity to praise Windsor’s defense on stand-alone terms, then warn his talented players that 7 points is not going to yank the crank against all but the humblest of conference opponents this year.

Seckman High School 34, Valle University 20

As Michael Scott said on “The Office,” well, well, well. How the turn-tables.

The Jefferson County Leader may have had Hillsboro in its crosshairs (wrong again, Zod!) when writing about the “massive talent drain” that was supposed to depress county pigskin in 2023. But it truly must have been the Seckman Jaguars that the JCL was thinking of most of all. Not even QB Cole Ruble’s record-breaking ’22 season could get Seckman High over the hump against Marquette, or Valle U. for that matter. How could the Jaguars be expected to do anything special when Ruble is far from the team’s only missing piece?

To call Friday’s win “special” would be putting it down. The Jaguars shocked Valle U. from the start, smashing downhill with a throwback attack which produced nearly 200 rush yards in the 1st half. Seckman’s big defense exposed the Warriors for having relied too much on their senior blockers from last campaign, notching 4 sacks and forcing a pair of lost fumbles. The very deceptive final score was birthed from a 34-0 destruction at halftime.

It was 100% irony to watch Valle University scoring trash-time points in the 4th quarter, consoling a loss with 1st string mop-up drives against backups. That’s the scenario that about 90% of Valle U’s opponents found themselves in over the last 10 years. Seckman HC Nick Baer might have been pinching his arm before calling for JV substitutions in the final moments, but the Jaguars only needed some TOP to salt things away in Quarter 3.

SHS routing Valle U. is comparable to Hillsboro finally starting to beat Class 5 and Class 6 teams again in 2021. You can’t take a landmark, historic scrum and honor it by breaking it down into nuts-and-bolts. Yet there can’t be any avoiding a conversation about Valle’s poor blocking and average defense on Friday. Coach Dex R. Stacky may’ve drawn a losing hand for the first time.

Are there any Nick Baer haters left in Imperial? Man, it sure seems like a hard gig to pursue these days. Those who were ready to pounce on the debated HC as soon as last season’s amazing senior class graduated received a scoreboard education in Week 1. But in truth the Seckman Jaguars ran more of a “Southern Mississippi under Larry Fedora” offense against Valle U. than the “1940s” types of formations seen at the FHS Jamboree. Baer trusted his offensive line to block Valle’s front-7 so much that SHS put receivers on the edge just to make the battle at the LOS more of an easy win for the Jags.

Seckman’s “Red Blaik” rushing plays from last weekend could still come in handy this fall, though. Just ask St. Pius, which used a Wishbone attack to beat not one, but a pair of modern-day football teams by a convincing final score in Week 1. More about SPX’s rainy triumph to come on scroll.

Festus 38, St. Genevieve 7

Good news first. It looks like Festus head coach A.J. Ofodile might just have the lineup he was dreaming about when taking the FHS job in 2020. Every facet of what Ofodile wants to build was on display in the Tigers’ surprise blow-out of St. Genevieve. RB Hayden Bates, whose season debut included electrifying TDs and fancy new moves, is leading a corps of tailbacks with more home-run hitters than any Festus roster in 10 years. Landen Yates’ incredible punt-return TD, and 2 key interceptions for the Festus secondary, showed that the Lollipop Guild has become a force to be dealt with. The FHS defense looked night-and-day different from 2022, as the Tigers become deeper, older, more physical, and better poised in the trenches.

What’s most exciting is that FHS’s 2 quarterbacks are starting to GET IT. Short throws and runs-after-catch are the sauce for a team with 4 excellent running backs and special-teams standouts at wide receiver. If Smith and Cunningham punish opponents with as many RAC yards as they should, there’s very little chance of a blue-collar defense stopping the Tigers this season. Hayden Bates’ first run-after-catch TD against St. Genevieve was thrown short of the sticks on a 4th-and-long play, which violates the John Madden Rule of not throwing “a 9 yard pass when there’s 10 yards to go.” However, the Black & Gold’s pair of QBs have found out that if #10 and a patch of green grass in front of him are in sight, then a dink to the Tigers’ explosive senior rusher is a better bet than any kind of long jump-ball.

