Calvin Jackson made his first varsity start at quarterback Friday night for Red Bank.
So much for opening-night jitters.
Jackson passed for 117 yards and a touchdown and ran for another 98, including a 15-yarder that allowed the Lions to run out the clock and send Soddy-Daisy back north with a 22-14 loss.
“I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit nervous before the game,” Jackson said after his debut, his smile shining through the steady rain. “But we have worked all year and through the summer for this game.”
Running new offensive coordinator Drew Akins’ run-based spread efficiently, Jackson guided the Lions to more than 400 yards of offense.
“A lot of these sophomores played some last year and they kind of knew what to expect,” Red Back coach Chad Grabowski said of Jackson and his classmates. “This was the kind of effort we expect, and they really settled down and made it happen.”
The early nerves for a host of the young Lions were evident. Penalties, turnovers and missed opportunities dotted Red Bank’s first two quarters.
Dressed in all white, the Soddy-Daisy Trojans were all or nothing Friday night, and they took a halftime lead on big plays.
Justin Cooke’s perfectly placed throw on Ty Boeck’s post pattern gave Soddy-Daisy an earlier lead. Brandon Davis’ 43-yard run late in the second quarter pushed the Trojans to the 14-7 halftime lead.
Despite the score, Red Bank dominated most of the first half – the game had 60 consecutive snaps in Soddy-Daisy territory – but two lost fumbles inside the Soddy-Daisy 20 and nine first-half penalties short-circuited the Lions.
“We just told them to settle down,” Grabowski said of his halftime message. “We knew we made some mistakes in the first half, and if we got them corrected we’d be OK.”
They corrected the miscues and offensively turned the load to Zay Brown, who carried the ball on 11 consecutive snaps to start the second half. One of those was a 22-yard score, and the groundwork of Brown and his 128 yards rushing, mainly between the tackles, allowed Red Bank and Jackson a myriad of options.
He made the most of one of those, exploiting one-on-one coverage on the perimeter for a 63-yard touchdown connection with Mike Clark to put the exclamation on his dazzling debut.
“That was a lot of fun,” Jackson said as plainly as his standout stat line. “Now we just have to keep getting better.”
Jackson and the rest of his offensive skill players maximized a dominating effort from the Lions linemen on each side.
“Our front seven (defensively) and offensive line played great,” Grabowski said. “I really thought we got after it on both sides of the ball.”
Boeck – Soddy-Daisy’s most dynamic playmaker – caught almost a dozen passes that covered more than 150 of Cooke’s 237 passing yards.
But on the Trojans’ last, best chance to pull even with rival Red Bank, Boeck was corralled 3 yards short of the goal line with less than five minutes to play.
“We’ve got a lot of young players in a lot of spots, but you have to give Red Bank a lot of credit for getting it done tonight,” Soddy-Daisy coach Justin Barnes said. “We made a lot of mistakes, and I really have to do a better job of getting them in position and ready to play.”
Soddy-Daisy will face Central next week; Red Bank is scheduled to play Baylor.