DeSoto 26, Hillsboro 20
It was, by any litmus, the best and the most important football game that DeSoto has played in this decade. The underclass QB Cannon Kisner led the Dragons over the top versus the Mississippi Conference’s longest-reigning underdog undertaker in the Hillsboro Hawks, giving the Green Gang a potential path to host two District games rather than just one.
The Geek remembers his popular recap from DeSoto’s last win over Hillsboro in 2018. “Buddhists say a man is shaped in his earliest years,” Mississippi Magazine wrote to explain having picked Hillsboro to defeat DeSoto by 35 points that season. Hillsboro has always been Jefferson County’s team that opposing coaches squint at and imagine having found terrible flaws in, and they talk themselves into thinking they’re equally-matched with the Hawks until the game happens and Hillsboro is celebrating in the end zone. You can be embarrassed very badly as a pundit by picking teams to beat Hillsboro, which always seemed to snap into its best form when the leaves were turning under HC Lee Freeman.
DeSoto won with “Moser’s Maulers” defense in a 14-8 upset that year. 2025’s big victory came via a fun and higher-scoring encounter, but the Dragons’ critical early lead was set up by the best defensive effort that we’ve witnessed from DeSoto since 2018’s flash in the pan. DeSoto’s strengthening corps of tacklers was fabulous in the first quarter, letting Kisner and the offense take the field fully relaxed and confident that they could play their patient game and win with it. DeSoto first points came on on such a methodical long march that it signaled a role-reversal in the rivalry. The Varsity Dragons’ opening drives looked inexorable, as the Hawks’ drives against DeSoto used to look. When the Hawks got their newest exciting underclassman Trey Zimmerly going in response, the Green Gang stiffened in the Red Zone and forced field goals from HHS kicker Caleb Arnold. By the time Leon Hall achieved some kind of stalemate at the LOS, Kisner had already hauled-off for the home run, hitting senior TE Jackson Turnbo for a 55-yard TD that had put DeSoto ahead by double-digits and make the Hawks’ defense cautious in the second half, not unlike DeSoto’s former QB Briar “Patch” Fischer going downtown to Clayton Snudden in 2018. Exceptionally fitting was when Kisner intercepted Hillsboro signal-caller Braxton Chazelle’s final pass attempt to nix a late comeback bid and seal the six-point victory.
HC Russ Schmidt’s team joins Northwest, Grandview, and Herky as local teams to have “watershed” breakthroughs in 2025, and the joyous revivals may not be limited to those four. DeSoto has a solid Class 4 visitor coming to town for Week 8 in the Potosi Trojans. But a victory in that contest could give DHS as high as a #2 District seed, should the Herculaneum Blackcats defeat the Perryville Pirates this coming Friday night. Even if that doesn’t happen, DeSoto’s chances of reaching Week 12 just went way, way up.
Grandview 33, Jefferson 30
The Birds of Prey have their greatest signature win since Senior Night of 2021. The 5-2 Grandview Eagles showed up at a place where the Jefferson Blue Jays have always beaten them – always always. In fact, Jefferson had never lost a game of football with Grandview … until now. GHS rushed for a fantastic 326 yards and bamboozled Jefferson’s star quarterback Cooper Frisk with four interceptions, almost as if the wonderful pass defending of the Eagles back in ’21 has come back to the fold at just the right moment.
Grandview and DeSoto’s minor upsets (and it’s to the Eagles and Dragons boys’ credit that these were only “minor” upsets) of Week 7 were similar in the sense that the opposing home team took on the underdog’s familiar role. It was Jefferson, not Grandview, that immediately squandered early momentum with a sloppy mistake when senior defensive back Blake Brown grabbed the Eagles’ first INT and rumbled close to midfield with it. The visitors outscored JHS 20-16 in the first two frames with the wind behind their backs for once. The Grandview Eagles took over Jefferson’s Homecoming Game in even more stunning fashion in the third quarter, dishing the egg to Brook Poole on a Jet Sweep that featured a 40-yard gallop and nearly five broken tackles. GHS then bullied its way to the goal line behind the “Croom and Ramsey”-worthy 1-2 punch of Keim and Walker, until quarterback Brendan Martin plunged in from the 1-yard line. The Jefferson Eagles Blue Jays of Dittmer R-7 couldn’t get out of their own way, taking penalties that foiled a comeback try.