But as players must avoid a Trap Game, bloggers should avoid the Week 1 trap of determining a team’s power from one final score. Festus beat Vashon by 96 points to begin the 2017 season and got excited, before realizing the Wolverines were going to lose to everyone by a bundle that year. Friday’s visiting Dragons are not made to move the football in hot weather, when no running back who gets “hot” can be leaned on due to the literal heat that’s draining every starter in the game. The Geek thinks St. Genevieve is a formidable, athletic squad again in 2023, but MSHSAA pundits won’t be too surprised if the Dragons take a step back on offense without QB Aiden Boyer. Because of the broiling conditions that kept an Iron Man team from playing its best game against FHS, we can’t say the Midmeadow Lane defense has stamped its anticipated revival with a statement victory just yet.

What’s not up for debate is that the St. Genevieve defense is a tough nut to crack. 10 of 11 starters have returned to a defense that frustrated Festus, putrefied Potosi, and gave up no meaningful touchdowns until Round 3 of the postseason. Yes, the ’22 Dragons were embarrassed by Park Hills Central and an all-time-great Valle U. lineup, but as Coach O pointed out in his postgame interview, they’ve sure been thumping the Tigers. Festus tacklers may not get tons much more credit for holding the Dragons to 7 points this year versus giving up last August’s 50-spot to an ace QB. But an offense that technically scored less TDs than in the last go ’round against St. Gen has made strides of its own, and whipped an even better defense this time.

Festus R-6 hasn’t conquered the town of St. Genevieve yet. The boys will take on the old river ‘hood’s “Final Boss” in Week 2, playing in front of a Valle University crowd whose mood could be as indignant as the lady in Boris Yeltsin’s iconic butt-pinch photo. Does the Black & Gold have improved odds to upset Valle U. this September? You bet. It’s just going to be a thousand times harder to do than this weekend’s scores might make it seem.

Crystal City 38, Chaffee 7

We’re about to compare St. Pius ’23 to Herculaneum’s title teams of yore in our Lancers-Greyhounds (and friends) recap. Crystal City’s a good excuse to bring up the old ‘Cats in Week 1 also, because a “38-7” score against a team that a younger lineup blew away by 40+ last August could give some far-off observers second thoughts about ranking the Hornets. Chaffee even scored first by adding a surprise Double-Wing formation to the Red Devils’ sack of simple NFL-style runs and passes, echoing a 1996 Festus-Herculaneum game in which the Tigers scored right away on a tricky kick return, but the Blackcat blow-out that both schools expected began right after that.

The Gridiron Geek can recall kickoffs from the 1990s in which Herky’s fans sat watching HHS beat Flat River and Fredericktown by dull scores like 22-0, wondering how such slow-paced boredom could translate into a state playoff bid Dunklin R-5 craved. (The Blackcats went to a pair of Class 3 Show-Me Bowls in 1991 and 1995.) Crystal City’s offense chews up so much of the clock while on the move that the Hornets are their own worst enemies in racking-up a big point total. It’s great that the blossoming CCHS offense finally has the steady ball-control element that head coach Dan Fox wants. Selfishly speaking, a season of 22-0 victories would help turn the media’s focus on the Sunken Place defense, where TGG thinks it ought to be.

Chaffee did expose one key weakness in the Hornets with that first TD, an angle that’s sure to come up on Mississippi Magazine again as big, strong teams like Gateway Tech and Russellville take on Crystal City. The Geek’s main mistake in this year’s CCHS preview was to assume that Fox would load-up with as much size as he could organize on the front lines for ’23, probably starting 260 lb. Matt Bins alongside names like Seth Senter and Luke Holdinghausen to minimize his lineup’s only drawback. Bins’ stat line from 2022 was very thin, but with 2 linemen having transferred away to Florida Atlantic St. Pius X this season, the Magazine expected that all of Crystal City’s big seniors would combine on the line for one last ride. Yet Caden Raftery has replaced Jacob Loveless on the defensive line, and Crystal appears to be keeping Bins in the “bin” for package duty in ’23, utilizing more freshmen on the OL and edge rushers on the DL. Fox apparently believes that CCHS’s speed will overcome all problems.

