Grandview Eagles at Perryville Pirates (a Week 5 Thursday Night Prediction)

The NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” is like a track sprinter with great form, solid technique, and a quick start out of the blocks – and who has also been eating Cheetos and gulping Dr. Peppers for a month. The Shield’s schedulers are savvy enough to program perfectly nice Thursday night games to begin every season, like Kansas City vs Detroit, or Philadelphia and Minnesota’s shootout that began Week 2. But as the autumn winds forward, the pace of Thursday Night Football can slow to a crawl, with sloppy games between half-prepared teams who’re languishing in the standings. Roger Goodell’s office can “flex” a good game into Sunday Night Football any time. Yet if the powerful San Francisco 49ers beat the New York Giants by as many points as analysts expect them to this week, the TNF broadcasts will have already begin to waste away in quality again, with “barnburners” like Week 10’s Chicago Bears vs Carolina Panthers kickoff poised to bore everybody to sleep later on.

Friday Night Lights can happen on Thursday nights too, though most of the games that are moved to Thursday are shifted-over at close to the last minute, and often without any fanfare. Friday Night Lights media, after all, is dedicated to High School football played on (wait for it) Friday nights. Schools often move a kickoff to Thursday if Friday’s weather forecast is severe, or if a contest is expected to be lopsided or otherwise pointless. DeSoto and Sullivan High, for instance, got their game “over with” on a Thursday in Week 2. It gave the Dragons a chance to prepare for bouts they could actually compete in.

These off-night events are quiet and forgotten, like the “Dark” matches that begin a WWE wrestling card before the live TV show starts. That’s a shame, because Roone Arledge’s genius behind “Monday Night Football” was that everybody had to sit down and watch only those 2 teams play for once. There was no “simultaneous” action going on with which to distract anybody. If a couple of High School teams ever decided to take a Thursday night bout seriously, with a concrete plan in place, a chance for kids to prepare adequately, and SOME TV AND RADIO, it could be spectacular.

Birds of Prey to the rescue! Grandview and Perryville are going to play a football game this Thursday night – as in, TONIGHT – and let’s go over the ways in which this event beats the crap out of the typical “we need the field for a wedding” Friday-to-Thursday schedule hijinks that occur sometimes.

First, it’s going to be at least a decent game, as Eagles-Pirates will be a key moment for each school trying to earn a winning I-55 Conference mark, in addition to getting to .500 and above in the regular season. There is a 0% chance that Perryville-Grandview was scheduled for tonight due to either program’s people thinking that their team doesn’t have a chance to prevail.  Perryville’s upset win over GHS last season illustrates that both teams are confident that they can beat the other one with just 4 days of preparation.

Next – and credit to Perryville High School and Regional Radio for this one – our upcoming “Thursday Night Football” scrum will be easy to watch and listen to. Both teams have done a swell job getting the word out, and Regional Radio has followed in kind by promoting its own “TNF” J-98 broadcast of the critical conference fight. Even better, Perryville High’s YouTube channel has been faithfully streaming every outdoor Varsity game of any sort – including this last week’s JV football! We can look forward to watching Grandview-Perryville’s Varsities on PHS’s YouTube tonight, barring some sort of unforeseen bug.

Should The Geek make a prediction on “TNF,” MSHSAA-style? Why not? After all, we have made plenty of “Friday Night Predictions” over the years while totally unaware that the games had been moved to Thursdays. (Mississippi Magazine is lucky that The Geek has never predicted a perfect Thursday score on a preview posted after 9 PM – everyone would think I found the score and was cheating!) Let’s take a stab at our local TNF for real-zees this time.

Perryville looks like the “Louisiana Tech” of MSHSAA again this year, a brand that you’re below average if you lose to and above-average if you defeat it. PHS debuted losing 55-0 to Class 5’s Oakville, but rebounded with its own shutout of Windsor, a below-average Class 4 team. It’s been the same deal for the last 2 weeks. St. Vincent = above average = defeated Perryville in Week 4. Bayless = below average = couldn’t beat Perryville. The Pirates appear to be guarding the fence between Missouri’s good teams and struggling teams.

Don’t be intimidated by how many Perryville Pirates there are, or how much PHS looks the part of a large-school contender on the sidelines. Perryville’s got enough size, speed, and experience in about 20-25 kids to compete for the line-of-scrimmage with the big, burly Grandview Eagles, but there’s also some inexperience stuck in the trenches that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a visually appealing club with 50+ annual tryouts like Perryville’s. The Perryville Pirates can be punished on run plays between the hashes – that’s how a sluggish team like Windsor-2023 was still able to grind out a competitive game.

On the flip side, Grandview’s offensive line hasn’t yet reached the promise of a training camp that shook the Big River valley with thunder. The Geek noticed that St. Pius X was unable to push the Eagles’ big linemen around, but what Lancer footballers did do was make GHS’s line less organized, failing to consistently turn the right direction or get moving upfield as a unit. The anticipated Grandview “trampling” of ’23 won’t happen until they do.

Our best advice for GHS head coach Jason Kimminau is to exercise as much patience as he has ever displayed, starting with the kickoff at 7 PM. Perryville’s offense only outscored Windsor’s confused attack 12-0, and isn’t a threat to run away with a ragged contest the way that St. Pius X did. Grandview should pick out a handful of aggressive running plays that work against the Pirates in the opening frame, and stick with those plays throughout the game no matter what, making Perryville do too much work between the hashes to persist for the whole night. At that point, GHS can start pitching and catching the bean without so many gaffes and penalties – and potentially defend Perryville’s play-action passes a little better too. PREDICTION: EAGLES 28, PERRYVILLE 19