Grandview’s got a chance to become the first Class 1 public school to earn honors in what was once known as the I-55 Conference, and is now the Quad County Conference. QCC administrators definitely need to go shopping for new additions after Cuba fell apart with attritition and cancelled the rest of its season. But the league is growing stronger overall, during the resurgence of Herky’s program and the rise of St. Vincent and Perryville as serious playoff contenders. Win next week, and a 4-1 record will be tied with the Pirates.
There’s only one complaint that The Geek can make about Grandview’s effort, though it’s a worrying one. Mississippi Magazine is concerned that the Eagles are still performing with a bit of an Inferiority Complex, despite having already proven up, down, and sideways that the Birds of Prey are anything but “inferior” this season. Head coach Cory Hanger’s decision to go for a 4th-and-2 conversion at midfield with a two-score lead and a couple of minutes left was a reasonable one … but the play-call that went with it was not.
In one choice to run a fancy Triple Option play with a long lateral, Grandview was doing everything it could to lose the game without being conscious of it. A long run for a TD would have made a neat exclamation point, but it would have also given Jefferson the ball back right away. The clock, not the quest for the end zone, was Grandview’s very best friend in that moment. A first down sealed the deal while a long play to the end zone or the sideline would complicate things. The lateral could have been fumbled for a scoop-and-score TD that would have put the Blue Jays right back in the game and down only a few points at the 2:00 mark. Even if the play worked like it was designed to, gaining a first down around the outside, it would have stopped the clock when the play went out-of-bounds. Nothing about that play call made any sense, except that Grandview was like a cocky candidate trying to “act winningly” as opposed to just looking at the vote tally scoreboard, taking a deep breath, and saying “Hey, we’re winning.” It was lucky the play was stopped for a loss. Jefferson went on to score, but Frisk’s brave offense used up enough time in desperation that Grandview’s recovery of an onside kick put the Eagles straight into a V-Formation.
Hanger can’t make the argument that Grandview was going for a 13+ point win with its risky Razzle-Dazzle, since the Eagles’ potential #1 seed is just going to come down to Week 9’s game against Crystal City anyway – and it might be sealed before then if the Hornets lose in Week 8 and fall back to #3 position. The Eagles, with their massive OL and as many as four dangerous rushers, will be favorites over any District 2 team they play. The worst thing they could do now is behave like a last-place spoiler instead of a conference leader.
DeSmet 56, Festus 28
It was the worst game of pigskin that the Festus Tigers have played in three years. For most of 48:00 inside the noisy, strange world of DeSmet’s stadium, the Tigers put on a masterclass in how to miscommunicate, misfire, take a penalty on the next misfire, and then make a coaching blunder to screw it all up worse. The FHS defensive line had only intermittent success breaking blocks against the Spartans’ front, and didn’t do much with the chances it had to put pressure on DeSmet’s rebuilding offense. The Tigers were obliterated on special teams, giving up as many plus-territory chances to the home team as St. Francis of Borgia boasted in 2019’s maddening win over Midmeadow Lane.
The Tigers’ ineptitude was highlighted by two sequences, one in a terrible first quarter, and the other in midgame. Black & Gold’s second attempt at a scoring drive was marred by five FHS coaches standing shoulder to shoulder, all making frantic signals at QB Parker Perry and ordering the offense to make several nervous shifts. They flapped their arms, pulled their noses, and tugged their ears, but none of them thought to look at the Play Clock. Festus had already spent two time-outs trying to get its motioning to work without penalties being called, and began to simply endure the five-yard Delay of Game flags at that point. R-6’s self-destruction got worse at the end of a first half in which a pick-six interception by Brayden Wilkes gave the Tigers life with :49 remaining. Festus squib-kicked to give DeSmet good field position, and then refused to go into a “prevent”-style defensive look as DeSmet gunned for the end zone with :20 left, giving up a wide-open TD and a 35-14 lead to DeSmet. (“We do what we do” = we DO give up long TDs.)
