Festus 14, Hillsboro 7
The stage was set. The state runner-up Hillsboro Hawks had endured a grudging defensive war with the crosstown rival Festus Tigers, set in the rainy refuse of yet another Gulf hurricane, only to look up with 2:00 to go and realize the Football Gods had parted the clouds in their favor. The downpour and the wind were trailing off, with the Yankee flags prominent on St. Pius X’s live feed falling lazily, incredibly to their poles. Friday’s break in the weather came at a perfect time for Hillsboro High’s QB Preston Brown to finally start unleashing some long throws all over the place, and running up the sideline when Festus cornerbacks became too scared of the All-State marksman’s zingers. A roughing-the-passer penalty on FHS helped to place Hillsboro in plus-territory when the Hawks needed it most. Blue & White was poised for yet another comeback on its proud home turf, and to draw within a single point at 14-13 before having to make the suspenseful decision: Take note of the calm and grab 1 point for OT, or go for 2 and the heroic win?
It was no time for The Gridiron Geek to get stark-raving-crazy-(pee)-and-(an apple-cider substance) mad at one of the Highway A Game’s pair of head coaches. But he did.
Hillsboro’s fine skipper Bill Sucharski, much like he did at the end of North County’s playoff victory over the Hawks in 2021, started to cough, gag, and hack on his sunflower seeds. Sucharski called for a series of cautious run plays, followed by Hillsboro time-outs taken, until The Geek thought he must be seeing things. Brown was given chances to open up on 3rd down and made the most of them, finally scampering for what appeared to be a 1st-and-goal with :25 seconds left before a minor penalty moved Hillsboro back 5 yards. The favorites were in perfect straits to score by then, except for a problem – all those running-clock play calls, and the resulting lack of a viable option to run the rock for a winning TD. Now having 0 time-outs left, Hillsboro could not try any more run plays or throw-and-catch plays, right when either would have come in handy. An opposing tackle made short of the 1-yard line would be a game-clock disaster and a waste of opportunities. Hillsboro wasn’t losing, but the clock ran out, and Brown fell to a sack on the final play.
The Geek violated a reporter’s best manners, and was yelling at Sucharski (or, actually, at a TV) in the style of a “Team Uncle” who doesn’t spend a chunk of his football year cheering for both programs:
“But…But…Coach…Okay. There’s this guy. He’s a quarterback. You have heard of him. You can find him right now, in fact he’s right there in your own backfield! Time is RUNNING OUT, Coach! Another handoff? Another timeout? You’re out of them now! He’s an ALL-STATE QB! BOMBS AWAY! Right??? COACH?!”
Why the Hillsboro Hawks did not perform with more urgency until the clock told the tale is an enigma. The 5-0 Festus Tigers probably owe Sucharski a Christmas Card. The Highway A Game keeps ending with one coach out-foxing the other in Quarter 4. This time, it was A.J. Ofodile of R-6 who held on to his nerve.
Ofodile’s team has triumphed over its worst nemesis by the ironic “Hurricane Bowl” score of 14-7, in spite of conditions that weren’t all that chaotic. 2024’s defense simply seems to be made out of iron, a group that has now stonewalled Rolla and Hillsboro on rainy nights, and which can boast of a tall, rangy D-backfield in place of the small-but-shifty “Lollipop Guild” of years past. The Varsity Tigers pressured Preston Brown with relentless wheels all night long, until the celebrated host QB’s number of “hurries,” or forced passes on the run, tallied more than his completions. Hillsboro’s ball-control domination feels like a vanishing memory.
It’s not supposed to be this way after a Week 5, at least not following the 5-week gauntlet (and going into the next month’s minefield of 4 more very tough opponents) on Midmeadow Lane’s toughest schedule in school history. The Festus Tigers are happy, healthy, and ready to lock up a #1 District seed to go with a potential conference title victory this coming Friday, and no one can fault Essien Smith’s offense for only putting 14 points on the board. Smith was clutch in the final 24:00 at Leon Hall, firing a beauty to Jackson Frank on the tilt’s biggest play, before bolting to the 1-yard line to set up Mason Schirmer’s winning 3rd-quarter plunge.
