Seckman 34, Fox 7

“It was deja-vu all over again,” wrote the country sportswriter. Seckman’s 34-7 triumph over Fox on Friday night felt so familiar, it was almost as if the Jaguars had whipped the Warriors in essentially the same contest last season, or something. And they did! In 2023 and 2024’s SHS-vs-FHS kickoffs alike, Arnold’s kids learned the same lesson NFL teams do when their offense stops scoring in midgame, and the opponent has achieved a run-pass balance to go with a tough stalemate at the line of scrimmage. It doesn’t matter how “defense-oriented” Fox Warrior pigskin may be when its patented option-plays go icy. An opposing team with a balanced attack will always find a way to pierce your stubborn defense in that scenario, especially with endless turns (and punt returns) to help.

Of course, we’d be lax not to report that Seckman is more than just “balanced” on offense in 2024. As of Friday night, the Jaguars have a fresh star performer at a position that just seems charmed when it comes to Imperial’s fall gridiron. Seckman QB Brody Kube was absolutely perfect through the air, with a “Pat Mahomes in the 1st Quarter” stat line of 9-of-9 and 2 touchdown passes, one of a few Jeff County quarterbacks to have turned up with truly amazing performances this weekend. Fox tacklers limited the indomitable SHS rushing offense to just 5.1 YPC, but that didn’t matter to a QB with accuracy like Kube’s.

Seckman is a heavy favorite to rack-up 20 straight regular-season wins as of next week and its traditional, but not very well-matched Suburban League scrum vs Northwest-CH. That’s as impressive as Hillsboro’s active win streak against public schools. The cynic would gripe that Imperial still hasn’t had a breakthrough campaign in the postseason yet, though it would be a mistake to view Jaguars’ defeats in the playoffs as unrelated to Seckman High’s summer campaign, and the rest of its scheduled ’24 season.

SHS has been hit by unlucky draws ever since Cole Ruble became a name-brand, and since the Jags’ school enrollment pushed them up into the highest division. You shouldn’t have to beat SLUH, Marquette, and then either Jackson or CBC in a row to win a District. MSHSAA Districts aren’t supposed to work that way. This season, the path to a #1 or #2 seed, and potential Seckman home games right through November, seems a little less steep if only the Jaguars hold serve and maintain that winning streak a while longer. The Jackson Indians began the year with a belly-flop against Cardinal Ritter, looking far inferior to Hillsboro and Republic’s relatively small-campus efforts vs the Lions.

Did we say “home games?” Yes, it’s got to be another on-field motivator for Seckman to get its field back (and boy, that logo looks sharp enough to be seen from the Hubble) and better than ever, before any of July’s grim forecasts had predicted it might come, and just as 2024’s Suburban League slate begins. The Geek says they should let each Suburban League “division” (conference) name itself something all its own (Praise God, not the “Quad County Conference”) so that the champs can win a prize that’s all their own, not regionally shared with Suburban League Green, Yellow, Blue, and Fire-Engine Red.

Seckman’s setting enough regular-season records to be called the “Peyton Manning” of Jefferson County. It’s gotta be worth more than a templated trophy and a color-code.

SLUH 24, Hillsboro 17

We established during the Jaxin Patterson years that kids of the Dirty Dozen love proving The Geek wrong, and Hillsboro ’24 became the newest team to do so on Friday night.

Focus, schmocus! The Hillsboro Hawks proved on Friday that (on top of everything else HHS does right) its coaches and its lineup know how to walk and chew gum at the same time. Hillsboro went into SLUH on a mission despite dealing with a controversy all week, and stymied the St, Louis U. High ground attack, limiting the Hawks’ marquee hosts to merely 120-or-so total yards on handoffs. The score was 17-17 with under 2:00 to go.

Mississippi Magazine can’t say that Hillsboro’s defense stopped an elite offense for 3 quarters. For one thing, SLUH ’24 is sporting a 100% improvised lineup with the ball that is led by QB Kyren Eleby, a novelty athlete of the variety that you might find going viral on YouTube. Eleby appears to be about 6’2″ tall and around 300 pounds, as SLUH hands the quarterback spot to a hulking kid who was almost certainly a lineman before coaches discovered he could zip the bean around like a Varsity starter. Eleby led the Junior Billikens on a winning drive that took longer than a cattle drive, draining the Game Clock on unlucky Hillsboro and setting up that “YouTube” moment for Eleby to score a winning TD, on a QUARTERBACK RUN from the 5-yard line. There was an earthquake. The national guard was called toward a seismic disruption in St. Louis. Lab physicists recorded a very brief, but noticeable fracture in the space-time continuum.

