Northwest 27, Fox 7
Cohenn Stark with a haymaker! The Fox Warriors had overcome a sluggish first half to sit within 13 points of the host NHS Lions when No. 5 rifled an 81-yard touchdown pass to Jax Newcomer, giving Cedar Hill a prohibitive 20-0 edge in the third quarter.
Northwest’s offense, for the first time in literally four decades, is showing it can put efficient TD drives together without the self-destructive characteristics that continued to plague Stark’s squad early in the breakthrough campaign of last year.
Northwest’s conditioning program has been underrated. The Lions are getting the absolute most out of their Iron Man performers, even on hot nights such as Friday of Week 2, without succumbing to the heavy legs, cramps, or mental errors brought upon by fatigue. Newcomer was touted as a defensive back by Mississippi Magazine. In Week 2, he was a home-run receiver. Senior running back Will Murphy bounced back from his frustrating Week 1 to open the scoring against Arnold.
Great drothers, the Belcher brothers haven’t even fully hit stride yet this year. Who says the Northwest Lions don’t have a team full of stars?
Many other Large School teams talk-up their platoon systems. Cedar Hill, by contrast, is simply going with its best players in every scenario imaginable, and they’re responding with epic stamina and versatility. Not only the seniors like Stark, but juniors such as Newcomer are not running out of motor in 48:00, even on hot nights. That is just exceptional physical form for a Varsity lineup prior to Labor Day. The 2-0 Varsity Lions have not simply “reloaded” for their big follow-up season. They’re also recharged!
Week 2’s bitter rivalry game didn’t come without a cost. Fox’s offensive line is said to have taken a serious injury blow; we know that a Cheerleader also suffered Heat Exhaustion, and that more than one ambulance was called to the field. It is a happy gift from upstairs, as they say, that nothing more than sports injuries and treatable conditions struck the kids in the event, which could’ve been even worse from a heat POV. What are they gonna do, play indoors? JeffCo has survived its gridiron sauna.
It makes two straight 20+ point victories for Northwest over Fox in the original “JCTV” rivalry tilt. Do you think folks imagined that was possible when the Lions-Warriors series went on the schedule? When the Lions beat the Warriors last season, Cedar Hill’s fans were just glad to put a quality-W on the board, and they could scarcely believe that Arnold was the foil. But if Fox doesn’t watch out, NHS could now be poised to rule the rivalry. The Lions know how to defend the Flexbone like nobody’s business.
DeSoto 52, Perryville 34 (Thursday)
DeSoto’s offense produced its breakout game merely one week late, responding to Perryville’s early go-ahead TD with a drive capped by senior RB Trey Blair late in the first quarter, then getting the tailback into paydirt again thanks to tight end Tyler Wolf’s superb block on the hash marks as Blair galloped around end for a 15-yard score. Damian “The Omen” Pogue got into the end zone on a scintillating 20-yard run down the far sideline to help the Dragons reach the 30-point mark before halftime. Cannon Kisner, who looks like one of the fastest rushers in the Dirty Dozen, was as hot as the temperature on two-point conversions.
Hopefully, some Joachim Junction folks saw Mississippi Magazine’s DeSoto-Perryville correction in this week’s rankings. The Geek’s gaffe aside, the Dragons’ 52-34 was not vengeance for anyone, except maybe some of the seniors who made Varsity in 2024, since Perryville has not beaten DeSoto since then. It was the Dragons who had the 31-point performance and the victory over PHS last season, not the other way around. Kisner’s offense nonetheless appears more explosive now than a year ago.
Not that the 2026 Perryville Pirates will likely rise above their water line. In fact, given how Perryville could barely score in its first contest with Fredericktown, it’s not great for the Dragons defense to have allowed 32 points to PHS’s young lineup. It should be easier, not harder, for DeSoto to build a destructive defense with the pieces already in place. A set of front-seven tacklers who average 200-220 pounds should be a lot more intimidating than a 10-up offensive line depth chart that averages that weight.
DeSoto’s win over Perryville didn’t feel that different from Festus’ 56-41 victory over North County when Joachim Junction’s head coach Russ Schmidt was coaching FHS in 2019. It was a breakout for the offense, but a red-flag for a potentially weak defense, simultaneously in one box score. Then again, that Festus High team eventually got itself together and played well in late fall, following a slump that lasted seven weeks. DeSoto may not take quite that long to start playing complete football in 2026.