Does the City of Tanglefoot have a Show-Me Bowl contender on its hands? Don’t laugh, but to get the answer, tell us what you would think of Kyler Murray – or Tim Tebow in his prime – on an NFL team with a legendarily good defense like the Purple People Eaters or the Orange Crush. Is that a championship-level combination? There are spectators who would say any QB as obsessed with running as Tebow, or who’s as prone to misadventure as Murray, is never a “Super Bowl” quarterback. He can only ever get lucky and start for a team which happens to be competing in the Super Bowl. But to Mississippi Magazine’s thinking, a dual-threat QB who takes some chances is a GREAT fit for a football team with a crazy-good defense, especially if he takes those chances via bombs far down the field, and protects the football like gold when running with it. Murray can’t defeat Dak Prescott 49-48 in a slugfest, because he’ll have too many pratfalls along the way while the Cowboys scientifically score TDs. But if the score is 14-14? Murray can also make 90-yard plays for 6 points wearing a nonchalant expression on his face, and that’s worth the Sun, the Moon, and the planets all together if you’re always in tight games thanks to a punishing defense. Essien Smith wasn’t always spectacular against Hillsboro on Friday night, but #2 fit the profile of “explosive QB on a defensive team” perfectly, and Black & Gold’s senior QB was responsible with the bean when R-6’s offense sputtered. (“We made some mental mistakes in that game,” a humble Smith told STLToday at close to midnight.) It may be hilarious to think about, but The Geek’s little “formula” is being tested (successfully!) by the ’24 Tigers.
Getting over the hump at Hillsboro gives the Festus Tigers a chance to play for outright conference honors versus North County in Week 6, and it should buy the boys a #1 District seed with an easier path to Week 12 also. However, now the Black & Gold must hope that the latter quest hasn’t been a wasted effort. The 4-1 Perryville Pirates stand ahead of the North County Raiders (and the Hillsboro Hawks) by a few points in Missouri’s Class 4, District 1 standings, even though Perryville has beaten Grandview, Bayless, DeSoto, and Fredericktown, while 3-2 North County has defeated the Rolla Bulldogs and Farmington Black Knights.
In other words, likely #1 seed Festus could wind up meeting a #4 seeded North County in Week 11, while Week 5’s “let down” Hawks draw the #3 seeded Perryville Pirates, a team that would lose to Bonne Terre by at least 3 TDs. If that occurs, look for Sucharski to mail that early Christmas Card right back to Coach O.
St. Pius 23, St. James 6
Outstanding! The St. Pius defense finds a way not to be upstaged by Festus High’s stonewall of Leon Hall, as the Lancers’ young corps dismantled, demolished, and destroyed a proud offense from St. James in Friday’s surprise blow-out win. St. Pius showed off why it has been accused of making-up its defensive sack totals on stats sheets, giving the Tigers’ senior QB John Altis a night to remember (or to forget) with dogged pursuit and take-downs on drop-backs and scrambles alike. It’s getting dangerous to launch downfield passes against St. Pius X without the Lancers gobbling-up INTs, or tearing your QB protection apart.
Don’t look now, but the St. Pius X Lancers defense fared superior to Class 2’s District standings leader Hermann against the same St. James Tigers from the weekend before. A victory over the St. James Tigers is nothing to sniff at; Class 3’s “Grape Gang” from St. James outscored 3 of their first 4 opponents 120-6 this season, and fought hard in a lively scrum with victorious Hermann, which needed all kinds of breaks and turnovers to hold the Tigers to 15 points. St. Pius X, by contrast, hardly allowed St. James any opportunities in the Red Zone, and did not allow the visitors’ aerial game to flourish after Friday’s wind calmed down.
Hill Valley’s offense fought through adversity to produce a breakthrough performance in its own right. SPX was forced to shift its offensive line around once more in Week 5, coping with an injury by moving junior offensive guard Mike Moss to center. Moss has the makeup of an effective MSHSAA small-school center at close to 200 pounds with a low center-of-gravity. However, it’s hard to imagine a tougher gig than being a guard who moves to center – and who must snap the football to the quarterback, punter, and kicker – with virtually no time to prepare for a game played in the rain and wind on natural turf. Moss did screw up a few snaps Friday, early in Week 5’s contest, when the weather from Hurricane Helene was at its worst. But by the second 24:00, Moss was manufacturing his squad’s Shotgun snaps like a veteran, and SPX’s offensive linemen took inspiration enough to come into their own as a blocking unit. Justin Lehn’s 39-yard TD run gave the Lancers a 15-0 advantage and all kinds of confidence, and going forward from there, the St. Pius offense that’s seemed so shaky for 4 weeks began to run like a smooth, seasoned operation.