Then the Tigers let RB Cam Sharp’s kid brother Rocky Sharp go 91 yards for a KR touchdown to begin the second half, making the tight “midgame” score into a distant memory. The defense’s statemate at the LOS wasn’t enough to contain DeSmet’s outstanding rusher in Sharp. FHS linebackers didn’t have a chance to tackle him, or pressure QB Gabe Rodriguez, on the many turns when Festus lost its battle in the trenches. The boys’ performance went about how The Geek figured it would in a highly-nervous scenario, although we didn’t anticipate how much DeSmet had improved since losing so badly to SLUH and CBC early this season. Week 2’s 34-14 defeat of MICDS was DeSmet’s harbinger. The Varsity Tigers had all kinds of bad things happen to them but they deserved them all – from the 300 opposing special-teams yards to the penalty flags to the brief Turbo Clock.
DeSmet’s other advantage wasn’t an athletic edge, but DeSmet’s zany atmosphere that the Tigers had to play in on Friday, which hopefully turned into a learning experience in the absence of other positives to take out of Week 7, plus in case the 2025 team is in for playoff road-game scenario such as Hillsboro faced at Pacific in 2022’s state quarterfinals. The fact that DeSmet has a massive student body without a marching band or a pep band to play on Fridays is really kooky. Instead, there’s a two-person “pep band” that consists of a budget Casio keyboard and a live drummer. (The national anthem at DeSmet sounds like one lonely bloke with an accordion.) The Spartans’ rowdy student section was blowing Vuvuzelas, a fun musical instrument in small doses that can get really “FFFFFRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZ” annoying when played over and over. The Vuvuzela is what turned the last FIFA World Cup in South America into a month-long swarm of Atomic Mosquitos, and it helped turn FHS into an atomic mess on Friday.
Perry threw three more touchdown passes without tossing an interception. He’s still the most accurate damned quarterback on the eastern side of the state. But the 6-1 Festus Tigers are once again under pressure to beat Farmington, or else risk a three-game losing skid to end the regular season. Jackson could beat DeSmet by a bundle, making Week 9’s task impossible if FHS can’t regroup in time. The silver lining is a clinched #1 District seed. Perryville can’t pass Festus in the standings by defeating Pevely High School.
St. Pius 56, Miller Career Academy 6
The St. Pius Lancers are like the preacher from the Thorn Birds television miniseries back in the day. Everyone else gets older, and they stay the same age. It was three years ago when we were saying, “just wait until St. Pius gets a year older.” Then came 2023-24 and a succession of lineups on which many top contributors were again underclassmen. What’s exciting about this year’s Hill Valley team is that neither the seniors or sophomores appear to be there to fill gaps. There’s less and less gaps to go around in a bolstered St. Pius X squad, and wouldn’t you know – top contributors are again averaging about 15.5 years of age. SPX’s “three-headed monster” of Eckrich-Shaver-Ray is a senior-worthy weapon featuring two sophomores and a junior. We’ve got a hunch, though, that 2025-26 is the turning point where an eternally-young starting lineup finally gains that seasoning.
St. Pius is whitewashing teams that it labored against last season, like Cuba and Miller Career Academy. Cody Shaver rushed for another 200+ yards and three TDs against a team that nearly spoiled Hill Valley’s Homecoming Game last autumn, making him the undisputed king of running backs in the STL Metro with 1342 yards in seven games. The sophomore WR/DB Harry Ray is developing into a force in the defensive backfield who can give Jack Michaud a run for his money, snagging two picks to go with a 74-yard touchdown catch. Brody Ervin is the rusher from 2024’s backfield who has emerged to give Shaver a spell every so often, scoring a rush TD in Week 7’s 50-point romp.
