Something to prove
Southlake Carroll running back T.J.
McDaniel acknowledged he had something to prove Saturday when the Dragons faced
their oldest rivals, the Coppell Cowboys, in the first round of the 2018
playoffs.
And prove it he did.
McDaniel, who transferred to Carroll from
Coppell for his junior year, led the fire-breathing Dragon offense, both on the
ground and – shockingly – in the air, to its 11th-straight win this
year.
The Dragons meet the DeSoto Eagles in the
area round next Saturday at Vernon Newsom Stadium in Mansfield.
“I knew there was going to be quite a bit
of physical play today,” McDaniel told Dragon Radio after the game. “And there
was. I guess they felt they had something to prove to me. And I had something
to prove to them, too.”
Head coach Riley Dodge, who now has
enjoyed the most successful first season as any Carroll head coach in history,
knew Coppell was likely to key on McDaniel, the mainstay of the Dragon offense
all season.
In anticipation, he and his staff prepared
an offensive scheme for the game with a few distinctive twists, such as using the
SMU commit as a receiver in certain situations.
No answer
It worked exceedingly well. McDaniel ran
for 313 yards on 29 carries and made four rushing touchdowns. And he caught two
Will Bowers passes for 27 yards and another score. The overmatched Cowboys,
forced to contend with an elusive, hard-running rusher and a slippery,
sure-handed receiver, had no answer.
Dodge said he understood McDaniel’s
determination to perform well against his former teammates.
“I think that definitely had something to
do with the way he played today,” Dodge said in a post-game radio interview.
“His family has roots in Coppell. He played with some of these guys. But I’m
proud of the way he prepared. He went about his business and treated
it as just another game.”
Meanwhile, the Dragon defense picked the
Coppell game to turn in its best performance of the year, both in the eyes of
its coach and in my less-experienced but no less enthusiastic opinion.
“They were relentless,” Dodge said simply.
Linebacker Colton Hunter said the key to
the D’s success wasn’t mysterious at all.
“The coach emphasizes getting off the ball
quickly,” Hunter said. “And we did.”
One statistic tells it all. Coppell’s
total rushing yards yesterday? 30 on 31 carries. Carroll’s defensive front,
playing without standout nose guard Quentin Bunton, who suffered a knee injury
last week, neutralized Cowboy quarterback Drew Cerniglia and corralled running
back Ryan Hirt.
Meager impact
Cerniglia fared better in the air,
completing 12 of 17 for 160, but with meager impact.
The Dragons held the Cowboys scoreless until
the last 2 minutes of the first half after coasting to a comfortable – and as
it turned out, unassailable – 24-point lead.
Only then did Coppell finally put together
an effective drive, powered by a pair of Cerniglia passes and a late-hit call
against the Dragons. That brought Coppell inside the Dragon red zone, where the
drive stalled after the Cowboy quarterback was sacked on a 3th-and-16
at the 25. Coppell had to settle for a 42-yard field goal from its superb kicker, Caden
Davis.
Coppell would not score again until late
in the 4th, long after the Dragon defense, with Carroll holding a
45-3 lead, began thinking about next week’s matchup with DeSoto.
The Cowboys, facing the fury of an
inspired Dragon D-line, kept shooting itself in the foot. At least two drives
were ruined by bad snaps that led to quarterback sacks.
The bad blood between these two programs,
which goes back decades, finally surfaced late in the game after Carroll
starters had departed. As McDaniel noted, it had been a hard-hitting game all
afternoon, and Coppell’s frustration with the butt-kicking being administrated
by the Dragons finally boiled over.
Fielding a Carroll punt at about the
Coppell 30, the returner veered to the right sideline where he
encountered a cluster of Dragon defenders at the 42. As he fought for more
yardage, the Cowboy threw a punch at his tormentors, causing Carroll fans to
gasp in shock.
He didn’t connect, but game officials took
a dim view of the matter, penalizing Coppell back to its own 7. Another bad
snap backed Coppell up another 5 yards. Two plays later, Taj Gregory, Cerniglia’s
reliever, bobbled a snap and was pushed out of the back of the end zone for a
safety, adding insult to the injury already felt by the suffering Cowboys, who
finish the season 7-4.