Coach Frank Ray still deserves credit for turning Hillsboro’s defense into a lion in the early 2020s. But his coaching job at St. Pius this autumn takes the cake, and moves Ray into serious COTY consideration at Mississippi Magazine. Here’s a team that was unfairly banished by its old league during a spring filled with tears and anger, and that showed up to 2024 training camp without any players reaching 200+ pounds who wanted to take part in the trenches. Ray convinced Hill Valley’s athletes that rearranging their whole depth chart in July was bitter medicine that had to be swallowed, and produced a lineup which has improved by leaps and bounds since Week 1. Consider that SPX’s sophomore tacklers couldn’t stop Caruthersville from doubling-up the Lancers on the scoreboard in August. CHS has not beaten a school with a winning record since then, and lost by a Turbo Clock to Valle University on Friday. St. James would be ranked in Class 3 notwithstanding all those turnovers against Hermann, but the Tigers’ only TD at St. Pius felt like a token.
St. Pius has now beaten more marquee opponents than any brand in Jefferson County other than the ’24 Festus Tigers. Do the schools of the JCAA still believe they’re punishing St. Pius sports? Considering that the Jefferson Blue Jays are in a postseason bracket with the Lancers, they might have created a monster.
Parkway South 28, Northwest 27
Northwest head coach Scott Gerling decided to compete with Hurricane Helene on Friday night. Gerling had the Varsity Lions’ third win of the year right in his hands, and HE BLEW IT…with a Clark Kent raspberry.
Cedar Hill was in solid position, leading 27-20 at Parkway South with about 6:00 to go. Parkway South downed itself a punt close to the Northwest goal line, and the pinned-down Lions didn’t go anywhere for 2 plays. On 3rd down the Lions managed to gain 7 or 8 yards out to about the 10. That was good – it meant room for the punter and a decent chance for one final NHS defensive stand to win the night. But as if having wagered on the Parkway South Patriots, Gerling called for a 4TH DOWN CONVERSION ATTEMPT from Cedar Hill’s own 10 yard line! It wasn’t even a trick play or a fake punt, but some kind of weird, hastily organized “bunch” formation and a carry that went nowhere.
Speaking of Christmas gifts! Parkway South’s offense jumped onto the gridiron (literally) as if it had won the lottery, and quickly put together goal-to-go drive and a 2-point conversion to take Friday’s decisive 28-27 lead. Northwest did have one final drive into plus-territory, but it fell victim to a wayward snap. Northwest, completely cliche as it is to say, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against PSHS’s host Patriots.
Gerling was not asked about his game-losing blunder on a brief Live Stream STL interview that followed the contest. That was a boner by the Live Stream crew, which did not appear to have taken note of the flubbed finish at Parkway South. But we’re trying not to criticize Live Stream STL any more this season, which gives The Gridiron Geek no choice in this instance but to go into “Donald Trump at a campaign event” mode and dish-out compliments no matter what. It was a great Live Stream STL postgame interview. It was actually a PERFECT postgame interview. The best postgame interview, perhaps, in all of history. People are saying.
If Gerling DOES get asked about his 4th-down decision, we hope not to hear any standard coach’s tripe like “We had a play that we thought would work.” EVERY coach ALWAYS has a play that they think will work. If they didn’t, they’d call a different one. It insults the intelligence of fans when coaches use that “explanation” for a bad risk-vs-reward decision, as if the team is being coached by 12-year-old boys whose favorite play call is “Sack the Quarterback!” Sacking the quarterback is a goal, not a strategy, and those football coaches who have blown their own winning chances because they Had A Play That They Thought Would Work have made the same adolescent’s error in logic. Northwest-CH was supposed to be 3-2 and working on a game plan to beat rival Fox this week. Instead, the Lions are asking why their coach just kicked over the table.
The Geek thinks Coach Gerling should bring up the topic himself, address it, and take full responsibility for causing Northwest to lose. Otherwise, he’ll appear to be a Class 6 Varsity CEO who doesn’t know football tactics from a fondue tray. That’s a bad look for a program that’s otherwise in the midst of a revival year.