The Geek whiffed on two of this week’s kickoffs which occurred on Thursday, not Friday, making the prior night a clumsy one for making corrections. Thursday’s other local game – or game with local kids in it – got its 24 hour jump on Week 2 in Hazelwood.
Hillsboro 28, Hazelwood East 0 (Thursday)
The Varsity Hawks earned what should be called an impressive shut-out win in Hazelwood, considering that Hazelwood East is still playing a crisp and physical brand of pigskin without last year’s senior stars on board. Hillsboro was “clinical,” as the Premier League writers say, scoring at the end of three long drives that included two TD rushes from sophomore Nathan Bulback. Climactically, QB Aidan Fleming found slot WR Preston Ross for a 51-yard catch-and-run TD in the fourth quarter.
Hillsboro’s defense responded well when HEHS threatened to score at the first half’s end, which would have slashed the Hawks’ lead to 14-7 at the break. You can’t say as much for the Blue & White’s special teams – namely the punt team – which gave up too reflexively on fielding a high Spartans punt, and paid the price by getting Leon Hall pinned on its own 1-yard line in midgame. Minutes later, Hazelwood East returned a similar-length Hillsboro boot 30 yards back to the Hawks’ 40-yard line.
You would certainly want to get the special-teams problems squared away by Week 4, when the Hawks’ conference slate begins. But the 2-0 Blue & White should be favored to beat Wentzville next weekend, giving Hillsboro a chance to breathe deeply and focus on the detail work, instead of hailing a fierce rivalry opponent, and forgetting about silly punt-practicing in the process.
St. Mary’s 14, Festus 12
In another year, a 14-12 loss to a question mark of a Class 5 opponent would be Tanglefoot’s main topic of discussion, especially when a promising Festus High roster had fallen to 0-2 via the defeat. This time, there’s a takeaway that’s so worrying, Midmeadow Lane’s faithful might trade a few victories from the 2020s to have last Friday go differently.
QB Parker Perry has been revealed to be hurting. Perry was pulled from Friday’s contest at St. Mary’s in the fourth quarter, after having nearly been pulled in the first half.
Head coach A.J. Ofodile tells MyMoInfo that Perry’s shoulder was injured, and that the QB showed courage in stepping out of the halftime period to take the reins again. Perry laid on the field getting treatment after a first-down carry on Midmeadow Lane’s second-to-last drive in South City. When he walked off the field slowly, under his own power, the student-athletes on the visitors’ bench whispered about Perry’s collarbone, which was fractured back in 2024.
QB Quinnten O’Brien is the Tigers’ backup-turned-starter for the foreseeable future. We’ll get to know Mr. O’Brien better in the weeks to come. He threw a clutch TD pass to nearly pull Festus back into it on Friday night. However, as of right now, there is a broken heart on top of the Varsity Tigers’ “news pyramid.” How does the team gather itself mentally after an icy-cold start, with its All-Star senior leader potentially sidelined for weeks, months, even the whole year? The Gridiron Geek has already strained his brains looking for some positive outro-theme on the potentially somber scenario for the injured Mr. Perry. It makes it hard on a personal level that The Geek – while he takes pains not to become any athlete’s best buddy – is friendly with Perry’s family, enthusiastic pals of TGG on social media. It’s tough! But as Clint Eastwood says in “Escape from Alcatraz,” try this one.
Parker Perry has not been jilted out of the chance to shine with another fine team this regular season, not due to his worsened shoulder injury, or the timing of the awful pratfalls at St. Mary’s. If Festus ‘26 becomes a great team, it will not be in the regular season, and we’ll be debating whether Perry should try to come back in November to play for a different, nearly unrecognizable Tigers team. It might’ve been reckless to let Festus High’s preseason “title” talk slip into MyMoInfo’s Tigers interviews, given that R-6 is taking the field so dotted with greenhorns in critical roles in which The Gridiron Geek and others had presumed they would be worked in slowly. FHS won’t let its freshman kicker try a kickoff over 20 yards, and it can’t return an opposing kick back to the 20-yard line without drawing a flag. Festus High can’t contend, or nurture its top players that way.