We can’t show it to you. Eleby’s winning run crashed YouTube too.

However, TGG comes away more impressed than ever with Hillsboro’s offense, which overcame bumps-and-bruises on the offensive line (already a new group) to mint another comeback effort, this one actually paying off with a tied score against C6’s big-shots with no thunderstorm to call a halt to it first. A lagging first half offense seemed to be inspired by the great tackling and characteristic effort of Blue & White’s defense and special teams, going on a championship-level drive to deadlock SLUH in the late stages.

SLUH’s broadcast announcers on Friday night (both Junior Billikens alumni in their 20s) said in the 3rd quarter that Hillsboro could not hope to mount a comeback via passing the ball, and that the Hawks would have to rely on their running backs. The reason the SLUH alumni said that was because they were either drunk, or crazy. Preston Brown was Elite with a capital “E” against St. Louis U. High, squeezing every last drop of offense out of every potential drive without putting the ball in harm’s way. Brown raced down the far sideline to push Hillsboro into the Red Zone that last critical time, and bedeviled the Billikens on run-pass options whenever the Hawks needed to move the chains.

In one sense, Leon Hall did not have the start to the season that it wanted. The Varsity Hawks are 0-0-2, or at least 0-1-1, and 3 more difficult bouts await before the schedule grows any easier. But look again, and Hillsboro has had exactly the start that it wanted, proving without a doubt that 2024’s roster is just as much of a state playoff contender as the previous 2. HHS’s matchups against Cardinal Ritter and Lutheran North last season showed that Blue & White’s defense could not be dominated by even the best Gateway City skill players. Week 2 of 2024 showed that Hillsboro High can score touchdowns in MSHSAA’s hardest situations, like versus a Class 6 defensive line that meant business.

Crystal City 42, Louisiana 16

What a difference a few padawans can make! Crystal City’s class of eligible Varsity kids finally grew to about 2 complete strings for the home opener on Friday night of Week 2, as opposed to the dreadful number of 15 or 16 players who were able to dress out in Week 1’s loss at Sikeston. The uptick in quality was noticeable right away, as a far-fresher junior Ricardo Pastrana had his best night ever galloping for the CCHS Hornets. Mississippi Avenue had to sit through another boring first 12:00, but that was about all, as Crystal City exploded for 30+ points in midgame, and came close to producing its first Turbo Clock of 2024 versus a rival that isn’t buying what its new coach has for sale.

Did we say the Dirty Dozen had great QB performances on Friday? Crystal City senior Nolan Eisenbeis reprised his wonderful outing in last year’s Homecoming Game with an immaculate 48:00 against Louisiana High, needing less than 10 drop-backs to produce 174 yards and 2 TD passes. Nolan’s aerial mastery helped Evan Wolfe have his best contest since sparking Crystal’s rally over Herculaneum back in 2022, scoring an incredible 3 times on a pair of long touchdown catches and a 25 yard Pick-6.

Could it be that #12 has become the outstanding dual-threat QB we all thought he could, except as a “bomber”-style passer first, and a rusher second? His number of attempts per-game aren’t a very big sample size with which to tell if the perfection is a fluke, BUT changing the makeup of rivalry games with bombs for TDs is enough “sample” for this reporter. We think CCHS is getting into a groove again, and its QB right along with it.

Park Hills Central 42, Jefferson 24

Jefferson’s padawans probably don’t care to read a recap of this one, since the Blue Jays followed The Geek’s advice to the letter, didn’t burn themselves out in the opening half, and took a fight to the end against Class 3’s defending champion. It didn’t help Jefferson R-7 outplay its prediction, so we’ll just point out that Mississippi Magazine’s Week 2 Friday Night Predictions nailed more than one margin-of-victory on the dot…

Grandview 25, Bayless 6

They tell us that the referees threw so many flags on both teams that Grandview-Bayless turned into Festus vs North County from 2018. That’s probably why it was only “25-8” instead of “38-19” just like it was supposed to be at Winchester Avenue.

Festus 34, Francis Howell Central 14

We didn’t nail the exact score at Francis Howell Central either, but in truth, it stands as the Magazine’s one-and-only accurate pick of the week. Black & Gold’s defense was porous in the opening frame, allowing a 14-0 Spartans advantage before you could say “Ofodile’s defense always starts poorly.” The offense was sloppy again, as the senior QB Essien Smith tossed wild incompletions into the night sky, and R-6’s passing specialist Parker Perry threw an ill-advised Red Zone interception while off on the scramble.

