There is joyful irony about what head coach Nick Baer said about his Seckman Jaguars, and the county’s myriad of other clubs that compete in the Suburban League, in the preseason of summer 2026. Baer, as justifiably as you’ll ever hear a local skipper complain, said that the Suburban League’s system creates a “dead zone” in northern Jefferson County that keeps those Friday Night Lights venues from being recognized as the highlights of Missouri’s new hotbed, which they are, and deserve to be credited for. “When the northern schools come here, they think they’re down in the boonies,” Baer told Ray Halbrook, sadly adding that potential opponents who know what Seckman, Fox, and Northwest mean to the region’s pigskin, such as Festus, Hillsboro, and DeSoto High, almost never get to bus up and have a melee on the Meramec.
It’s like Marcus Aurelius said. “Ask of a thing, what of it.” What about St. Louis teams not respecting the Imperial and Arnold kids enough to think they’re visiting a football mecca, not the Shepherd of the Hills? They’d better get with the program, or else they are going to be defeated, over and over again, by our poor little community of beet farmers in JeffCo. There’s been such a sea change in the STL Metro’s balance of power that south-of-the-Meramec schools can fire shots across-the-bow at STL just by clobbering each other. SHS didn’t just make a statement last Friday, it made a relevant one, reverberating from the Gateway to Jackson.
Seckman annihilated Cedar Hill’s powerful Northwest Lions 38-7 in the Class 6 district semifinals, whipping the Lions on their home turf for the first time since 2024. WHOA, what a hurting the 8-2 Varsity Jaguars put on a penalty-away-from-unbeaten opponent in Friday’s semifinal. Baer’s defense, led by talented tacklers Jackson Rutledge and Boyer Hart, held Northwest’s star QB Cohenn Stark to an unfathomably low 59 rushing yards on 11 carries. Stark finished a brave 9-of-19 with an INT in his final Varsity tilt, considering that Seckman’s excellent edge-rusher Matt Muessig was all over the place, scoring three sacks on the night.
Oh, and 5’11” senior linebacker Brody Mosello became the “Logan Young of Class 6” in Week 11, taking over the Jaguars’ effort to the shock of all concerned – the unlucky Lions most of all. Mosello nearly matched Muessig with two QB takedowns, while snagging the early interception off of Stark near midfield that gave the Jags their first momentum swing. “BrOdY mOsELLo?” The Geek yelps in a Chris Berman voice. But in reality, Week 11’s difference maker is ranking top-five on SHS’s defense in both sacks and tackles.
That kind of defense put Brody Kube’s attack in business, and gosh, did the Jaguars’ speedsters ever cash in. Jaxson Jablonski’s return to the RB position has been as revelatory as Kube’s return to the QB position, given that the junior J.J. has taken to dual roles in the backfield like an Army or Navy RB-turned-QB-turned-RB. Jablonski led the way with 124 rush yards and three touchdowns, sparking an Imperial offense that would manufacture nearly twice as many points as any other NHS opponent in 2026.
Kube was outstanding against Jeremy Clines’ defense, going 9-of-15 for nearly 200 yards, and executing the tricky sequence when Seckman got Nick Weidler his eighth TD reception of the year. “You should call that a Goal-Line Flea Flicker,” said Mississippi Magazine scout Doug Anderson to The Geek. But our conversation had already turned more serious as the Jaguars built a crushing 28-0 advantage, hushing the throng that had arrived to cheer Northwest’s most successful bid in decades. “They’re going for the jugular!” Anderson shouted, as SHS ruled Quarter 2.
Nobody has blown Cohenn Stark and the Northwest Lions off the field in consecutive seasons, until now. Northwest, apart from its exhausted, futile journey into The Pit last November, has pulverized so many schools in a row that we’ve long lost count. It’s insane that SHS made it look like September 2025 again versus Cedar Hill. No STL Metro team has outclassed Northwest since that time.
Okay, so Jackson is at least nominally on notice against the Seckman Jaguars. Muessig and Mosello’s pass rush alone could give the Indians a few questions to answer on offense, because it will take more than Jaylon Hampton’s speedy carries up the middle to quiet an edge-rushing front which can get to the pocket without requiring the defensive backfield to help by blitzing. Weidler, known as the Jaguars’ first official Iron Man of Baer’s reign, is in such a groove on offense that it’s not so physically taxing for the veteran dynamo to cover fast WRs as a defensive back, then gallop down the sidelines to give Kube one primary elite target downfield.
