The Gridiron Geek considers his relationship with Black & Gold football to be sweeter, not more aloof, due to not having always been a fan of the Tigers since childhood. FHS was among the “bad guy” teams that always defeated the neighborhood’s small-schools in the old Jefferson County Conference way back when, and as a teenager, TGG had the misfortune of transferring to R-6 just as the Varsity brand was taking a big dive off a tall cliff. The early 1990s were a golden era, but as your blogger was completing High School in 1997, well, it was hard to cheer for a lineup that organized macho stunts in pregame while its classy opponents stood clapping, then trailed 0-49 in Quarter 2.
It was nice when Joel Critchlow (and later Russ Schmidt) whipped the program into shape and overcame the loss of Jefferson R-7 enrollees to produce winning teams through the 2010s. But it took a number of episodes to make a lifelong Tiger fanatic out of The Geek, including a gig traveling with the squad and doing media chores for 2 seasons, helping to convince Superintendent Luttrell and the schoolboard who not to hire as head coach in 2020, and last but not least, getting to know a terrific youth player on the sidelines prior to a Homecoming Game in 2014, a padawan who caught every last wobbly wiffle-ball TGG threw at him. (His name? Oh, Cole Rickermann, or something like that.)
No disrespect to readers who say things like, “I was born as a Cardinals fan, and I’ll be a Cardinals fan in retirement.” But anyone can just cheer for their school, city, or college forever. Cheering for a team each and every year from birth overlooks the fact that 90 rosters in a row aren’t bound to all be heroic angels worth living-and-dying for on weekends. It’s almost as if the rooting interest was merely handed to you instead of picked out. Festus pigskin has come to represent something to The Geek that it wouldn’t if he hadn’t once been a jilted bride as a fan and journalist. Part of that process has been learning not to “mark-out” as a fan at every turn and every kickoff. There’s times when it’s wise to realize that each Friday’s foe is someone’s alma mater too, and what’s good for your boys is bad for theirs.
Friday of Week 12 – weirdly enough – is one of those times. Yes, a Festus vs Hillsboro game is the occasion on which Mississippi Magazine sets neutrality aside, and adopts a “home team” lingo while recounting a bitter rivalry. But that can’t be a no-exceptions rule either, not if our MSHSAA “dirty dozen” is part of the same community. If Festus upsets Hillsboro this weekend, this household will cheer and celebrate along with many others in the Tri-Cities. Yet there wouldn’t be any denying what a bitter, sad, ugly disappointment it would be for an HHS Hawk team of destiny.
This is the Hillsboro team that’s supposed to win a District title, meant to win a District title, has to win a District title. There’s been too much success, too many touchdowns, and too many Division 1 level performances over the past 3 seasons for the Blue & White to fall short now. If that kind of pressure is wearing on Jaxin Patterson’s lineup, it didn’t emerge last week as the Hawks debuted in the playoffs by smashing rival Farmington 57-0. Patterson learned as a youngster that a loose, relaxed option-offense beats a nervous group gritting its teeth, and his supporting cast is discovering the same after not only scoring more points, but taking less penalties than Seckman or FHS in ’22.
Festus could play a perfect District Championship Game at Leon Hall, beat Hillsboro 45-44, and go on to represent the flag of county football with honor against St. Mary’s. But that’s not probable given the din of battle at Hillsboro (STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!) and what promises to be a chilly, bracing Friday night by the stables. Regretfully, it’s more likely that an upset loss for #1 would come thanks to a flat, uninspired 48:00 such as the scenario in last year’s final scrum. HHS alums would finally be pushed to demand answers from the coaching staff as to why Hillsboro can’t match its own excellence in November, and that story wouldn’t be any more fun to report than to live-out on a local campus.
FHS can’t worry about being a catalyst for calamity – the Varsity Tigers have no alternative but to chase that “classic” win. Thankfully, the team has proven to be excellent with ball-security and solid choices from the pocket since Week 5’s turnover-plagued loss at Hillsboro, and to say that the R-6 defense turned a corner against NCHS would be an understatement. Still, the boys are a year away from matching HHS’s depth and execution for 4 straight frames, and victory in a 2nd championship scrum in 3 years – while very possible – will require a walk across a tightrope for the visitors. If any part of a delicate Festus game-plan falls apart, Hillsboro will score yet another lopsided triumph.
