‘A defining moment’
The Southlake Carroll Dragons entered Globe Life Park in Arlington
yesterday as a well-oiled, finely tuned machine, a machine that bowled over,
chewed up and spit out a very good football team.
The Euless Trinity Trojans fought gamely to the end, but
they had no answer for the Dragons’ offensive firepower and no success in
overwhelming Carroll’s swarming defense.
Yesterday’s win propels Carroll into the semi-final round of
the playoffs for the first time since 2011, the year it won its eighth state
championship.
Riley Dodge, who has compiled a 37-3 record in his three
years as Carroll head coach, has seen his team get ousted from the fourth round
of the playoffs for the past two years. He said his team understands the
significance of breaking through to the fifth, penultimate, round.
“We talked about
it all week: This is a defining moment for us as a program, even though we have
a historically rich program,” Dodge told The Dallas Morning News’ Joseph
Hoyt. “This is a big win for us, and I’m proud of the guys for answering the
bell.”
He added, “To be
in the final four in the state of Texas in 6A Division I – that means
everything to us.”
And the school
standing in the way of Carroll advancing to the final Division I (big school)
championship game? The same team that booted the Dragons from the playoffs in
2018 and 2019 – the dreaded Duncanville Panthers.
Duncanville
hammered DeSoto yesterday 56-28 to reach the semi-finals. It is seeking to make
its third straight trip to the championship game, where it has lost the past
two years to the Galena Park North Shore Mustangs. Duncanville’s talented
three-star receiver Roderick Daniels Jr. admitted after the game that his team
already is looking past the Dragons in seeking a rematch with the Mustangs.
Well, we’ll see.
But more about that later.
Yesterday’s game was the ninth matchup between Carroll and
Trinity, two schools with vastly different fan bases located only 10 miles
apart. While Carroll now leads the series 6-3, most of those contests were
bruising, hard-fought affairs. Five of the first seven were decided by 4 points
or less.
Their first encounter, the 2006 playoff game when both
schools were returning state champions in different divisions, is considered by
many to be one of the best high school football games ever played. Carroll eked
out a victory in the closing seconds with a touchdown run by none other than
Riley Dodge. The Dragons went on to win their third consecutive state
championship four weeks later.
Close-run matchup
This year’s game was expected to be another close-run
matchup between 11-1 Trinity and 10-1 Carroll. And it might have been, too, if
not for the superb performance of Dragon quarterback Quinn Ewers.
Ewers, playing in his second game since returning from a
sports-hernia injury, demonstrated, in grand fashion and on a prominent stage,
why he’s rated the No. 1 junior quarterback in the nation. He completed almost
90 percent of his passes, piling up 450 yards in the air and scoring six
touchdowns.
Brady Boyd reels in one of his 4 TD passes.
Ewers was, in fact, almost perfect. During the first half,
he completed every pass he threw, save one. And even that sole incompletion
fell into the hands of Landon Samson (13 receptions for 137 yards, 2 TDs), who
came within inches of keeping his feet in bounds.
That play set up a 4th down that Carroll
successfully converted. Two plays later, Ewers connected with Brady Boyd (17
receptions for 261 yards), who strode into the end zone from the Trinity 35 for
his first of four TDs. With 8 minutes left in the half, the Dragons led 21-0.
Trinity teams traditionally have never been particularly
good at playing catchup, but you can’t fault the Trojans for not trying. After
all, they had recent history on their side.
In the second round of the playoffs, Euless trailed Midland
Lee by three touchdowns near the end of the half, only to score four unanswered
TDs to get back into a game they eventually won 56-49.
Played lights out
But the Carroll Dragons are not Midland Lee, and the Dragon
defense played lights out against Euless’ powerful ground game, led by
hard-charging Ollie Gordon, who last week rushed for 455 yards on 49 – you
heard me, 49 – carries. He scored six TDs in the Trojans’ 49-45 win over the formidable
Allen Eagles.
Gordon scored three TDs yesterday, gaining 204 yards on 23
carries. But most of his success came on just two plays, one a 75-yard TD dash on
the first play from scrimmage in the 2nd quarter and the other a thundering
92-yard kickoff return for a TD in the 3rd quarter.
The Dragons established their dominance early. Ewers led his
team to its first score less than a minute into the game, when sophomore Owen
Allen (31-161, 2 TDs) plunged across the goal line from the 3.
The defense stifled Euless with a 3-and-out, setting up a
few minutes later the second Carroll score, an 18-yard pass from Ewers to
Samson.