Perry will strive to heal up while FHS tries to block for another, less careworn signal-caller for a while. Hopefully, this isn’t the year when all of Ofodile’s safety methods prove hapless to stem a tide of heartbreaking wounds.
We would want Perry to remain on the field, and play until his soul is content, for a team that was 0-9. It remains sad that he may not get a Senior Night start which could help get an ailing team above .500 in October. But we don’t have to be despondent for Perry in the sense of, “he had a vintage year taken away.” Perry has already mined solid gold for superior Tigers lineups. There’s slightly less to gain watching him take brutal hits on an uphill gridiron, unless and until this year’s kids improve, and give him the chance to rock and roll. If No. 4 becomes this fall’s secret “OPEN IN CASE OF STATE RUN” weapon, well, that’s handy.
Valle’s easy annihilation of Rockwood Summit showed that Fenton’s staying power was an illusion this year, and that the Tigers could have scored 75 points on Aug. 28 with a more cohesive lineup. Hannibal, meanwhile, has performed a miracle in getting its whole new cast of characters to play exceptional ball from this year’s outset. It’s time to reset Midmeadow Lane’s expectations to those of a hopeful District and league suitor that’s trying to work through 9 dangerously busted plays-per-game with the ball. Maybe the conference slate will un-scrabble some heads.
As for the boys in Black & Gold, yes, they still have a shot to become an outstanding group … by playoff time. The defense is just about everything The Geek cracked it up to be so far, but that unit has been left to attempt to win on its own, with the exception of fourth-quarter rallies by the Tigers’ offense. The offense, with any quarterback at the helm, cannot outscore opponents whose field position gives them four downs, while the Tigers only get three. If the offensive line and the special teams are works-in-progress that have been designed that way in 2026, there’ll be a long row to hoe before FHS looks anything like 2025’s complete team.
Seckman 71, North Point 35
Preston Brown, Cooper Frisk, and others have graduated and moved on. Seckman quarterback Brody Kube is out long-term with what’s said to be a collarbone fracture. The Festus Tigers’ all-world QB Parker Perry could be on the shelf also. Is The Geek’s bold prediction of a “Golden Era” of Jeff County quarterbacks proving flat wrong, due to turnover and injuries?
Nope! Say hello to Cohner Baer, the Seckman Jaguars’ junior QB and former running back, who just had what might be the finest first half of any JeffCo signal-caller in his maiden start behind center. Baer’s passing arm lit up The Valley with an incredible three TD passes, totaling close to a combined 150 yards, in the first 15:00 of play against North Point.
Baer found Seckman’s standout senior Nick Weidler for the graceful utility man’s first of two TDs. Jaxson Jablonski scored three times. What’s most impressive is that Baer’s offense put its foot down on a NPHS team that had fought nobly versus St. Dominic, setting a Turbo Clock in motion before the halftime break of a tilt from which the final score is deceptive. Seckman didn’t have any problems at all with NPHS.
It’s one of the most unique kinds of “Statement Wins” ever seen in the Suburban League, or in the Big City League or the Country League for that matter. The Jaguars, having lost senior QB Brody Kube for what looks to be an extended period of time, came out firing with a beautiful offense that no one outside of The Valley really had an inkling about. Seckman’s defense takes credit for being one hell of a “momentum” unit against North Point in the opening half, given its relative lack of Iron Man pieces. It’s phenomenally great, meanwhile, that the Jags were able to mentally reset, and win handily, with Kube out of action.
Kube’s injury story isn’t a tragedy, because the three-year starter’s absence from the lineup has shone a light on how No. 12 has been (and will continue to be) contributing to The Valley’s success in other ways. The team’s “old pro” has been mentoring Baer, who was probably not destined to play as a change-of-pace QB right away due to Kube’s unreal smarts and ball-security skills making the senior a primo choice in any situation. But one thing the Jaguars can do is shift their offense around in a hurry, furnishing looks from which the new passing specialist can prosper. Baer tossed more TDs (3) than incompletions (2)!
Head coach Baer was displeased by Mississippi Magazine favoring Seckman over Oakville, and he wasn’t shy about saying so in public. The Geek, in turn, thought it was unfair for Coach Baer to imply, categorically, that you can’t fairly report on a team without getting to know them personally. That would wipe out a mighty chunk of The Geek’s career in sports writing as “Fan Fiction,” since he has never gotten to talk to Tim Tebow or Lionel Messi, but was asked to report on the Florida Gators and Inter Miami anyway. The eye in the sky don’t lie. A team’s form isn’t a secret if they play on TV. Neither are their quotes.