But then came the second 24:00, and we realized that Coach Ofodile had been “Bobby Bowden-ing” his 4-quarter lineup, just like he did in the title campaign of 2020. A fresh FHS starting-11 took the field and stuffed the running plays that had worked for FHC beforehand, and caused pass after pass to fall harmlessly to the turf, thanks to the some strangulating DB coverage. QB Jason Campbell of the Spartans finished 12-of-32. The score stood Florida State 7, NC State 7 Festus 14, Francis Howell Central 14 at halftime, and Florida State 63, NC State 7 Festus 34, Francis Howell Central 14 a time later.

Oh, and something else happened to Festus during a 20-0 half of football. Smith took off running, running, and running some more, having that breakout rushing night that we’ve been waiting for since Essien began shooting through holes like a dart as a sophomore backup. Smith turned a forgettable road trip into a statistic that will make the county TAKE NOTICE, scoring on 2 consecutive 75+ yard runs to produce a 28-14 lead.

Here’s his second home-run rush TD in a row, in which Essien makes a lovely cutback on the same play he took to the power-side to score the previous points. Watch how Smith combines his skill-set of vision, speed, elusiveness, and power (plus a “Hayden Bates” stiff-arm!) to score on a play during which more than 5 free defenders had an angle.

The Geek also thinks Ofodile’s staff is calling plays all wrong, other than the neat trick of giving Smith the same “Student Body” style running play until Francis Howell Central showed that it could stop that (it didn’t). That’s not a complaint that you usually read on Mississippi Magazine, since we understand that real-life pigskin isn’t PlayStation, making it impossible for anyone to play-call their way to a championship to begin with. It doesn’t matter as much as people tend to think that it does. But we’re feeling safe in bringing up Black & Gold’s play-calling this time, since Festus has a nice 2-0 record to go with, and a couple of easier scrums coming up in which the Tigers can call any old plays and win. We’ll still save TGG’s next lecture (a thousand padawans cheer!) for later in Week 3.

Northwest 12, Mehlville 7

Success is one hard thing to deal with if you’ve never had it. Northwest will add more wins to what could be a healthy total for 2024, and (whoopie!) should no longer be bracketed out of an even matchup in Week 10, should the defense keep rocking.

Fort Zumwalt East 17, St. Pius 6

Okay, so maybe our St. Pius X prediction for Week 2 was pretty accurate too, but there’s no pleasure taken in that whatsoever. (That’s why TGG didn’t bring it up earlier.) St. Pius controlled the ball, the game, and the line-of-scrimmage for most of a noble 2nd half, but lost 2 critical fumbles close to the goal line in the 3rd and 4th quarters. Youth and lack of burly numbers are going to keep St. Pius football out of the win column often against its Murderer’s Row schedule of 2024, but to say the adventure has value to the future of Coach Ray’s newly independent Lancers would be the understatement of the year.

Windsor 40, Affton 6

You’d hope that any Lee Freeman squad could defeat a cupcake by more touchdowns than Lutheran South of Class 3 did last weekend. But even from the Box Score posted at STLToday on Saturday evening (which only includes Affton’s stats), we can see that WHS controlled the heck out of the football, and almost never let the Bananas close to Manna.

Perryville 31, DeSoto 28

Here’s a Week 2 outcome that suffers from “Week 1” syndrome 7 days later, where you can’t gauge whether a hotly-contested game between schools in the same Class was actually good or bad on both programs. DeSoto has no victories over MSHSAA on the season yet, but on the other hand, Perryville is looking pretty good at 2-0, having additionally whipped a Fredericktown squad that embarrassed Herky on Friday.

DeSoto’s skipper Russ Schmidt sounded more positive than usual after a defeat, taking advantage of new coach’s shows on 93.1 FM and Live Stream STL to say he was proud of the Varsity Dragons’ late comeback try. You would imagine that the 1-1 Dragons (oh gosh, TGG sees what he did there. Sorry, husbands! At least they’re not on 93.1 FM) would be encouraged by Week 3’s foe North County losing to an Illinois team last weekend, which does make DeSoto 1-0 in a category Friday’s favorite is 0-1 in.

Fredericktown 14, Herculaneum 0

Are the Herky Blackcats buying what HC Blane Boss is selling these days? They’re not playing like it at 0-2. But there’s whispering that Fredericktown could be about to have itself a watershed season (and so could Windsor, after all) so we’ll hold off on adding more controversy to a summer of discontent. Herky’s got the horses to roar back.