Red Bank and Loudon could provide a fun football matchup for years to come for Region 3-3A onlookers. It wasn't Friday night, though.
Red Bank's Lions continued their dominance of the region under the guidance of third-year head coach Chad Grabowski, beating the visiting Redskins 49-24 in a game that wasn't that close. It was Red Bank's 11th straight region win and produced a second consecutive league title.
"The bottom line is we are not where Red Bank is yet," Loudon coach Jeff Harig said in the first year of his second stint as the Redskins' boss. "For us to play with them we needed to be perfect and we needed them to come back to us, and at the end of the night we didn't and they didn't."
Loudon (7-3, 4-1) went winless in the region last season and was proud to be in the position to play for a title, but the Lions were just too much. Both programs have state titles on their resumes and both have fought back to get to this point. Red Bank, however, seems to have a little bit of a head start.
The quartet of Zay Brown, Calvin Jackson, David Cosby and Madox Wilkey was almost unstoppable Friday night. Jackson scored three times, Brown and Cosby twice each and Wilkey was nearly perfect managing the game and tossing three touchdown passes.
"A lot of people wondered what we were doing playing some of the teams we have the last three years, and we did so with games like this in mind," Grabowski said. "We have a group of guys who are special and know what they have in front of them. It feels good to win the region championship again."
The Redskins had no answers for the Lions after challenging them early. Loudon twice drove inside the 5 but came away with just a field goal before Red Bank erupted for 28 second-quarter points.
"We knew they had some weaknesses we could exploit, and the coaches told me to be ready for a big game," said Brown, who had 206 rushing yards on 27 carries.
With Brown and Jackson slicing and dicing through the Loudon defense, Wilkey was able to take advantage of a cheating defense. The sophomore quarterback was 10-for-10 in the first half and finished 13-of-16 for 206 yards with TD passes of 13 and 24 yards to Cosby and 41 to Jackson.
"Madox has really come into his own this year. He has so many talented guys around him, I mean, just athletes out there, and he manages the touches to them all so well," Grabowski said.
Red Bank (8-2, 5-0) wound up with 455 total yards of offense, and the defense held the Redskins to 0-of-8 on third downs and twice stopped them on fourth-down tries. Brown accounted for 250 of the yards by adding 44 receiving yards, and Jackson had 134 with 89 receiving and 45 rushing.
For Loudon, Drew Jackson had 81 rushing yards on 21 totes. The Lions will host Sequatchie County in their first-round state playoff matchup next Friday, while Loudon will host Upperman.
"I wouldn't mind if we met up down here in a couple of more weeks and saw them again," Harig said. "They are an excellent football team, and that's the level we are trying to get back to."
Contact James Beach at sports@timesfreepress.com