However, in light of Friday’s statement win, maybe we didn’t give Coach Baer enough credit for matching his diverse playbook with a dynamic personality. Baer’s willingness to lay his feelings right on the line in a weekly team podcast, modeled after the “Coach’s Show” format from olden days, opens the PHD scholar up to criticism and misunderstanding. But he hasn’t made it about himself while distracting the team. He’s been making it about the team, while distracting himself! By emotionally laying Kube’s midseason prospects to rest on the last YouTube, Baer erased any notion that Brody was “Jake Plummer” and Cohner was “Jay Cutler,” prepping for a QB switch that would have come anyway. He protected the kids, while convincing STLToday to publish an extraordinary, FREE recap of Week 2, covering Kube’s mentorship, Baer’s big night, and his dad’s canny coaching.
If the Jaguars can pair this kind of offense with defense and special teams, we could see a District 1 race with Seckman leading Northwest in bonus points while keeping pace with Jackson’s win-loss record. We’ll know more about Seckman’s defense when the Jags get into some tighter contests. This Friday’s meeting with Lindbergh may not produce a tighter scoreboard for Imperial’s resurgent powerhouse, because Lindbergh’s 0-2 rec … WAIT. Sorry, Coach! We will try not to give any more of your rivals cool fuel for motivation! But it’s hard not to favor SHS, and its seemingly endless supply of ballers, to keep going 1-0 every week.
St. Pius 61, Mehlville 8
St. Pius X got to 1-1 via a Friday whitewash, one that some fans are dubbing a “Massacre in Mehlville.” (a “Slaughter in SoCo” is a pretty good one, too.) Cody Shaver rushed for 300 yards and at least five TDs before Hill Valley’s first string sat down in the second half. Mehlville’s 0-2 lineup became so bedraggled trying to limit the Lancers that the Panthers asked for “Hyper Turbo-Clock” rules, with zero stoppages in the second half, then began kneeling down and punting by the final 12:00.
Did the Lancers’ second, lopsided game – in its own weird way – do as much to show off SPX’s new powerhouse as the United Fidelity Bank Bowl? The Geek knew that the St. Pius X first string would outperform Mehlville’s first string. What’s more interesting is the contrast between Mehlville’s trash-time experience in Week 1, when the Panthers inked 23 points on Fox, and Friday’s domination of MHS by every string/lineup/package St. Pius put on the field, until the home team waved the white flag.
Hill Valley coaches pulled a “Caruthersville,” and sandbagged their second string this year! The Geek thinks the Lancers have plenty of depth on hand by now. No one’s going to talk him out of that until the St. Pius substitute players quit balling out like Kurt Rambis in lopsided games. Meanwhile, we might see every sophomore play in the home opener (and stadium debut) at SPX next week. No disrespect to 1-1 Priory, but it would take a Raven’s curse to slow down the Lancers’ momentum at this moment.
Windsor 64, Lutheran South 46
Like the DeSoto Dragons, the 2-0 Windsor Owls must be wondering if they’ll need to average six-to-ten TDs to win a bunch more games this season. Windsor’s potent option-attack produced 478 rushing yards against Lutheran South, yet the favorites from C4 needed two late TDs, including a touchdown toss from Jett Black to the freshman Carson Honea, just to put Week 2’s contest to bed.
The hopeful note for Owls supporters is that Lutheran South’s offense seems ten times more dangerous than Clayton High’s at this time last season, making it less embarrassing for the Albino Birds to have allowed so many points. LSHS’s passer Brody Slinkard went nuts in the first half, and finished with four TD passes. The Lancers weren’t scared to let him throw after all.
Park Hills Central 27, Jefferson 7
The way that Park Hills defeated Jefferson is troubling, since it mirrors the Blue Jays’ previous, frustrating season in a microcosm to have been close at halftime before finding themselves practically blown-out by the CHS Rebels in the end. Yet the Jays’ second loss did not feature every QB on the squad getting injured, nor did Park Hills or Jefferson feel a need to replace their HUDL videos of Friday night’s clash with four hours of rainy test footage. That’s progress!