Eli Ortmann’s defense will have to do more than stop the Hillsboro Hawks. It’ll have to produce some type of short-field opportunities for a Tiger attack that’s still better off scoring a massive TD than driving for 12-15 plays. The offensive line led by Peyton Besore (No, Google, that’s not BED-SORE!) has been chewing-up some pedestrian opponents in what’s an exciting sign of progress to be sure, but there’s no such thing as executing your way downfield vs a defense like Leon Hall’s, with potential Division 1 stars prowling the hashes and looking for balls to swat out of the air. Festus has faced plenty of tough Hillsboro defenses, but the 2022 group is a play-making unit that can foil the best drive with a stupendous tackle-for-loss or a busted play. You’re fatter if you look to score the winning points vs HHS in fits-and-starts, while otherwise working to protect the egg, the formula that worked well enough for Cardinal Ritter. Any postseason rival – including St. Mary’s – that tries to “hog the ball” on Hillsboro may be asking for trouble.
QBs Essien Smith and Jeremiah Cunningham will have chances to make plays on 4th downs, since Patterson and Austin Romaine are such dangerous home-run batters that there’s no point trying to pin HHS deep in its own territory. Festus must only worry about securing solid-enough field position to put the Hawks in a punt-scenario a few times. Mississippi Magazine has written musical-jingles trying to get HC A.J. Ofodile to diversify his backfield and allow powerful Hayden Bates to block for a few fast little guys this year, but on Friday, players like Landen Bradshaw and Landen Yates would be best-served in the slot next to WR Arhmad Branch, giving the Tigers a chance to flood the gridiron with so many swift receivers that Patterson, Romaine, and Peyton Brown can’t cover them all at once. Cunningham and Smith can’t use the wide-open circumstances as an excuse to be reckless on 3rd down, though, because having 4th down in manageable yardage at midfield will be a key to each team’s success in Week 12.
Hillsboro’s strengths in 2022 also pose a challenge for Festus coaches under the team’s current paradigm. Coach O is a “jazz” style teacher, not a classical-style teacher of offense. The Geek’s classical music teachers always insisted that note #1 be played perfectly before you ever thought about moving on to note #2. But a jazz instructor figures if you get into the music and play every day, you’ll develop the precision along with everything else. Most head coaches would have burned the dressing room down after FHS took 6 consecutive false-start penalties at Farmington in 2020. But Ofodile shrugged it off like a professor handing out charts of “Autumn Leaves,” guessing out loud that the Tigers naturally had better performances soon to come. He wasn’t wrong – but FHS still hasn’t killed the penalty bug in ’22. However it happens, we know the Tigers will be in 1st-and-15 a few times in the championship tilt. Encouragingly, Midmeadow Lane’s offense has grown into such an explosive group that 15+ yards isn’t always a problem.
For the Hawks coaches, it comes back to the same conundrum Hillsboro faced against North County in 2020. Preston Brown’s fancy new offense isn’t as surefire a way to knife through an LB like Mason Schirmer as the team’s Flexbone attack of old. (Remember, the Blue & White can always bring Griffin Ray onto the field – or put Mr. Brown behind center – and run the old-fashioned, periscope-down style of offense that the Hawks still know like the backs of their hands.) The trade-off is that Hillsboro can pass the ball more comfortably now, or run complicated delay-carries that wouldn’t jive with the timing of the under-center Flex. But the team’s play calling can’t resemble that of the 2019 Varsity Hawks, merely with longer snaps-from-scrimmage. If Brown’s “Muskegon” method is allowed to wreak havoc on the Festus defensive backfield with passes and runs-after-catch, the developing Tigers will get a dose of their own medicine.
What about that “checklist” Festus needs to win? It begins and ends with turnovers. Black & Gold has to get some turnovers, preferably on Hillsboro’s side of the field. One of the few advantages FHS may enjoy on Friday is that the school’s otherwise meager kicking game in ’22 seems tailor-made to give Hillsboro issues in a high-scoring scrum. Festus has been kicking-off with an old-fashioned, sharp squib-kick into the opposing blockers around the 35, which prevents either of the Brown brothers from taking off with a kick-return TD while forcing HHS to handle a knuckling football, and giving the defense at least 1 shot to force a punting scenario if the egg is fielded conservatively. The Hillsboro kicking game is proud by comparison (imagine that!), but in a frigid weather game, long kickoffs at least present Festus returners with simple options in the open field. On the flip side, if the teams are trading TDs in a deadlocked contest, you can see FHS getting a key squib-kick recovery, botched by an LB with numb fingers.