On its second possession, Trinity struggled downfield, with
Gordon fighting for every yard, to the Dragon 15, where Carroll stopped the
drive cold. Faced with a 4-10, the Trojans, wary of Ewers' mastery on Carroll’s
first two drives, eschewed a field-goal attempt. But they failed to convert
when quarterback Valentino Foni was chased out of the pocket and threw an
incompletion.
The Dragons took over and eventually widened their lead to three
scores.
Few exceptions
Carroll scored on all but one of its possessions – eight TDs
and a 32-yard field goal by Joe McFadden. The exception came when Trojan Jacob
Schaeffer intercepted a Carroll pass after Ewers was hit as he released the
ball, one of the few times Trinity was able to break through the Dragon O-line.
With few exceptions, his Big Guys gave Ewers’ plenty of time
in the pocket to survey the field and pepper his receivers with perfectly timed
and targeted balls. When he did feel pressure, he calmed stepped forward and
finished the play. At one point, as he avoided a tackler, Ewers actually lofted a
ball with his left hand. His receiver had to correct his route, but the play
gained yardage.
Landon Samson, who caught two TD passes, evades a tackler.
He and his receivers – Boyd and Samson – ruled the field. At
this point in the season, they operate as a single synchronized unit. Ewers' long
passes to Boyd, in the left or right corner of the end zone, were absolute
things of beauty, the ball arriving in Boyd’s hands an instant before he zoomed
out of bounds.
Such artistry requires talent, yes, but it also takes
discipline, intelligence and practice, practice, practice.
As for the defense, well, I’m reminded that in football, as
in most things, timing is everything. And the Carroll defense picked the fourth
round of the playoffs, when the level of competition rises dramatically, to put
all the pieces together. Its hard work on the practice field and in the film room
shined through in dramatic fashion yesterday.
Hold their own
Most Dragon fans
believed that Ewers and company could hold their own in a shootout. But many of
us worried about the defense’s ability to control Gordon. He truly is a beast.
His performance against the Eagles last week brought him almost a half-dozen
scholarship offers.
And while he got his yards against the Dragons, he did not
pick up his team and carry it to victory as he did against Allen. The Dragon
D-line hung tough and strangled his attempts to take over the game.
Carroll will have its hands full next Saturday against the
Panthers, who I suspect will be strong favorites to carry the day. But don’t
count the Dragons out just yet. During last year’s game, Quinn Ewers staged an
impressive comeback in the fourth quarter that fell short but came close enough
to have Dragon fans gulping for air and Panther fans sweating bullets.
It was that effort that helped earn the young Ewers, then a
sophomore, the national profile that he enjoys today. And here’s the thing. He is
oh-so-much-better today than he was in December 2019. And so are his receivers.
Add to that a defense that has gelled into a solid,
tough-as-nails front, and you’ve got the makings of one helluva football game.
Riley Dodge says this game was "a defining moment" for his program.
So when Roderick Daniels Jr., one of Duncanville’s top
players, says he “most definitely” wants to play North Shore again for the
state title, he’d best not count his chickens before they hatch. (Although I
suspect his coach, the venerable Reginald Samples, already has had that
conversation with his player.)
Interesting history
A final note on yesterday’s game. The history of the
Southlake-Euless rivalry is an interesting one. The schools could not be more
different. Trinity High School is middle-class, multi-cultural and
multi-racial. Carroll High School is not. Euless is a solid blue-collar town
with a slightly rough edge. Southlake is upscale, exclusive and full of
attitude.
And yet, the football programs at both schools are quite
close. Respect and comradeship reign over the relationship. I hear Dragon fans
say all the time, “I always root for the Trojans – except when they’re playing
us.”
As do I. At the end of that nail-biting 2006 game, which my
team had just won (by the skin of its teeth), I watched teary eyed as the
dejected Trojans gathered in front of their fans, who hadn’t moved a muscle
since the final whistle, and performed the Haka war dance, a Trinity tradition.
But the Haka wasn’t what sparked my emotions. As the Trojans
stamped and flexed their muscles, Dragon players – who usually gather in front
of the Dragon Band after a game to sing the school song – stood still as
statues, their eyes trained on their erstwhile foes.
Once the Haka ended,
players from both teams embraced, friends once more.
Nothing has changed. In a radio interview after the game,
Brady Boyd was asked about the unique connection between the two programs.
“We have nothing but respect for them,” he said of the
Trojan players. “There was no trash-talking or anything like that from either side. After the game, I told all those guys that I love them.”
Now ask me why I love high school football. Ask me.
Go Dragons!
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