#1 – Northwest Lions
Cedar Hill’s Northwest Varsity Football Lions have achieved a benchmark that even some of their fathers weren’t old enough to have experienced as young alumni. It’s been 40+ years since Northwest dominated the local football scene. Outplaying their forecasts for one big contest after another with a novel Iron Man approach to Class 6, QB Cohenn Stark and the 2-0 Lions are making Big River a second local hotbed.
It’s been so long since NHS was Jefferson County’s top team, most of the Northwest-No. 1 stories are apocryphal. That doesn’t mean they aren’t funny! Once in the late 1970s, the Festus Tigers had utilized Split-Back Veer tactics to deadlock the favored Northwest Lions 14-14 after 47:30 of a Jefferson County Conference game. Festus had a 1st-down-and-goal at the 1-yard line and was working from a timeout. Suddenly, or so the story has it, the FHS quarterback emerged from the huddle and started strutting around the gridiron, smiling and nodding at the fans with his helmet on, like a wobbly bobble-head.
Midmeadow Lane’s crowd gasped as the QB made a play-action fake and rolled out. “Wow,” the home-field students yelled, “we’re gonna throw a touchdown pass and defeat the county’s #1!”
Except that the Northwest kids were smart enough to know what the Festus QB’s duck walk meant the Tigers were about to do. The Festus quarterback was about to throw a pass, and Northwest was about to intercept it, followed by Cedar Hill’s defensive back going 99 yards for the winning touchdown. So much for tipping your hand to the Lions when they’re hot.
The Geek doesn’t want to do a “Crap-Spill” on Northwest’s new #1 ranking, though. The Crap-Spill occurs when a pesky announcer, who loves to pick on a team’s losing history, responds to the brand’s watershed moments by barking-out stats which emphasize how futile all their seasons must have been, to make such a team milestone even possible. You could cryogenically revive Al Michaels 500 years from now, once the Arizona Cardinals won 100 NFC Championships in a row, and he would say, “But as the history shows, the Cardinals were a real lousy team five hundred years ago.” It’s as if the glory of your watershed campaign causes the sports world’s cynics to flush all of the crap out one final time.
The fantastic Varsity Lions, who’ve turned an old rivalry game into a romp with blowout wins over the Fox Warriors in each of the last two years, are having more than just one good season, and what’s been going on in Cedar Hill for a long time is anything but crap. The Geek can recall skipper Scott Gerling in years like 2022 and 2023, telling Regional Radio “Dangit, if we could just push one of our opponents into the fourth quarter in a close game, we could finally see what we can do in one.” It felt like some kind of project in which Northwest was just spinning wheels, trying to catch cars that had lapped away. Gerling never wavered, building NHS from a cupcake into a spoiler, a live underdog, and finally, a powerhouse.
Northwest needs more elite performers to step up to hold on to #1 this season. We’re thinking that the LB combo of Stark, Jeremiah Clines, and Kaleb Belcher is starting to stand out as one of the county’s most terrifying trios of tacklers, giving NHS a rock to build on as the Lions keep bolstering a stout defense.
#2 – St. Pius Lancers
One way to look at it is that the St. Pius Lancers won by about 60 points, and still couldn’t improve on a #2 ranking in the Power Poll. Another way to see it is that the Varsity Lancers are now standing alone in the runner-up spot, making it the second straight week SPX has broken a glass ceiling for Small Schools.
Congrats to Hill Valley’s administration on the new venue, which looks outstanding for Friday’s inaugural.
#3 (Tie) – Seckman Jaguars
The Jaguars are on the move upward again after going to 2-0 with last Friday’s surprising breakout game. Don’t look now, but Imperial is one win away from a potential clash-of-unbeatens versus familiar Pattonville. QB Cohner Baer could land a few more ‘Max Baer’ haymakers in Week 3.
#3 (Tie) Festus Tigers
We won’t rank ‘em down because of the injuries, but we have to do it because of the first two games. Festus relinquishes its long-held #1 slot in the Jefferson County Power Poll while plunging into a tie for third, due to playing shaky offense with three different quarterbacks at the controls – including but not limited to the marvelous Parker Perry – and competing with the special-team tactics and handicaps of a Class 1 side kicking the ball off to Class 4. The 0-2 Tigers have a dynamite defense that can’t win games by itself, unless an opponent proves too slow and ordinary to take advantage of their bounty of field position.
#5 – Hillsboro Hawks
By a similar token, the 2-0 Hillsboro Hawks do not get a “boost” from their chief rival’s quarterback going down, so much as they’ve already gotten a boost from watching Festus High losing games with JV-caliber efforts in the third phase, and an offensive line that can’t do anything quite so well as it can protect an unmoving pocket (which is to say, they do that very decently). There will not be another easy conquest for Festus over Hillsboro in 2026, whether the schools have met twice, or merely once by mid-November.
Hillsboro’s “#5” rank could still cause Mississippi Magazine to get some blowback, because the Hawks are 2-0 and the Festus Tigers are 0-2. You have to take the strength-of-schedule into consideration, and ask what win-loss marks would be if the schools’ opening pairs of opponents were reversed. Hillsboro is unlucky because the Hawks have not yet faced an opponent against whom Aidan Fleming’s squad can get a decisive, quality W on the board. If the Hawks jump up again soon, it’ll likely be higher than to T-#3.