Jefferson has been solidly in both of the games it has lost, casting JHS as a potential Quad County Conference contender now that the O-O-C slate is played through until Week 8. The $100,000 question is whether Sam Kerley’s team can rebound at Herky, but that seems an easier task in light of Week 2’s scoreboard.
Fredericktown 30, Herculaneum 7
What? The most inexplicable final of Week 2 looks simply upside-down on the scoreboard. Fredericktown, which could not tally a point against Perryville’s pale “U16” defense of this summer, managed to blow out the 1-1 Herky Blackcats by a score such as we thought the visiting Blackcats would win by. HC Blane Boss told MyMoInfo after the game that FHS “got after us … we couldn’t get ahead of the sticks.” Fredericktown’s O-Line – unable to block for Bo Jackson in Week 1 – has gotten an upgrade.
The Gridiron Geek gave Herky’s bright forecast a slot in “Blowout Gulch” for Week 2, which may’ve been Mississippi Magazine’s worst Friday Night Prediction of all time. We’ve seen teams lose that TGG had predicted to win in a romp, but almost never a school that was forecast to win by 30 points getting obliterated by a similar score, at least not since Grandview pasted St. Vincent back in 2021. Fredericktown’s amazing Week 2 improvement has to be acknowledged and credited. But it’s still embarrassing to have made the blog’s worst whiff in five years, not on a big game, but on what felt like a no-brainer!
It raises the problem of whether Mississippi Magazine’s sunniest final-score picks for JeffCo teams actually hurt those teams, by giving opponents from “Blowout Gulch” motivation to outplay those picks and prevail. Why, they post it on their Bulletin Boards, if such things still exist in the Digital era! Coach Baer of Seckman noticed that Oakville’s kids were chirping about TGG favoring Seckman over the Tigers in Week 1. “Look what they’re saying about us!” the Tigers might have shouted in pregame. But of course, that’s why Mississippi Magazine reports on 12 teams instead of representing them, and why we don’t try to make best-friends with coaches and boosters around town, since you can’t be a fair pundit if you’re a team’s best pal.
We said Affton might hang around with Herky in Week 1, but the Blackcats won in a whitewash, showing that it was Dunklin’s kids who should have been offended that time. Seckman, meanwhile, soaked Oakville by the same 19 points that TGG said it would. Oakville didn’t gain a point from its Week 1 pep rally “The Alliance to End Mississippi-Mania,” if that’s in fact how the Tigers tried to get up for Seckman, because Oakville had to know that you would not name a sports journal Mississippi-something if it was about how Seckman is the bestest team ever, and how it could beat up the big brothers of all of the schools who’re actually closer to the river bank (like Oakville), and how the other teams in JeffCo and South County stink. It’s easy to see Mississippi Magazine wasn’t written by the kid-sister of somebody at Seckman, and that the team has no kind of input in our picks. It was not the “Jaguars talking smack” on OHS, and the Tigers knew that … that’s why they still lost by 19.
The Geek only brings this up in the wake of the Herky-Fredericktown letdown because if we could ever hurt the kids’ chances by rating teams and players, then everything should be wiped off the blog tomorrow, except for some old scores! It’s easy to imagine how Herky feels about being a phantom “30-point favorite” while (just maybe) having had the feeling Fredericktown was Friday’s favorite. But the HHS Blackcats were natural picks to punish a squad that couldn’t lick sophomores in Week 1. Sometimes, the Herculaneum Blackcats still go off on a road trip, and forget to bring their helmets and pads along.
Be skeptical that it ever helps/hurts anything in the long run, no matter what a campus may p’shaw at the pundits after an upset loss. TGG’s made about 1200 predictions over the years with little impact on actual final scores. The Geek didn’t invent Friday Night Lights rankings. He’s just an imitator. The Jefferson County Leader, Live Stream STL, Gateway Sports, even head coaches themselves rate lineups ahead of one another constantly, all the time, forever! That’s what the Missouri Coach’s Polls are. We are journalists and we don’t speak for coaches and players. Herky is not threatened by the Friday Night Predictions, since rivals would have to be silly cupcakes to label it the “Blackcat Blog.”