Maybe he’s right. Shotgun-spread teams are going to be toast against Crystal City’s speedsters at DB, which means that CCHS opponents have to get boring or get behind. St. Pius X won its Jamboree easily, and could march up and down the field against Fox’s starting DL with its Wishbone plays, tasking CCHS to either force turnovers, or lose. But what happened when St. Pius opened things up in its scrimmage with the Hornets? Crystal City’s defense forced turnovers on 3 straight plays, at least 2 of which would have been defensive scores if the rules allowed for it. Only the Jamboree’s quirks allowed St. Pius to avoid tying CCHS’s defense in points, 2 TDs to 2.

Crystal City also utilized a bold, new, CRAZY tactic against Chaffee High in Week 1. Chaffee’s first possession began on the 50-yard line (of course) and was stopped on 3 downs by CCHS over and over again, but the Red Devils used about 62 plays to eke their way to the Red Zone, falling over the pylons on 4th down. But on the Hornets’ next kickoff, Fox asked his kicker to try a special move called kicking the football hard, knowing the Hornet Pep Squad would be shocked at watching a CCHS player do something that has never been tried at the Sunken Place before. Lo and behold, kicking the football hard actually paid off, as Chaffee had 75 yards to go on its next turn, and petered out about halfway through. CCHS took a big lead right after that.

Just think – Week 2 through Week 9’s opponents have been getting ready to try to beat the Crystal City Hornets on a 50-yard field. Won’t they get a surprise to learn that Coach Fox is thinking about having CCHS try kicking the football hard more often, making them start from their own half of the field on offense like every other football team in world history has had to do.

It keeps getting worse for the Sunken Place’s rivals in 2023.

Grandview 34, Skyline 14

The Geek missed an exact-score prediction for Grandview vs Herculaneum in 2021 when GHS’s kicker just had to be the bad guy and make all 5 of his XP attempts. Regional Radio reported Grandview’s win over Skyline as “34-13,” making us think it was another single-point miss, but then the GHS coaches were kindly enough to correct Week 1’s final score as 34-14. BULL’S EYE!

Hillsboro 63, Sikeston 14

The Magazine has been predicting Hillsboro’s margins of victory okay, but the Hawks just keep putting up prodigious point-totals that blow out our Friday night forecasts. TGG may be guilty of thinking about the old Hillsboro Hawks, who protected leads with 9:00 drives, not this fall’s dynamic offense built around the arm and legs of QB Preston Brown.

The Geek is trying to locate some footage or at least a Box Score to find out how often Hillsboro put the bean in the air against Sikeston. We suspect HHS’s playbook will keep expanding the same way that its scores do.

St. Pius X 24, Clayton Greyhounds & Friends 10

In hindsight, SPX’s game on Saturday may have been the toughest W for Jefferson County in earning its fantastic 9-1 mark in Week 1’s out-of-conference scrums. What had looked on the offseason schedule like a powerhouse-meets-patsy game between Clayton High and visiting St. Pius devolved into an unfair mess for St. Pius X when Brentwood’s remaining players joined Clayton’s team in July. Brentwood was the team that defeated the Lancers in Week 1 of last season. Sure, the Clayton Greyhounds have been in a downward spiral since The Geek began covering Gateway City pigskin. Clayton went just 2-8 last year. But mixing a Class 4 program’s numbers with a ranked Class 1 team from ’22 is another deal. St. Pius X was going up vs tough odds in a bout that was postponed due to weather twice. Imagine if Mizzou lost to Tennessee 26-16 to launch an SEC campaign, and then the following year, had to go up against a select team of Tennessee’s and another college team’s best combined players in a road game.

Hooray! St. Pius the Tenth gave us that 9th victory on Saturday after all, rushing for close to 400 yards in the rain and outscoring Clayton + Brentwood 17-0 in the latter half with a Wishbone style that made Herky’s alumni start reminiscing in the stands. Indeed, the Greyhounds/Pioneers looked just like a Herculaneum playoff victim from 1995 or so, barely touching the football after the first half, and breaking down in front of an 11-man blocking and rushing attack. QB James Smith will need to become a bigger part of the ground game if coach Frank Ray intends to use the Wishbone all the time. But it made a perfect weapon for a wet game against a mysterious opponent.

Ray is not breaking The Geek’s heart by putting in an old-school power playbook. The Wishbone is quite different from Jefferson’s offense, a more wide-open system invented by Coach Paul Johnson 25 years ago. JHS’s conservative running plays are the calm before the storm. By running the Wishbone, SPX doesn’t want storms. It wants to be the Roman Army, inexorably pushing down the field while the opposing D goes mad.