His first at his last
For the Dragons, some good came from the
Coppell fiasco. On the drive following the ensuing free kick, backup
quarterback Blake Smith brought his team to the 3, where senior backup RB
Matthew Broadway, playing in his last game in Dragon Stadium, made Carroll’s
final score – and his first varsity touchdown.
But it was starting QB Will Bowers and
McDaniel who powered the Dragons’ domineering performance. Bowers was 14 of 19
for 166 yards and 2 TDs. His leading receiver was the remarkable R.J. Mickens,
3-58, who played brilliantly in all three phases for Carroll. WR John Manero also
stood out, snagging five Bowers throws for 45 yards and a touchdown.
And then there was McDaniel, who unleashed
the Dragon scoring spree on the third play of the game with a heart-pounding 70-yard
TD sprint down the left side. For McDaniel, it was nothing special. In the two
previous games, he scored on the first play of the game.
His second TD came near the end of the 1st
quarter, when he sprinted 24 yards, hurtled a Cowboy tackler at the goal line and
arrived in the end zone up right and sassy.
All in all, it was a perfect day. Just
perfect. The weather was flawless, bright sunshine with a cool southwestern
breeze. I actually got a bit of a sunburn. The week before Thanksgiving. That’s
Texas for you.
Love the shellacking
As for the game itself, purists will tell
you that blowouts don’t qualify as good games. I don’t disagree. But it’s good
to see your team perform at a high level at the point in the season when it
matters most. Beyond that, I loved the shellacking the Dragons gave the
Cowboys. That program deserves it.
Coppell fans and players, by and large,
are arrogant, rude and boorish. Not all, I’ll grant you. But many. I vividly
remember one home game when Coppell students taunted the Carroll Marching Band
and pelted it with soft drinks and other debris as the band kids waited to go
on the field. We should have called the dogs on them.
And the thrown punch yesterday? I’ve seen
such things at the end of a play, when youthful tempers flare. But to take a
swing at an opponent to gain an advantage while the play is developing? That’s all
kinds of wrong.
The irony is that the Dragon most
responsible for the Coppell angst, the worthy McDaniel, has friends on the
Cowboys, including his best friend, wide receiver/defensive back Jonathan
McGill, another SMU commit.
“A lot of those guys are going to be my
friends forever,” he told radio interviewer Chuck Kelly. “But today, they were
my enemies.”
He said he and McGill probably will be
roommates next year at SMU. They both knew that this game would end the season
for one of them.
“I hate that he’s going home, but that’s
the way it is,” McDaniel said. “I know that he’s going to be behind me for the
rest of the season. I know that he’s going to be a Dragon fan from here on. I
can’t love that guy enough.”
Hollywood moment
One of the topics for conversation between
the roommates could be the play in which McDaniel uncharacteristically coughed
up the ball inside the red zone as the Dragons were closing in for their fourth
score. The Cowboy who recovered it? One Jonathan McGill. (The moment is captured in the photo below.)
So DeSoto looms next. The Dragons will
have their hands full with the 9-2 Eagles. Playoff games against the Eagles are
always exciting, hard-fought affairs. Carroll ended DeSoto’s season last year
with a 33-15 win.
The Eagles, who slipped past a good but
not great Skyline 55-53 on Friday, are not the frightening juggernaut of
previous years. But you can bet they’ll play tough and rough next week in
Mansfield.
Dodge says his team will be ready. And I
believe him, based on the game story in today’s Dallas Morning News. In it, McDaniel, a senior, talked eloquently
about the powerful emotional bond that girds the Carroll squad together and
drives the Dragons to keep winning.
“After the season’s over, you don’t see
them,” McDaniel told reporter Joe Hoyt, speaking of his teammates. “That’s why
we talk about keeping the brotherhood alive because when football is over,
these juniors, these sophomores, even the freshmen, they won’t see us anymore.”
Go Dragons!
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