Jubilee (Duerrisms for the Week of September 17th)

by Christopher Duerr

Thursday, Sep 16th 2021

WAYLON DEGRAVE.jpg

The Fall Sports Calender has become crazy busy, in very short order, my friends. Must mean we are having fun, again. Hard to believe we’ve nearly reached the midpoint of the High School Football Season.

Welcome one and all to DUERRISMS for the Week of September 17th where we are proudly sponsored by the fine folks at ADVANCE PHYSICAL THERAPY. Please remember to support the people in this world with your business and your gratitude those who choose to support your kids, your communities and your schools.

Did something I don't usually do this week: I played hooky from work. Well, more honestly, I played hooky from the daily requirements of my job on Tuesday Night to trek down to St Louis for the big soccer showdown between former QND stars Mitchell Murphy and Seth Anderson so that I could bring you a unique story on Wednesday of the intersection of their careers. Despite an hour lightning delay, double overtime, and a 2:15am return to Quincy, I had an absolute blast in doing this. It was such a special moment to witness and I am glad I forced myself to go. Ordinarily, I would have found a reason to talk myself out of such a trip. There's a certain guilt involved when you pride yourself on trying to be a Sports Department for Everyone; all sports, all communities, and schools of any and every size. Pulling myself out of the equation limits the number of games and places we can get to on a given night. And I know that is a silly guilt, but I always feel it all the same. Not that Zach Richardson didn't do a great job in my absence covering some big events on Tuesday, but I constantly talk myself out of some really neat story-telling opportunities even this late in my career because of that internally felt burden. And look, no one puts that on me but me. But as I expressed to a colleague over the week, I need to do that more. For your sake and mine. It's so cool to see our many wonderful Tri-State alums doing so many special things in so many athletic arenas that it's time I just say "you only live once/what the heck" and go. It's really the only regret of my KHQA career here. The number of times I talked myself out of going to see James Vandenberg and Mikey Smith and Craig Lewis myself in my career because I really wanted to tell those stories personally. Contrast that with the fun I had going to see Mikaela Foecke play with Nebraska Volleyball or catching Seth and Mitch on Tuesday and the traction those stories received, I am turning over a new leaf and doing this more often. So thank you for your indulgence in advance. And expect me to show up at a random Illinois State Golf even some time soon...

6)BACK FROM THE DEAD: Week Three served as a cautionary tale on why you should probably never shovel dirt on Palmyra or Centralia Football teams. Kevin Miles got all his weapons back in place and finally got to see his run game at full go, which trampled over the Macon Defense to the tune of a nearly seven yards per carry average on the night. Expect this to become the new normal. As easy as it is here to couch Palmyra’s first two losses as roster-related, I am going to float a slightly alternative theory here. That Palmyra benefitted from reps here as much as it did from any one returning roster piece. Look at recent history. Kevin Miles offenses traditionally are in August/September a shell of what they become in October crunch time. Moreover, this particular Palmyra Offense was looking to affect a different, more power run identity behind Nolyn Richards as the new Franchise back. That takes time, even behind a line as good as the one Palmyra sports. Sure, having Collin Arch there to keep a defenses attention as a run threat at QB aids that, but I am not sure Nolyn wasn’t going to get there any way in just simply “getting better/more comfortable in his role by the carry.” He’s a big, powerful dude. But there is nuance to playing that role and I think his 190 yard effort against Macon was a smart kid figuring it out in real time. Like a pitcher realizing you don’t just throw fastball every single pitch, no matter how good your fastball may be. Looking at clips, Nolyn had a different confidence running the ball and it amplified through his play. Moreover, the long game here isn’t that Nolyn Richards had to be a superstar in week one. It’s that his true outlier here is the accumulated damage he is going to do long term over the course of a year as opposing defenses get more beat up. Richards was always going to be a better back late in the season because he’s a Sherman Tank to try and tackle. And that’s not fun for anyone. So again, if you were celebrating the demise of Palmyra after two weeks, you clearly jumped the gun. Moreover, the work the Panthers secondary did in negating Chrisjen Riekeberg speaks to the value of having both Collin Arch and Landyn Smith working in concert in a secondary. The band is back together and that’s going to make “the home run threat” really tough to create against P-Town moving forward. Meanwhile, Centralia rallied back after nine sub-par and injury addled quarters of football to start the season to grit its way to a 30-12 victory over upset minded Brookfield. The totality of circumstance for Tyler Forsee’s team these first few weeks has not been ideal (strength of schedule, Kyden Wilkerson injury) but Friday’s victory was a “cornered wounded animal win” from a team that while hampered, still has the chops to find a way. In this case, that mechanism was Beau Gordon playing “one man wrecking crew” but when you are 0-2, you ride whatever works. Granted, I don’t think anyone formulating that game plan wanted to be that Beau-Centric in approach, but the dude is a Warhorse and he provided needed traction for a program that needed some. So Centralia can build forward with that, try to get healthy, and feel more like itself Friday Night headed into a really difficult matchup with Monroe City. And yet if you are Centralia and you pull off that upset, you are really right back where you need to be in factoring in the Clarence Cannon Conference Calculus. And you are still Centralia, which carries its own cache as well. Again, if I am a Palmyra fan I probably feel more confident about my team today than I do as a Centralia Fan, but I think both proud fanbases should be confident in walking away from the ledge after seeing their team’s fight and figure-it-out approaches come to fruition in Week Three.