Heck, Dunklin’s coach didn’t even bring up Herky’s “giddy” preseason hype when discussing Friday’s upset loss on MyMyInfo, Boss turned the onus on himself, courageously, saying that his key message for the week – that Fredericktown has a talented OL-DL combination which merely underachieved in Week 1 – didn’t land with the team. The solid alibi which can be taken from Boss’ wise ‘deep breath’ postgame presser was Boss’ hinting that “(Fredericktown) might have handled the temperature better than we did,” a clue that it was Herculaneum’s visitors who fell victim to the ever-lurking cramping and fatigue at 90 degrees.
The weather should be better by next Friday. But the Blackcats’ conference race will be heating up. Jefferson meets Herky in what feels like a must-win Week 3 contest for both teams, following two weeks of frustration for the dangerous Blue Jays, and two weeks of a split-personality syndrome for the Blackcats, who underachieved in their own right against JHS last year.
Affton 32, Crystal City 14
Did we mention that The Geek shouldn’t get too close with coaches, parents, and boosters from individual schools? The 2026 Crystal City Hornets season is – very sadly – starting to turn into a big, fat, lousy example of why that’s a bad idea sometimes. Other reporters are more skilled than yours-truly at describing a losing team’s woes without hurting anyone’s feelings. As your disclaimer, it’s Highway A’s rise as a Friday Night Lights hotbed that holds its coaches to high standards. We could make up “Varsity-only” sports writing rules, like “coaches of kids under 20 should not be criticized,” but that makes infants out of a wonderful class of coaches who’ve smashed program records at CCHS and nearby. Many of them are still at CCHS.
On the good side – and arguably “most important for Crystal City in the 2020s” – fans got their first taste of Alex Parham’s potential career as a big-time rusher for the Hornets. Parham juked and feinted to escape opposing tacklers, then turned on his 100-yard-dash jets to race away with a 52-yard TD carry in Friday’s first half against Affton. Fellow sophomore and CCHS quarterback Kolton Adams seems to be making strides. As for Crystal’s coaching and execution, that’s another story.
No honest recap of Crystal City ‘26 will describe the Hornets as a well-coached team. The 0-2 Varsity Hornets are faring so badly on defense that they made one of Missouri’s worst offenses into home-field heroes in Week 2. There is no overwhelming lack of material, but the Hornets are performing with bad, inconsistent fundamentals. One kid runs with his head down low, another is getting yanked on the back of his neck as his feet go forward out ahead of him, a ‘Banana Peel’ style of running associated with teams like Affton’s “Varsity Bananas” and not the CCHS Hornets. One defensive linemen gets stuck down in the weeds, another stands up too straight and is cruelly pancake-blocked. The offense is too tentative and the defense is either too frightened, or it doesn’t know just how frightened it ought to be. Shaky pre-snaps and busted plays have become popular pastimes for the lineup, like other folks take up golf or tennis.
The Hornets, who let a short Affton kickoff drop and get recovered (as if Affton had punted instead of kicking off), look tense, ragged, and confused on the field. The Bayless Bronchos could simply embarrass Crystal in Week 3. Student-athletes who shined as sophomores in 2024’s thrilling postseason run can’t get their mojo going again as seniors.
Right now, watching HC Craig Collins’ team is like watching a Demolition Derby in which only his cars are being smashed. If the coach had taken over a bad team and was headed for a potential 0-10 season, you could say that it wasn’t his fault. But with a pair of other HCs having had crazy success with younger versions of many of the same Bradley’s Farm athletes, the skipper’s capacity to lead a Dirty Dozen brand must be called into question. Coach Collins’ chair is the variable that changed for CCHS. We can think that this year’s roster is a weaker one, yet then again, 2021 and 2024’s Hornets teams were each said to be too thin in the preseason, just like this season’s lineup, and they turned out alright.
Crystal’s scenario may be worse than simply that of a Centennial team that can’t win in its 100th year. It’s a crisis, because CCHS could be about to get wiped out further in a flood of dangerous injuries.
Bayless 16, Grandview 0
The Gridiron Geek does not want to talk about it. One silver lining is that Bayless and Grandview’s football kids are tight friends. The Birds of Prey might be less bent about this upset loss to Bayless than they would be if Cuba defeated Grandview again. However, given how flat Brock Poole’s 0-2 team has been thus far, a Week 3 loss to the “Cigars” is a smelly possibility.