Webster Groves 42, Northwest 35
Sports offer a way for people to clap back at Father Time. Not by playing Jai’alai until we’re 90 (seems dangerous) but by praying for the pelota to arrive in whatever sport we’re cheering a team in. Each summer, it feels like the next Friday Night Lights season just WON’T EVER GET HERE. The passing of time can cause human beings to feel melancholy, morose, or even Midlife Critical. Dammit, though, what a feeling to know time’s inexorable tick means that the football year ALWAYS comes back again.
A revival team’s “growing pains” can produce a paradox of the same kind. We wish for a lineup’s breakthroughs to come in the shining sun of victory, with the struggling QB throwing a long touchdown to secure the W, like at Florida State on Saturday, or a previously poor defense grabbing a fumble-and-return to change a loss into a win, like the Bayless Bronchos at Crystal City last weekend…though The Geek was wishing for Crystal City to win the latter game. Often, a High School program’s actual watershed comes in defeat, such as when CCHS finally looked like a lively underdog vs Kelly in a tight 2021 loss that MSHSAA’s community shrugged at. Northwest had its second “heartbreaking” loss in a row to WGHS on Friday, but it ain’t a heartbreaker. Northwest desperately needed a turn-around on offense in ’24, and while it comes at the expense of a 2-2 record, IT’S HAPPENING!
It comes at the expense of a crisis for Cedar Hill’s defense, too, but no one said making progress is cheap. Friday’s bummer was that the Varsity Lions, having just handed Brody Kube his first shaky passing-game performance of 2024 for Seckman, could not stop Webster’s passing attack following a tight opening 12:00. The next 2 quarters of action became the Will Travers show, as the Statesmen caught all but 3 of Travers’ 27 throws to manufacture a “Pat Mahomes against Carolina” stat line of 24-27-5-0. It offends pigskin’s practical logic and morals that Northwest would be caught with so many WRs open following a scrum in which Seckman’s play-action fakes did way more to freeze Cedar Hill’s linebackers than Webster Groves’ puny run-game could ever be responsible for. Webster Groves rushed for less than 4 yards-per-carry again, but Travers’ arm couldn’t be contained until late in the 2nd half.
That’s when Cedar Hill’s offense – for the first time all season – growled like a Lion. Northwest produced 29 points and nearly 300 yards-gained in a frantic final 13 minutes of play, finally giving sophomore Cohenn Stark a real turn at QB, and turning a potential Turbo Clock scenario into a scary situation for the Statesmen. When the visitors triple-teamed Wes Knuckles out of desperation, starting QB Cooper Viehland found open receiver Devin Washington for a 60-yard touchdown that gave Northwest one rowdy attempt at a kick-recovery and Hail Mary deadlock at 42-42. Cedar Hill’s pep squad headline? “NHS beats WGHS, 35 to 42.”
Coach Gerling will probably say what’s expected of him, and ask the Northwest Lions to try to play a complete game in Week 5, with “the offense and defense both executing well.” What the HC won’t say out loud is that he knows the circumstances of being down by several TDs are what spurred Northwest’s sudden success with the ball in Friday’s final frame, both from a players’ and a coach’s point of view. Northwest coaches did not expect to have to score 43+ points to defeat Webster Groves, and likely had no grand plan drawn-up to come back with 4 touchdowns-scored in 13:00. We can tell ourselves that Cedar Hill’s late-game defensive stops were due to an inspired defense realizing that its offense has something to offer, and that there is hope for a winning season after all. We won’t know for sure until Northwest makes Parkway South’s quarterback look like somebody other than Pat Mahomes on Friday.
Hillsboro 35, North County 14
The Geek scores another “accidental” good prediction, getting the outcome of Hawks-Raiders correct while missing the real story 100%. Hillsboro did not flourish in hot conditions, in fact, the Hawks struggled to keep up with Brian Jones’ Buccaneers until it rained, and lightning delayed the contest for an hour. North County has a beautiful new “backspin” kickoff to the opposing 30-yard line, and produced a fumble-and-recovery with the gambit before taking a surprise 14-7 lead into the halftime break. Payton Brown’s offense claims another cacophony of credits for dominating the bout’s latter 24:00, and helping to outscore NCHS in the 2nd half until the scoreboard nearly turned out like TGG said it would. But it’s that Raiders goose-egg in the last 2 quarters that catches the eye.