Now it’s time for the St. Pius Bowl against visiting St. Pius X of Kansas City. Can the Lancers contend to beat the Warriors? Or will it be another “ceremonial” game in which SPX would be happy to score a few points and avoid a Turbo Clock? Without more familiar teams on the SPXKC schedule to help compare, the answer depends on what Cardinal Ritter was up to when the Warriors lost to the Lions by a respectable score of 36-8 early this season. That’s the kind of score that we would expect Festus or Hillsboro to lose to Cardinal Ritter by in an average year for the Tigers/Hawks and the Lions, and it could help to cast SPXKC as a “Class 4 contender’s quality” team such as the Kennett roster which mauled Class 2’s Lancers with a 40-point win in 2020. But on the other hand, Cardinal Ritter is having another see-saw season befitting such an artificial enterprize, standing at just 2-3 without Forfeit-Ws. Cardinal Ritter squandered 700 yards of total offense without putting a Turbo Clock on SPXKC. Then there was this embarrassing episode last weekend:
We probably shouldn’t use the least stable group of student-athletes in Missouri as a measuring stick. St. Pius X of Kansas City might be a “Festus/Hillsboro” level of opponent, or even a “Country Day” level of opponent, but the St. Pius X (of Festus) kids are hungry for that kind of a challenge after feasting on underdogs for three weeks straight. We’ll attempt to get a better bead on Week 8’s Warriors by the time the next Friday Night Predictions roll around. Meanwhile, St. Pius (and Festus) have to overcome the handicap of two games (including a Homecoming Game) within less than a mile of each other this coming weekend. It’s time for Hill Valley’s alumni to get the word out about the coolest game St. Pius is hosting this year (or any year), and work to get so many “on the fence” spectators out to the St. Pius Bowl that there’s no room in the stands, or on the fences for that matter.
Crystal City 52, Duchesne 6
QB Landyn DeRousse returns healthy to lead a Crystal City blowout win, which is bigger news than anything the Hornets might have shown against Duchesne’s weakest team yet. Crystal City is doing what it did in 2024 by climbing back to the .500 mark now that late summer’s doldrums and a mighty midseason schedule are in the past. The Geek was glad to see Rico Pastrana and Alex Kuchera combine for six touchdowns, while the freshman prodigy Alex Parham got on the board with a short TD catch late in the first quarter. Overall, though, Week 7’s outcome impacts the Class 1, District 2 race by helping to show Grandview that Class 1 is a different ballgame – for good and bad. In a normal style of bracket, heavyweight “Class 2 veterans” like Grandview, Portageville, and Charleston would have an edge in roster size and durability at the end of 12 straight weeks of competition. MSHSAA’s Class 1 system involves a Week 10 rest period for most of its teams, similar to the fortnight’s break that the CCHS Hornets got by accident in early October.
If DeRousse is laboring to play through injury this fall, the Bradley’s Farm quarterback couldn’t ask for easier timing or more days to recover between performances. Crystal City will return to facing Class 1 opponents now – imagine that! – and as that smoke clears the best way to look at the Hornets’ trying trek against Class 4 is that things could’ve been worse.
Seckman 49, Parkway South 0
Because offense is the focus of most football hype, it would be easy to think of the Seckman Jaguars’ romp over Parkway South as the “get well” game for QB Brody Kube’s unit. But the fact is that Seckman’s attack already did “get well” in Week 7, generating a legit comeback bid against victorious Pattonville just one week after the Jags’ blocking went bye-bye for a half against a less-elite contender in Oakville. Last night’s blowout was really a chance for the defense to get well after surrendering its worst opposing second-quarter rally in a long time to the pernicious Pirates seven days earlier. It’s helpful for SHS pass rusher Dylan Lappe’s lineup to get to harass PSHS’s quarterback Calvin Huse through a shutout performance in which Seckman got the Turbo Clock going in Quarter 2 and in which Lappe sacked Huse two times. We hope that he took it easy on the way down though. The plight of Parkway South’s kids resembles that of the Hazelwood West Wildcats, a group of student-athletes maroooned with a half baked program and sloppy coaches.
Seckman’s next opponent? Hazelwood West. Just stop them on any third down, Jaguars, and you’ll take part in the merry circus described in this recap:
Northwest 49, Hazelwood West 6 (Thursday)
Let’s get one thing straight – for a Large School team the Hazelwood West Wildcats of 2025 are horrendous. HWHS’s coaches, not the kids, are to blame, having dumbfounded The Gridiron Geek with some of the worst tactics and attention-to-detail found on any Show-Me-State sideline. Hazelwood West can’t even line up to punt correctly, using some type of “Quick Kick” formation that was overwhelmed by panic early in Thursday’s twilight scrum (mislabeled as Friday night in this week’s “Rolynn Up the River” Friday Night Predictions), resulting in comical rush attempts and 14 points-off-turnovers for Cedar Hill right away. After the first Hazelwood punt try ended in disaster, the dazed Wildcats trudged past their coaches hoping for a word. But three Wildcats coaches played with their headsets. Then stared at the gridron. Then they played with their headsets a bit more. Then they stared at the gridiron and WHAT IN BLAZES ARE WE ACTUALLY DOING HERE, GUYS? Forget the Mercy Rule – Northwest exhibited its own brand of mercy by not winning by 100 points, which the Varsity Lions most assuredly could have if they wanted to. Hazelwood West couldn’t block, putting HWHS quarterback Marquavion Jackson under pressure for four quarters. The Wildcats made up for that … by not tackling.