St. Pius always holds serve against weak teams and runs into trouble later on. This season, though, Ray’s throwback gambit on offense could help the Lancers prevail against favorites on the schedule…but it could risk some problems against the underdogs. If SPX takes on St. Vincent or Valle University and wins by controlling the ball with the Wishbone, Ray will be carried off joyfully by over a dozen Varsity Lancers. This weekend’s victory was not a performance of that caliber, as Ray’s inexperienced group fumbled away several TD drives, made pitiful game-management errors, and relied on Clayton/Brentwood being even more self-destructive to seal a Lancers comeback, which could have died after draining the clock on itself.

Ray’s got to know that a Wishbone team can gain 500 yards, fumble twice in the wrong spots, and lose to a underdog opponent that happens to spring 4 long TDs. If that occurs in the coach’s debut season at Hill Valley, it will be a matter of time before the boosters ask what happened to the old playbook.

Fox 42, Mehlville 7

Arnold gets the heartening Week 1 win that we thought the Fox Warriors would against Mehlville, as Cameron Underwood’s backfield averages over 10 yards-per-carry. Remember, when The Geek writes that Jefferson has the county’s “best” or “purest” triple-option style, the coaches from Fox High School daydream about wringing TGG’s neck just like a chicken’s.

Jefferson 28, Fredericktown 6

TGG is thrilled to see the Jefferson Blue Jays debut with 4 touchdowns in the opening half against Fredericktown, putting to rest any idea that JHS’s offense would be hapless without its old offensive line.

With regret, only people at the game got to be very thrilled about it. Regional Radio had an almost perfect Week 1, capturing the Tigers-Dragons grudge match in a fun broadcast on KJFF while Farmington vs North County gave no home-office announcers the chance to cheer for either “home team.” JHS and Fredericktown’s scrum on J-98 was another story, as 2 obvious FHS alumni sat sadly complaining about Jefferson’s win for over 90 minutes. The Geek would attest that it’s possible to root for Tri-City teams (or against Tri-City teams) and still be a fair journalist, but that point’s been lost on J-98.

It reminds us that the DeSoto Dragons have hired themselves a pretty darn good football coach (“pretty damn good” in the words of Seckman HC Nick Baer after pasting Valle U. on Friday) and that we could all stand to listen to him more often. Coach Russ Schmidt’s #1 team principle (other than SIT IN FRONT OF THE CLASSROOM and ANYONE WHO BULLIES A STUDENT IS KICKED OFF THIS TEAM TOMORROW) is that it’s never a good idea for a journalist, coach, player, or volunteer to be involved in a football game and also be a fan. Coaches, players, and journalists are welcome to be football fans in their spare time, but they cannot act as if they are fans while being involved. When coach Woody Hayes punched an opposing defensive back for intercepting a pass, he was acting like a very rowdy fan. If Woody Hayes had behaved as a coach, and said “Good play son, I wish my player would have made it,” then his Big Ten career wouldn’t have been over on the spot.

Regional Radio’s not going to slug anyone over a Jefferson win any time soon. Friday’s announcers might well have been writing sad Haikus on their scratch pads, though, while turning J-98’s game into a funeral just because Fredericktown didn’t win. The Geek will make sure to laud Regional Radio’s announcers who behave as real announcers do, and call out those who violate Schmidt Rule #1 and act like fans, as the ’23 season goes on.

DeSoto 35, DuBourg 34 (OT)

Schmidt’s first victory for Joachim Junction came far, far harder than a lot of DeSoto’s athletes probably thought that it would, after having beaten a badly undersized Bishop DuBourg team 12 months ago. HUDL updates told us in advance that DuBourg’s roster was bigger and better populated this fall, resulting in the Cavaliers making a close game that helped DHS grow.

Sullivan 49, Northwest 3

Northwest’s lone field goal makes the Lions’ defeat look as puny as Navy’s 45-3 loss to Notre Dame. But the underdogs actually pierced Sullivan, a clear Show-Me Bowl contender which went to the Class 4 semifinals last autumn, with that very same FG-scoring drive in Quarter 1.

One small (in)step for a kicker, one giant leap for Northwest pigskin.