We’ve spent the first chunk of the season praising Leon Hall’s offense, which came up big against tough opponents in Week 1 and Week 2. Now it’s time to laud Hillsboro’s new defense, which corralled an up-and-coming offense from North County (sophomore Noah Lashley is TERROR on the outside) and gave Brown all the turns that he needed in comfortable field position on Friday. It’s eluded Mississippi Magazine until now that Hillsboro’s changed style of offense benefits from MORE short-timed turns and a 3-hour circus. Hillsboro’s power teams of the 2010s and early 2020s did not need many possessions to take over a football game. Hawks rushers didn’t even want them! They wanted to play in a 2-hour scrum (or 1:45:00 when possible), most of which was expended watching Hillsboro’s best rushers go up the middle for 5 and 6 yards at a time. Opposing teams feared Hillsboro’s ball control most of all, but they knew that they couldn’t try anything fancy with RBs like “Patterson,” “Brown,” and “Keller” always threatening to take a run to the house. 2024’s HHS Hawks would be glad to stay on-field until midnight, like they did Friday.
Hillsboro ’24 tries lots of running plays that don’t go anywhere, and Brown (the senior QB) throws plenty of incomplete passes too. That’s not necessarily bad. Bill Sucharski has crafted a totally different animal out of an old Blue & White beast, and it’s something that many opposing teams may not be preparing for in the right way. Your defense can whoop and holler and celebrate tackles-for-loss against Leon Hall now, perhaps lulling teams into thinking Hillsboro isn’t as dangerous as it used to be. It doesn’t matter when an offense led by an All-State arm is capable of at least one explosive play on every 5-10 snaps, putting the opponent’s defense on another kind of knife’s edge, and pressuring its QB to take chances.
Brown himself is facing minimal pressure to score on every possession thanks to a Hawk defense that’s allowing fewer points than ever, a blessing that not every elite QB gets to have.
Festus 56, DeSoto 6
Festus High finds a way to make a statement in its second straight “cupcake” outing of September, getting off to a roaring start against DeSoto’s improved Varsity Dragons, and not allowing Russ Schmidt’s team to hang around for a half as it did against North County the previous Friday. QB Essien Smith is working on piling-up the 25,862 rush yards that The Geek predicted for his senior campaign. However, Smith will need to be sharp through the air against Hillsboro this Friday, given that the Tigers have developed less of a dynamic “rotation” passing game in 2024 than in 2022-23. Coach Ofodile’s young project Parker Perry had a bad night against DeSoto (at least for a kid winning by 50 points), casting doubts on how many times he’ll see the gridiron at Leon Hall.
Confluence 27, Crystal City 16
Well, it’s happened. Crystal City has gone into a bona-fide slump again, going 0-2 in 2 weeks on the home field where nary an opponent had won in the months of November ’22 through August of 2024. Last week, the Hornets were responsible for fumbling-away a lead against Bayless High. On Friday, it was the Sunken Place’s coaches who blew the shot, taking the CCHS offense out of what had been working, and calling exceptionally risky plays at the worst times, almost as if they were calling a practice, and not a game.
CCHS coaches also gave up while within striking distance of a comeback with 1:00 to go, a party foul that angered The Gridiron Geek and may have hurt the morale at 1-3 Crystal City further. CCHS’ special teams had just made a play to give Bradley’s Farm the bean inside the opposing 30, ONE Nolan Eisenbeis TD pass and ONE more special teams play away from a potentially game-saving rally. Adam Sims claiming to be booked-up on the history of Crystal City football is great, but he should probably get some footage of Crystal City’s team from the past 3 years, and see whether they ever quit with a 10-or-so point deficit late in a game. (Hint: No they didn’t.) It’s almost as if Sims wanted to “protect” just an 11-point loss against Class 4. Northwest didn’t have nearly the field position as Crystal City did when down by 9+ points at the end of Friday’s bout, but NHS tried to win – in thrilling style – instead of handing-off and trudging off the field.