You know what, though? The fact that Cohenn Stark’s squad was able to prove zip, zero, and zilch against such a lowly opponent marks the rise of Northwest’s brand in a peculiar way, or at least our reaction to Week 7’s outcome marks it. There was a time when playing such a downtrodden team would’ve been the NHS Lions’ only chance at a Turbo Clock victory in midst of another 3-7 season. Once the weak opponent just handed Northwest the win on a silver platter, we’d complain that no good reviews came out of it, no chance of a buzz that would get more than three new boys out for football the following summer. Those small-fry frustrations are all in the past now. Northwest High is finished with trying to put window dressing on unsuccessful seasons. This autumn’s Lions are MSHSAA contenders and they mean business. As such, Thursday’s whitewash came with many positives. The starting-22 will be well rested going into a Senior Night grudge match versus Oakville.
Cedar Hill’s next opponent Parkway Central has scored 19 points on the season. The game may be over by 8:15 PM.
North County 36, Windsor 0
North County is finally starting to look like – wait for it – North County! The Bonne Terre Buccaneers stonewall Windsor’s dangerous offense, holding the Blackbirds to about 150 total yards while running up the type of lead that 2024’s roster would have been expected to against a weaker Windsor team (and ironically didn’t come close). North County has played two good games in a row, and if we don’t miss our guess, it’s because NCHS skipper Brian Jones has brought another group of sophomores along ahead of their years. The FHS Booster Club was right – you can beat Windsor and make a statement in 2025. We are sad that WHS had to be the team that fell victim to Bonne Terre’s late season resurgence. However, the silver lining is that one of Mississippi Magazine’s favorite non-Dirty Dozen coaches (and a long-time friend of the site) might just get to stick at his job after all.
For the Windsor Owls, the last few weeks have hopefully left HC Lee Freeman with the notion that Imperial’s schedule needs to change. Windsor is on the ELEVATOR again, with a seven-week ledger of nothing but blowout wins and blowout losses save for the OT with Herculaneum and a decent first half with Hillsboro. We witness the Owls lose by scores like “25-14” in the District playoffs, and ask “why can’t they get over that hump.” Playing in just one close contest against a Class 4 opponent prior to being in that moment would help immensely. It won’t happen this time, given that Fredericktown and Bayless make such cupcakes in Weeks 8-9. Windsor goes into the Q-Finals with a confidence issue again.
Lindbergh 35, Fox 28
Forget last week’s hemming and hawing about Fox’s coaching outlook. Brent Tinker’s seat is red (and white) hot.
Herculaneum 37, Bayless 20
The Box Score from Herculaneum-at-Bayless reveals good news about Herky’s seemingly listless win. The Varsity Blackcats needed two halves to beat a Quad County Conference caboose by an ordinary final score. Perryville’s four-game win streak now makes the Pirates look like even more of a dangerous visitor for the Blackcats’ home game this Week 8.
Look at the stat sheet, though, and it’s evident that Coach Blane Boss’ fears about Dunklin’s defense coming unglued with injuries was overblown. Only about a dozen upperclass tacklers needed to really get in on the action at Bayless, against whom the Blackcats forced punts and picked-off passes. The Herky offense had a bad night, only generating a pedestrian 120 yards for RB Clark Struckhoff and botching the aerial game badly. We think that on home turf, going up against Perryville’s downsized defensive line, the Herculaneum offense will return to form. If the Pirates don’t lead 38-7 at halftime, we’ll continue to know that Boss was happy to be wrong about R-5’s health meter.