The Dragon season opens: What happens now?

 

Nothing normal about this

The Southlake Carroll Dragons, against high odds, open their much-delayed football season against the Rockwall Heath Hawks on Friday. At least we hope they do.

Nothing is certain this year. COVID-19 already has delayed the Dragons’ season for more than a month and robbed us of the most anticipated matchup in many a year: the planned season opener between Todd Dodge’s Austin Westlake Chapparals and Riley Dodge’s Carroll Dragons, a father-son battle that had Texas high school football fans salivating.

All it would take for the entire season to be shelved is a widespread breakout of the corona virus among the young Dragons. Isolated cases have been reported around the district.

So it is with bated breath that we await the opening of the Dragons’ nine-game season. While the rest of 6A schools began their season last weekend, Carroll decided to postpone its startup for another week, sacrificing a game in the process.

Salty lineup

Along with the Westlake game, Carroll also had to drop Prosper and Arlington Martin from its pre-district schedule. Rockwall Heath remains, joined by replacements Rockwall and Denton Guyer. That’s a pretty salty opening lineup.

The Guyer game will be much anticipated. District mates for the past two years, Guyer and Carroll have a flowering rivalry that is becoming more testy all the time. The Dragons whipped the Wildcats in district play the past two years. But Guyer had the immense satisfaction of making it all the way to the state championship game last year before falling to Papa Dodge’s Westlake Chaps. It would dearly love to humble the Dragons on their home field on Oct. 16, and Guyer knows how since it's one of the few teams to have done so.

But the Wildcats will have their hands full. That’s because the anticipation surrounding this season for Dragon fans extended beyond the delicious prospect of seeing father and son battle for football supremacy within the Dodge family.

Best of the best?

It also centers around junior Quinn Ewers, who stands a good chance of becoming the best quarterback in Carroll history – not a meager goal in its own right – and one of the best in Texas high school history.

Quinn Ewers is one cool customer.

As a sophomore, Ewers fielded offers from a score of the nation's collegiate bluebloods before committing to UT. He's considered the No. 1 quarterback recruiting prospect in the nation.

Last year, Dallas Morning News sportswriter Greg Riddle, the DMN’s high school football expert, compared Ewers to Highland Park’s Matthew Stafford and Allen’s Kyler Murray, both No. 1 overall picks in the NFL draft, and other Texas-spawned greats. His judgment?

“Quinn Ewers could end up being better than all of them,” he wrote.

Consider this. Last year as a sophomore, Ewers completed 72.4 percent of his passes, threw for 4,003 yards and 45 touchdowns, with only three interceptions, during Carroll’s 13-1 season that ended in the regional finals. Along the way, he also ran for 569 yards and nine TDs.

According to Riddle, that puts Ewers on pace to throw for 12,009 yards and 135 TDs in his three years of varsity ball.

Murray, now playing for the Arizona Cardinals and AP’s 2019 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, passed for 10,386 and 117 TDs during his high school career. Stafford, who ranks in the top 20 in NFL history for career passing yards and career TD passes, threw for 8,711 yards and 92 TDs in his last three years of high school.

Who knows if all these numbers mean anything. But they do strongly suggest that young Ewers is very special and stands poised to do great things. If the gods allow.

And that’s a mighty big IF. Unfortunately, almost anything that happens during this strange season is going to have an asterisk attached. Nothing’s normal.

The “it” factor

That said, there’s no doubt about it. Ewers has the “it” factor. Anyone watching him during his first year on varsity last year sensed it immediately. A certain electricity swept through the stadium when he came on the field. During the playoff game against Duncanville, the Carroll side of the stadium was going bonkers during a 4^th quarter comeback that ultimately fell short. On the field, however, Ewers was cool as a cucumber.

“His strength right now is he is so even-keeled,” coach Riley Dodge told 76092 magazine in an article entitled “The Young Gun.” “That’s want you want in a quarterback. He’s cool, calm, collected. He doesn’t get too high with his highs or too low with his lows.

“He’s tough kid,” Dodge continued. “He’s going to stay in the pocket and deliver the football.”

The 6-3, 200-pound Ewers will have plenty of targets for his rocket right arm.

Senior Brady Boyd (6-1, 175 pounds) had a solid year in 2019, snagging 66 passes, eight for TDs. They included a stunning one-handed grab in the playoffs against Midland Lee that ended up on ESPN’s SportsCenter as one of the Top 10 plays of the day. Eleven of those receptions came in the pressure-cooker game against Duncanville.

Brady Boyd and his ESPN moment. 

Young and tested

Boyd will lead a receiving corps that includes juniors Landon Samson and Josh Spaeth. RJ Maryland, son of former Dallas Cowboy Russell Maryland, also will be a Ewers target. He's taking over the tight end/halfback spot handled so ably last year by Blake Smith, now at Texas A&M. 

And let’s don’t forget about sophomore Owen Allen, who turned 15 last year as the Dragons’ starting running back. The youngster rushed for 1,266 yards and 23 TDs in a phenomenal freshman campaign that had Dragon fans gasping in astonishment.

He’ll lead a ground attack that will include several stalwart backups, including senior Kannon Kadi.

Senior Joe McFadden, the latest in a long line of standout kickers produced by the Dragon program, rounds out Carroll’s offensive might. McFadden, ranked No. 3 kicker and No. 11 punter in the country, kicked seven out of 10 field-goal attempts last season and booted 84 of 86 point-after attempts. Combined, he accounted for 105 points, according to 76092 magazine.

They’ll all play behind an offensive front that looked good in last week’s scrimmage against DeSoto. It’s hard to tell much from a scrimmage, of course, but the Dragons should be able to put plenty of points on the scoreboard this year.

Whether they can stop their opponents from doing the same is a question still seeking an answer. Not a single member of last year’s D-line returned this year, and a new crop of linebackers and pass defenders are stepping into the fray. According to reports, they looked pretty ragged during the DeSoto scrimmage.

That’s hardly surprising. DeSoto is no slouch at offense, and the Dragons’ Big Guys still are getting their timing and rhythm down. And truth to tell, it’s a longstanding Carroll tradition for its almost-always undersized defensive squad to struggle in the beginning and get steadily better as the season wears on.

Meanwhile, defensive coordinator Lee Munn told 76092 readers to be on the lookout for cornerbacks Avyonne Jones and Cinque Williams and for linebackers Nate Gall and Travis Keener, a jack of all trades.

Going with the flow

Who knows what’s in store for the Dragons – or, frankly, for any of us – in this very strange, make-it-up-as-you-go-along season. Nothing is normal. I’m not even sure how many away games I’ll be able to attend this year. That’s unsettling because I’ve only missed a handful of Dragon games since I started following the team in 2006, the year my daughter started high school.

Most districts are limiting their stadiums to 50 percent capacity, with ticket priority going to their own fans and families of participants, of course. I plan to attend as many as I can, but as with everything else in this screwy year, it’ll be a weekly adventure.

I’ll be taking precautions, observing social distancing and wearing a mask. I can handle that all right, but the thing I worry about most is spending the evening at Dragon Stadium without fortifying myself with a Feedstore BBQ sandwich, which will be unavailable for the duration of the emergency.

I understand the necessity of the move. After all, I’m in the most COVID-vulnerable cohort. But no Feedstore BBQ? It’s just one more reason to damn COVID to the lowest pits of hell.

Stay safe everyone and go Dragons!