One final Big Idea from Mississippi Magazine this season is that we’d like to bring our “low exposure” teams like the Fox Warriors into the limelight, even if we have to drag them kicking-and-screaming (and bribe MSHSAA TV to send its own video crew) into the big bright Friday Night Lights. Arnold will be pleased to hear that the way this preseason has worked out, we can skip over the Seckman Jaguars (mostly) and focus on Fox High School, and its rivalry with Northwest, in what’s turned out to be a local-themed season preview of MSHSAA Class 6 and Class 5 on scroll below.
Of course, there can be no ignoring the Seckman Jaguars following their best run of pigskin yet, an astounding 20-2 record earned over the last two seasons. The Gridiron Geek previewed Seckman’s 2025 season on this video, time stamped for SHS after a look at all 12 of the county’s teams:
A couple of further notes after reading Seckman’s JCL preview –
Korando makes a bold “prediction” (a new leaf for JCL’s team previews instead of the columnist’s own scroll) that Mason Fowler will become yet another Varsity Jaguar rusher to gallop for 1000+ yards in 2025. Here we thought junior Chance Ruble might be the featured back in Seckman’s latest lineup. (He has the right kind of last name for the job.) The JCL also says alumni Devin Gosser is “taking his 480 receiving yards with him,” but Mississippi Magazine readers know that kind of talk is hooey. Brody Kube just has to put his growing pains in the past, and whoever is outside will catch his accurate passes.
Seckman is also talking about Jackson again. A lot. Seckman’s talking about Jackson so much that the Jaguars are talking about Jackson while they’re disavowing the idea of talking about Jackson, like how the St. Louis Post Dispatch used to say, “It’s time to move on from the St. Louis Rams’ Super Bowl victory. We can’t live in the past by always bringing up the Rams’ Super Bowl victory, you know, from that year there was a Super Bowl and the Rams won it.” Baer says he told the team to focus on Parkway West, a dangerous Week 1 visitor with a potentially far-superior team than the 5-5 unit the Jaguars conquered to begin last season, but mentioned Jackson again while doing so, and then confessed again: “Jackson is on our minds.”
The Geek found it a tad silly when Seckman would lose to Jackson 55-0 and come back to say “we are so close to beating them” at the next training camp. But given how solid the Jaguars looked against last year’s Indians in parts of a heartening playoff loss, it’s not a bad thing for the Jags to acknowledge the pressure to turn 10-win seasons into something more in the playoffs, and that begins and ends with winning District 1.
The Fox Warriors appear to be headed for a Class 5 District in 2025, which screwed up TGG’s plan to skip over Class 5 and preview Class 6 alone. But the two top Classes are becoming so comparable that going to Class 5 to Class 6 and back doesn’t change the equation for Fox, Seckman, or Northwest as much as it might’ve in previous eras. If you can beat MICDS, you could beat DeSmet – if you can’t then there’s no point arguing over which state or District bracket is easier. What helps the Warriors this year is that they’ll get added Class 5 points for victories and tight losses against Class 6, and enhanced prospects to seed well in whatever C5 bracket Missouri sticks the Red & White into. It could get Fox back to Week 12 where it belongs.
Like the DeSoto Dragons and a few other Dirty Dozen teams, Fox looks ready to make a step up this season … with a few cautionary notes to go along with that. Fox head coach Brent Tinker has been more strident about playing a “pure” option style than almost any other local coach who prefers his Triple Option play called 10-to-20 times a game. The Fox offense, even when it gets off the turf and starts throwing a few more passes around, requires offensive linemen to play with rapid mobility. Zach Weiner and Will “Stacy” Peralta are massive players who average 6’2″ and 275 lbs. They don’t necessarily fit the mold of the type of quick, speedy linemen who excel in the under-center option offense. But it upside is there if they can.
Otherwise, the team is set up to make some noise in Class 5. QB Chander Price probably wouldn’t want to go back and play the 2024 season over again, but his “emergency” takeover behind center turned into a good seasoning experience with a team poised to play better in 2025. Jude Pribish was bothered by injuries throughout last season, so it’ll be an added bonus if the upperclassman rusher debuts in full flight this Week 1.
Dropping one enrollment class will benefit Fox with MSHSAA Bonus Points from every win and close game against a Class 6 opponent from the Suburban League or elsewhere. Thanks to MSHSAA keeping its website going throughout the red-eye hours of 8/29 (miracles do happen!) we can see that the Warriors are in a winnable District this season as well, given that Poplar Bluff has been treading water and Farmington has a brand-new style.
The Geek has more “trades” to wish for this summer. Fox could trade Northwest some of its spare linemen over 260, and Northwest could send over a few smaller musclemen to block for “Rocket Toss” on the Arnold field. Northwest quarterback Cohenn Stark’s supporting cast did a LOT last year for a squad that was as badly undersized as it was. For perspective, this year’s Crystal City line outweighs last year’s Northwest line. Cedar Hill is set for a watershed year in the offensive backfield, with Stack throwing to talented WRs and handing the pigskin off to senior RB Drew “No Fat” Spratt. But if skipper Scott Gerling’s prediction that the Lions will be “lethal” on offense is going to come to fruition, Northwest needs to get stronger up front.
That’s where Gerling has to be a more open-minded coach than he usually is for Northwest to succeed. There’s a lot of big guys in this year’s sophomore class at Cedar Hill, and yet The Geek was surprised to see Gerling only mention one sophomore as a potential OL starter in the Jefferson County Leader. Good gosh, all due respect to ALL of the seniors at Northwest who have been turning the program around, but if the Lions are going to have a higher ceiling-of-performance in 2025, they need to get more of the bigger and younger linemen involved more quickly. The Geek has found that a team’s sophomores – more than any other High School players – do not stop growing and getting bigger, stronger, faster, and tougher during a season.
Class 6 could be as wide-open as any of Missouri’s eastern brackets in the 2025 playoffs. Kirkwood is in Class 5, and MICDS/Cardinal Ritter cannot be promoted any higher than Class 5 until if-and-when their actual campuses get large enough to be called Class 4. DeSmet won’t have what it had last autumn, which is potentially great news for Seckman or Northwest, as well as good news for Festus R-6 taking on DeSmet in midseason.
Still, the Fox Warriors can rest assured that it’s better to be in Class 5 than Class 6, due to the comparative lack of roadblocks in the bracket. Whoever wins Class 6, District 1 has to get through the Jackson Indians. Whoever wins that District championship then has to deal with CBC at some point. A “roadblock” in Class 5 could come against Eureka or Ritter or Kirkwood in Round 4, but those teams could get careworn having to fight each other.
The Gridiron Geek’s prediction for Class 6 is that if Nixa gets back to the Show-Me Bowl, whoever is announcing the game will be VERY nice.
Stay tuned for Week 1’s Friday Night Predictions later today. Thanks for your patience with Mississippi Magazine, folks!