INTEL: Nice to see the Pirates getting a bit of pushback from opponents the last two weeks. Thinking long term, the more Hannibal has to fight its way out of adversity or adjust to an opponent’s success in some facet of the game, the sharper Jeff Gschwender’s crew remains. Unavoidably, there are going to be some very short nights for a team this talented. Last Friday clearly wasn’t one of those as Zumwalt West showed clear offensive chops; easily the best the Hannibal Defense has seen to date. And that allows for a higher level of fine tuning this week in correcting some of the tackling miscues and coverage breakdowns that allowed the Jaguars to amass over 500 yards of offense and really balanced metrics. No, the Pirates weren’t in danger of losing this game; not with the Aneyas Williams six-touchdown safety net in play. But there was looseness on Defense (and in Special Teams return coverage too) that a championship-level team doesn’t tolerate. On the plus side, the Pirates are still doing a credible job applying pass rush pressure, with Rommel Pinner bagging a pair of sacks. Both Jack Parker and Daquan Powell added interceptions to the cause. And the activity rate was fairly high with Ashton Watts, Aneyas Williams, and Jack Parker all delivering seven total tackles. Offensively, the Pirates were a bit more Aneyas-Centric than I think Jeff Gschwender would have liked on balance; but if your good fastball gets you the win and an opponent can’t hit it; you keep going to that pitch until someone proves you wrong for doing so. And at the end of the night, putting up 56 points on what I think is a very good ball club is a win for both play-caller and team as a whole. Winless Fulton comes to Porter Stadium Friday. Be mindful of the fact that the Hornets losses are to traditionally strong opponents in both Osage and California, so this probably isn’t an opponent you want to overlook. That said, I expect a motivated Hannibal to come Friday Night and deliver a statement level win for the home crowd that they’ve been made better by the first three weeks of their season and their fanbases soaring optimism is well place.

INTEL: Well, for starters, I actually have some. So that’s an improvement, right? Look, I realize the schedule is the schedule but do you realize how weird it was to not have any point of access on a team ranked Number Two in the State in Missouri Class 1 Football. Let alone have that team be Monroe City, arguably as big an historic bellwether as we have in High School Football. So yes, I’ve felt weirdly off-kilter by all of this in the early season. (Not “hey there’s not Football at all going on East of the Mississippi this Fall” strange, but strange none-the-less) So I called a “I’m The Freaking Boss” Audible last week, pulled myself off the Central/Unity-Payson contest and went to Titletown so that I could give you something meaningful here beyond stupid stat-sheet pulls. And I am glad I did, for a lot of reasons. For starters, there’s a different energy to this Monroe team than there was to last years. You don’t feel it until you see how comfortably in rhythm this Offense gets “in a hurry.” My initial take is that it’s not just talent that’s fueling this, but confidence. Let’s face it: Kyle Hays has kind of been at the helm of this thing forever now. His “user-friendliness” with the scheme, personnel is as good as any quarterback we have in Tri-State Football right now. That confidence, however, feels risen in that it seems to work both ways. David Kirby, parishioner of the Wing-T Religion, isn’t giving a quarterback he has one question about a first series like the one he handed Kyle on Friday Night. The “lets come out throwing this thing and unpack the box” from snap one vibe is FUN. And clearly effective. Two passes. Two completions. One touchdown. In just two plays. And one of the bigger personnel takeaways for me in seeing that was the addition of Cade Chapman to an already seasoned and gifted Receiving Corps (Deion White and Waylon DeGrave are as good as you will find at their respective slots) is just unfair overkill. So yes, “The Sling-T” is now a fully living, breathing monster that makes the everything else Monroe has in play with the run game that much more dangerous. And I think David Kirby is actually enjoying the heck out of getting to turn his root offense into a Football Piecaken, if you will. Not familiar with the Piecaken? Shame on you. It’s the most delicious Dessert invention ever. Two different kinds of pie. Two different kinds of Cake. Fused into one Kaiju of a Meal Finish. This is the Monroe City Offense right now. Too much of everything but in the best, most decadent way possible. And yes, at least on initial blush, I thought Monroe City’s rebuilt offensive line looked good; particularly on the behind view of Joshua Talton’s 91 yard touchdown run. The other relevant in person take here is that there’s more to the Monroe City Defense than just its pillars. Granted, bigger Ceaton Pennewell cuts the most ferocious looking Linebacker profile in the area right now and it’s pretty clear that give his high career starting point, and the work that he’s put in, that this is a young man on an All-Timer Linebacker trajectory in this area. He is everywhere, wrecking everything. That said, super impressed up front with Ashton Wallace (who David Kirby tried to subtly warn us about preseason) and Landan Holland. Neither of these guys are going to really “wow” you walking out to the field. Holland seems a tad undersized in profile and Wallace a bit thin for Defensive Line work. But both go at an exceptional rate and both have an outlier strength that really plays to their favor on top of just their excellent work rates. For Wallace, it’s his ability to slip contact and warp speed invade an offensive backfield. It doesn’t look like he’s moving that fast or that powerfully. But all of sudden, he’s there at point of impact. And Holland wins nearly every leverage battle. You can’t really do anything with him up front to get him off the ball, so he’s forever an impediment to getting clean running lanes. Good players add to an already good defense. I do think we get a much more exacting test on these guys in trying to deal with Beau Gordon this week. The one question mark we had with Monroe up front is how do you deal with more physically imposing teams. Centralia certainly has a power component to what it does and after last week’s bounce back win against Brookfield, Tyler Forsee’s crew should feel some confidence in getting back to its bread and butter. Plus, these two programs have never liked each other very much. (Do I need to remind anyone on the hit on Josh Talton last go-round) This is a really fun contest and if all goes according to plan, we should have highlights for you on SPORTS FINAL.