Gateway STEM 41, Crystal City 0
Crystal City hits what is hopefully the rock-bottom of its slump in Week 5, going to Gateway in a morass of confusion and sidelined stars. Landyn DeRousse caught a flu virus and had to miss the St. Louis trip with a high fever. QB Nolan Eisenbeis was injured early in the contest, leaving Crystal’s emergency quarterback Evan Wolfe to take the futile snaps. Adam Sims’ play callers finally started sticking to some repeated power carries, but it was probably just to run time off the clock and get to Week 6. Bradley’s Farm is actually a healthier squad than it was at this time last season, if you can believe that. They just can’t have both quarterbacks sitting out and still beat a Class 4 team with a 5-0 record, like the Gateway Jaguars. ‘
Given the swoon that the 1-4 Hornets have fallen in, we’re not even sure they could beat Friday’s Class 4 visitor from Roosevelt, which lost to Gateway by a similar final score, without a top QB back in the mix. But on a better note, Nolan popped up OK by the 4th quarter, and Landyn’s flu will go away with the sunshine.
DeSoto 52, Windsor 30
Just like that, Russ Schmidt’s upstart DeSoto Dragons brand is starting to look relevant in MSHSAA. DeSoto scored its first lopsided conference win since its victory at Festus in 2019, and is the only Mississippi or District 1 team to have beaten a Large School from Illinois so far. The Varsity Dragons are in sight of qualifying as a #5 or #6 seed in C4D1, and earning a winnable Q-Final kickoff against Perryville.
Oh, and Joachim Junction may just have its first All-Conference running back of the decade, too, especially if Festus and Hillsboro keep running backfields-by-committee in ’24. The junior fullback Eli Thebeau was marvelous on Friday night, galloping for 241 yards of DeSoto’s immense 428-yard rushing total, and producing 3 TDs. DeSoto has found its bell-cow back going into a clash of styles vs Fredericktown.
Perryville 32, Grandview 0
Grandview’s defense deserves credit for another “Southern Miss versus SEC Team”-style performance in which the Birds of Prey were overwhelmed early, but settled down to ward-off a Turbo Clock with better turns and stops in the 2nd half. We’re disappointed that Grandview’s offensive line couldn’t get a Class 4 defense sliding in the heavy rain, though, and it’s a sign that a nice 4-2 record following next weekend’s battle with Herculaneum is far from a sure thing. Herky’s offense is going notwhere fast, but the Blackcats won’t be coming off a shut-out loss like the Grandview Eagles. Worse yet, Week 6 is Homecoming at Dunklin.
Cuba 30, Herculaneum 6
The Geek thought he was being too tough on Blane Boss and Herculaneum’s coaching staff this summer. “Herky just has a hard schedule to start the year,” TGG told himself. “What you think is your great intution is just a fan’s armchair sadness that Herky did well in the 2023 playoffs, and then lost a few times. No big.”
Then came Friday’s catastrophe at Cuba. It’s a matter of time before Dunklin makes a change.
Seckman 30, Oakville 0
The Oakville Tigers rush for – ahem – 38 yards on 22 carries, while totaling – COUGH – 86 yards of offense against the Seckman Jaguars. We are glad about touting Pattonville, not Oakville, as the Jags’ top rival in midseason, but we’re not sure how dangerous even PHS will be against the Seckman Blocks of Granite.
Rockwood Summit 38, Fox 14
No senior starter at quarterback, no chance for Fox against powerful Fenton. At least now, Fox and its coaching staff will return home to answer questions about Northwest’s fun visit on Friday, and we’ll hope to gather some clues about what’s going on with Arnold’s backfield. Jude Pribish may still be ailling too.
Jefferson 35, Bayless 26 (Thursday)
Parity is a thing in the QCC. Cuba’s got 2 unlikely conference Ws in just 3 tries, and Bayless has looked better every time it plays a Jefferson County opponent. We never could have guessed that Herky would be the new league’s cellar bid this season, while Cuba and Bayless contend as spoilers against big-shots like Jefferson R-7. The Jefferson Blue Jays can help Class 4, District 1 put Perryville in a #4 or #5 seed where it belongs by defeating PHS again at Homecoming this Friday. Far more meaningfully to quarterback Cooper Frisk and the Varsity Blue Jays, JHS can earn an inside track to a #1 seeding, by winning just as District standings contenders Hermann and Bowling Green have to begin facing tougher teams in October.