But what’s most striking about Seckman’s gutsy, resilient, and thrilling 2026 season – and postseason – is how it plays into the story that MSHSAA’s superior teams are RIGHT HERE among us – no longer do St. Louis county’s best programs represent some kind of mysterious wall standing in our way. In fact, the football gets better as you leave St. Louis and head south on I-55 – St. Mary’s, Fox, The Valley, Festus, St. Pius, Jefferson, Valle, Sikeston, Jackson. Several of those teams will be crowned champions in a few days.
Not only is it a litany of conference tycoons and state-playoff hopefuls that the actual STL area can’t touch right now, it is also a set of Varsity lineups who’ve had to slug their way through harder schedules – save for maybe Jefferson and Sikeston – than Suburban League representatives north of the county line wind up having to face. A plain example of this is how Chaminade Prep’s 33-14 win over 2-9 Hazelwood East, which was shut out two consecutive times before losing to Seckman 40-6 this year, makes the Red Devils look poor going into a Class 5 district final against Cardinal Ritter, which Chaminade may win anyway. Imagine a Jefferson County team eking past Windsor, 33-14, then going on to win a localized District, because the field in the region was so questionable. That was Jefferson County 15 years ago. These days, it’s St. Louis county in which the small number of strong teams are under heavy pressure to beat Hazelwood, Webster, Mehlville, and others 100-0, or else they look weak, such as Chaminade Prep in Week 11.
Step back and look at Seckman’s 10-date resume. When healthy, the Jaguars have appeared almost unbeatable at times. They’ve held Ritenour, Parkway North, and Northwest to an average of fewer than 10 PPG over the past three contests, which puts the Jags’ defense on a plain with Aiden Schirmer’s defense at Festus, while vaulting Imperial’s “Defense Rank” over the rehabbing St. Pius X Lancers. You can vie to win Jackson’s bracket by running the football again and again, while playing the world’s best pass coverage, which is how Lee Summit outlasted the Indians in 2025’s state playoffs. But no one contends that’s the only possible way to mount a Cinderella’s surprise in The Pit on Championship Weekend. Seckman’s formula of rushing the QB that produced six sacks against Northwest, mixed with Kube and Weidler’s ability to turn sudden-change turns into touchdowns, is an alternative formula that can bother Jackson High’s 10-0 club. The Geek has prayed to see a Seckman lineup with this kind of edge-rush visiting Jackson!
Jackson’s 49-7 semifinal win over Lindbergh was very impressive considering how strong the Flyer defense had come on at the tail end of the regular season. Lindbergh’s kickoff at Jackson wound up going a lot like other strong Large Schools’ contests with the Indians, namely Festus or Hannibal’s, in the single sense that the Flyers teased keeping up on offense in Quarter 1, but it was not a significant thing at all because you can’t keep up with Usain Bolt in a track meet. Jackson’s great defense is its own team’s secret sauce this year, a unit that is playing more doggedly and efficiently than teams with point-a-minute offenses are supposed to.
Coach Baer’s challenge is to break that pattern. Seckman’s best hope may be if Jackson’s all-star tailbacks have a big night running up the middle, because that would at least shorten the game and give the Jaguars a chance to punch the ball out in the pile. The Jaguars’ deceptive offense is the perfect underdog’s attack in a low-scoring tilt, in which they can lie like a cobra in the undergrowth before unleashing a trick play for a touchdown. But against a crew of Jackson tacklers who can stop your best rusher with their left hands while they stop your trick plays with their throwin’ mitts, it might take another of Baer’s inspired coaching performances to improve on Seckman’s 21-point loss to Jackson in the teams’ last meeting, one that decided the C6D1 championship in 2024.
Elsewhere in Class 6’s eastern bracket, CBC’s inconsistent squad managed to trip DeSmet for a second time, eliminating the Metro Catholic’s best team of October after suffering through a 1-3 streak. They’ll face Kirkwood for the C6D2 hardware this Friday, while Pattonville hosts C6D3’s rubber match against Saint Louis University High. Mississippi Magazine is happy to see the Festus Tigers’ recent rival Troy Buchanan having one of Class 6’s best seasons to date, now preparing to host District 4’s championship contest against Fort Zumwalt West. The top-seeded Trojans have the same advantage Festus enjoyed against Sullivan, and would have enjoyed against Sullivan’s OT victim Vianney, in the Class 4 state quarterfinals of last season – the fact that Fort Zumwalt West advanced via a 36-35 heartstopper of a drama with Francis Howell, while Troy pulled to a 20-point victory in its own semifinal.
Photo Credit: Jeremy Pritchett Facebook