Now, it feels stranger still to make a prediction that has nothing to do with the “45-44” ping-pong match The Geek just described. With 10+ combined players on the field who specialize in scoring long touchdowns, we’ve got to be prepared to see it. But that’s what everyone thought might happen in 2021’s District Semifinal, which instead turned into a defensive struggle of the highest order, in which Festus’ offense didn’t score and Hillsboro’s barely did.
It’s not a good idea to pick against a team’s trends in prep football, in which all of a roster’s preparation and moxie goes into 12-or-less games in a typical season. For instance, Mississippi Magazine got the forecast on Jefferson vs St. Vincent dead-wrong again in 2022, mostly due to overlooking how Jefferson’s offense came alive vs burly St. Genevieve. We don’t want to ignore the game-by-game trends again going into a championship scrum.
Schirmer’s performance against North County in Week 11 gives the Tigers too many options at linebacker for the defense to continue to fold at the 2nd level. Size, speed, experience, and an aggressive turn of tactics has helped a formerly struggling ‘D turn a corner. Meanwhile, as cliché as it was to say after the Week 5 loss, FHS did prove that the boys can move the ball against HHS if they can only hold onto it. But just because you reach the Red Zone doesn’t amount to scoring TDs against a defense as deep, determined, and destined as Hillsboro’s this year.
It’s not that unlikely that in spite of the cold, the Hillsboro Hawks and Festus Tigers’ best veterans will each “get their touchdowns” and that the score will be 49-28 in favor if the 21-point favorites, given that HHS still has a few more effective seniors handy than Black & Gold this time around. But instead, The Geek imagines a game not unlike the Florida State vs Northern Illinois postseason bout at the Orange Bowl in 2013, with the Varsity Hawks playing the victorious Seminoles while the Tigers’ dual-threat QBs play the role of former NIU quarterback Jordan Lynch. Lynch played like crazy and did everything but get loose around end against FSU, while the Huskies’ generational lineup chased the ball and contained Florida State’s high-powered offense for most of the night. An upset victory for the Group-of-5 wasn’t in the cards (not everyone gets to be Appalachian State) but the score was never an eyesore.
We expect to see Festus just missing on chances to score at the end of sustained drives, while Hillsboro overcomes a fumble on a squib-kick in the 1st quarter (or the 4th quarter) to stay ahead by just enough TDs to breathe easy. Midmeadow Lane’s “Piston Honda – World Circuit” defense could shock the Hawks by playing so far above its Week 5 performance-level early, but Hillsboro’s new-and-improved playbook gives the hosts a thousand ways to fight back quickly, rather than rely on the slow-burn adjustments of HHS teams that needed longer to take over a game.
FHS supporters must set rivalry-mania aside and consider what a solid opportunity it is for the 6-5 Tigers to get a championship game against Hillsboro, since the team opened-up by losing to state-playoff contenders from Class 3, and now has a chance to show how much it has grown against a Show-Me Bowl contender from Class 4. It would be different if the majority of Tiger Stadium’s best weren’t going to be sticking around for 1-2 years, but a fun-to-watch defeat would be a more promising long-term sign than beating Hillsboro in a blooper bowl. Even a 27-point loss to HHS on its best day would be a sign of maturity after losing by 28 to a probable C3 bridesmaid from Valle U., provided the FHS defense doesn’t wear socks on its hands and give up 35 quick points to Hillsboro again in Friday’s rematch.
Don’t worry, if Festus finds a way to prevail as a heavy underdog, The Geek will celebrate and replay the footage more often than JCTV replayed the Great 2-Point Conversion Incident from a Festus-Hillsboro game in 1986. But not if the victory is by a final score of 6-3 in a farce that features 3 field goals, 4 fumbles, and 5 interceptions. Neither potential winner of a District title game such as that would be able to threaten St. Mary’s for 4 quarters in the next round, and Jefferson County fans deserve to see a fiery representative in the C4 state tournament after watching so many promising bids fall apart over the last few weeks. PREDICTION: HAWKS 34, TIGERS 14