What’s more, we think the Hawks could have taken down at least one of the Tigers’ first two opponents. But the Lions, Tigers, Jags, and Lancers have boasted higher ceilings of performance than the Hawks over the past 15 games, and Hillsboro has yet to prove its rehabilitated club will look deep enough against tougher foes. Holt’s visit gives Hillsboro that shot at a statement victory in Week 3.
#6 – Fox Warriors
Fox didn’t put many stats from the Northwest game on STLToday, but it’s easy to see that Arnold’s wrestler and football standout Cole Theobald had another outstanding night on defense, factoring in 11 total tackles. Week 3’s Warriors enjoy a key get-well-game opportunity against Hazelwood West.
#7 – Windsor Owls
Windsor is one defense away from cracking top half! The opposing Festus Tigers of Week 3, sans their senior gunslinger, are going to hand footballs to Kamden Yates from those “Sun Dial” vectors that Coach Ofodile likes to utilize again and again, until the Owls prove that they can stop that. The good news for the Imperial kids is that FHS’s run-blocking has been dicey so far. The Owls will be looking to make just one or two early stops, to receive punts and establish ball-control offense right away – yet the WHS defense still isn’t a sure-shot against any team in any scenario. Windsor has to escape the high-scoring circuses to flourish as a physical, clock-grinding team. Jett Black’s club has minted a 2-0 record, 98 points to 66.
#8 – DeSoto Dragons
DeSoto and Windsor remain underdogs to the Highway A schools in this year’s conference race, yet the Dragons and the Owls boast the two finest dual-threat quarterbacks in the Mississippi Conference, that’s money! QBs Cannon Kisner and Jett Black are poised to wage one heck of a juniors’-jostle in DeSoto on Sept. 25, one which could make pocket-QB specialists stare and blink.
#9 – Herculaneum Blackcats
Herky’s 1-1 team just hasn’t caught any breaks in the Power Poll recently. That could change in a hurry if HHS gets over the hump and defeats Jefferson. It would be considered a quality win in Herculaneum’s circumstances even though the Blue Jays are #10, since there’s a big gap between 10/11 currently. It’s a grudge match also, since Jefferson spoiled Herky’s league bid in 2025.
#10 – Jefferson Blue Jays
From #10 to #11 is the largest gap in the Jefferson County Power Poll in Week 3. Jefferson has played two competitive games against solid opposition, while the 11th-ranked Grandview Eagles try to find a new identity, after losing to a Quad County Conference weak-sister in Bayless High to fall to 0-2.
#11 – Grandview Eagles
Oh gosh, what does it mean when your offense can’t strike paydirt against Bayless, which always seems to give out a few early Christmas gifts to its conference rivals? The Geek is still as hopeful for the Birds of Prey as ever, especially when you consider how a school such as Fredericktown turned things around in record time after getting shut-out by Perryville’s “Under-16” contingent to begin this season. However, whispers are that GHS Eagles may be going through the same kind of crisis that they did in 2023.
2023 was the year Grandview visited Jefferson for a tight, noble struggle that ended with the Blue Jays prevailing 26-12. At that game, The Geek sat in the stands near an assistant coach’s wife, who made your reporter queasy (through no fault of her own!) the moment that we began going through the Grandview Eagles’ roster of players “Hank Hill and the Texas Longhorns”-style, peering at each kid one by one. “This fullback, he’s hurt. These two older offensive linemen, they both went out in September. That kid sprained his knee. That one’s neck isn’t medically cleared for contact. This other one tore his ACL … “
Ugh. As we charted through Grandview’s entire squad, it became painfully evident that there were more injured Eagles than healthy ones. Some kids were playing through less-severe injuries, or else the Grandview football brand itself would have had to “go dark” again, and give up on the year.
The Geek is working from no official team source, and won’t list any players’ names. There’s been enough football-injury misinformation going around JeffCo to make MSNBC want to come join in the fun, so it is a bad idea to throw any more speculation or hearsay on the fire. But it isn’t a fluke, or a dread slump, that caused Dittmer to go without a meaningful TD in its first two games. Half or more of Grandview High’s contingent of 25 to 30 Varsity players may be ailing, if not already on the shelf. Like in 2017-19, the predominant goal has to be surviving, and helping the sport survive at GHS. To keep everyone else healthy at all costs!
Grandview, which could struggle to stay out of #12 position if Crystal City’s young backfield keeps taking strides, will not get many breathers on an upcoming schedule that includes Cuba, which looks numerous and lively on the gridiron this season, and a road contest at Blackcat Drive on October 2. Those assistant coaches-turned-doctors who have to steer a casualty ward of a lineup should check out the footage of Crystal City’s 2021 campaign, in which the Hornets overcame a < 17 number to forge one memorable turnaround. Grandview’s shot at finishing the season, and avoiding “0-10,” may depend on such creativity.
#12 – Crystal City Hornets
Look to Week 4 and Week 5’s matchups against Confluence and Veritas Christian as contests that could potentially get Crystal City back in the win column.
In Friday’s combat with a Bayless squad that’s finally putting a few more respectable efforts on the board, we’ll just have to hope the Hornets don’t sustain a costly round of injuries in the Class 1 school’s first matchup of two against the Quad County Conference.
Photo Credit: Gene Bonds