The bright side is that Crystal City is still standing #3 in a 9-up Class 1 District, as the division goes through the syndrome that MAC Standings go through early in each college year when the conference is playing the Power-5. Losing to Class 4 in the regular season doesn’t hurt a Class 1 program’s standing that badly, and hosting a Week 11 quarterfinal is still a goal in sight. There’s a lot more weeks ahead for CCHS to recover from this slump as opposed to the Weeks 7-9 slump of 2023, and just think of how that turned out. We simply hope that Crystal City scouts ITSELF as much as its scouts Gateway Tech going into Week 5.
Windsor 34, Clayton 32
Elevator…WHA? Windsor fares poorly and nearly blows its Homecoming Game (this happens when you schedule them at weird times of the year, people!!!) against one of the worst Large School programs of STL in the 2020s. It’s hard to tell if WHS has done enough to stay ahead of Herky in Week 5’s Power Poll.
St. Vincent 47, Herculaneum 7
Windsor has done enough to stay ahead of Herky in the Power Poll. Still, this is a brighter moment for Herculaneum football than some folks may realize, given that the Blackcats are much healthier than last year’s incarnation just as the schedule turns away from Class 1’s newest Show-Me Bowl favorites. There’s hope for HHS to get back into the W column right away and start building momentum again. Dunklin’s first challenge is to handle a hostile setting at Cuba, and score enough times to smoke the Cigars in Week 5.
Senatobia 54, St. Pius 0
St. Pius tried for a miracle 4th-down conversion on its own 20-yard line early in the Senatobia loss, which was like Frank Ray confessing that he doesn’t think his Lancers can beat any champions yet, and wanted them to embark on 2024’s long trips as a learning experience. Still, the Warriors’ blow-out helps to establish that Mississippi isn’t nearly as bad as Illinois in football. Now, if they can only learn how to use the internet!
Eureka 27, Fox 0
From one injury scenario to another. Jude Pribish returned and had a strong night running the rock for Fox High against Eureka, but the offense was hampered by missing Cam Underwood at QB. 93.1 is based in Perryville, which means that we may not hear a coach’s update on Fox’s starting-11 woes for a while.
Jefferson 41, Cuba 14
It must be hard to share a Game Ball after you ran 6 times harder than anybody. Jefferson’s dual-threat QB Cooper Frisk outshined his backfield with room to spare in Week 4, galloping for 144 yards on the ground to produce more than half of JHS’s rush yards against the 2-2 “Cigars” of Cuba, who were also lit up (get it?) with a long-bomb TD while (of course) trying a couple of dozen long bombs of their own. Frisk will go in automated MaxPreps recaps and elsewhere as the only star of Friday’s victory at Blue Jay Way.
But did we not warn R-7 to watch out for Landon Weiss this year? Jefferson’s version of “Honey Badger” was all over the place again, streaking downfield with turnovers and netting 92 yards on punt returns. He’s the kind of Swiss Army Knife that Matt Atley’s program just adores having around, and something tells us that Mr. Weiss will weigh heavily in Jefferson’s plans on defense vs wide-open Bayless and Perryville.
Photo Credit: Jerrianne Wallace, JHS
Seckman 46, Mehlville 8
That’s 4 games for Seckman’s defense without a significant TD allowed. We’ve posed this question on Mississippi Magazine before (first time in the Facebook Group), but where are those Imperial ticket-buyers who were still saying HC Nick Baer was a bad Varsity coach, right up through the Jaguars’ first wave of success with Cole Ruble? If they’re around, 2024’s defense has sewn their mouths shut once again.
Grandview 46, Principia 23 (Saturday)
The Geek’s not just getting it wrong this year, he’s mixing up the weather on Fridays and Saturdays. It was Grandview which had to play Principia’s quirky contest on a 90-degree afternoon, and that’s no bueno for a power team that utilizes an Iron Man starting lineup. Thankfully, the game-day cardio of starting GHS tailback Wyatt Keim could put an MMA fighter’s to shame.
Keim braved the hot conditions to score an amazing 5 touchdowns for the Birds of Prey, putting a road lineup on his back as Principia scored no TDs in an improved 2nd half. The weird part of Grandview’s slate is over, but they’ll be traveling until 10/11.