CALHOUN, Ga. – It’s said good football teams find a way to win. For the Calhoun Yellow Jackets in their GHSA Class AA quarterfinal Friday night against Fitzgerald, that boiled down to making two key plays late in the first half of what turned out to be a 31-13 win.
The first came with Calhoun (13-0) leading 7-6 and Fitzgerald facing a fourth-and-3 from its own 38 with just under two minutes remaining. The Purple Hurricanes tried a fake punt, with punter Matt Taylor passing to Tevin Stewart-Gaulden, but Calhoun’s Malcolm Long sniffed out the play and stopped it short.
Five plays later, after Calhoun quarterback Landon Curtis was sacked for a 14-yard loss back at the Fitzgerald 38, coach Hal Lamb called for “Big Ben,” the team’s version of the Hail Mary pass. Curtis’ high floater went 5 yards into the end zone, where 6-foot-3 senior J.T. Palmer outleaped a slew of defenders to come down with the ball.
That touchdown, and 14-6 halftime margin, seemed to take the fight out of the Purple Hurricanes (10-3).
“I thought about kicking a field goal there, but it would have been 55, 56 yards, so I decided to run the clock down and throw up a Hail Mary,” said Lamb, who will participate in a coin flip this morning with semifinal foe Carver of Columbus to determine the site of next week’s game. “We’ve got some tall receivers and they’ve got some short backs. J.T. made a play and that was a huge one in the game. We came out in the second half and played extremely well, and that play really spurred us.”
Added Palmer, who had five catches for 76 yards and added a late touchdown catch: “Landon put it up there and I just went and got it. We wanted to go up two scores and come out strong in the second half. That score seemed to demoralize them some.”
The Calhoun defense dominated the second half, allowing Fitzgerald 119 total yards, 80 of them coming in the final minutes against the Jackets’ second-team defense. Senior quarterback Kaleb Nobles, who came in with 2,400 yards passing and a completion rate well over 65 percent, was just 12-for-22 for 161 yards. He was sacked four times and forced to scramble on numerous occasions as Alex Kirby, Hunter Knight, Gabe Freeman and crew blitzed at will.
“We only gave up six points to a great team that came in averaging 42, 43 points per game in a very tough region,” Lamb praised. “Our defense really dictated play in the second half.”
The game was still 14-6 after three quarters before the Jackets erupted for 17 in the final period. Junior kicker Adam Griffith got things started with a 50-yard field goal two plays into the quarter, and then the Calhoun defense sealed the game. Fitzgerald went for it on fourth-and-inches from its own 30, but Freeman nailed Darreal Joyner just short of the line.
On the next play Dustin Christian, who was the Jackets’ lone offense until the Hail Mary pass, burst up the middle for a 30-yard touchdown. The ‘Canes fumbled on their next series, with Palmer scoring on a 21-yard strike from Curtis.
“Man, the defense really stepped up tonight,” praised Christian, who finished with 155 yards and two scores. “Offensively, it took us a while to get going because they were switching defenses on us. But once we got it going, we rolled.”