A 14-yard touchdown run from Tetoe Boyd in the game's final seconds culminated a second-half revival by the Cleveland offense, and the Blue Raiders clinched the final state playoff spot out of Region 2-6A with a 36-30 win at Ooltewah on Friday night.
With his team leading 30-22 early in the fourth quarter, Ooltewah senior quarterback Fisher Perry was knocked out of the game after hitting the ground hard on a tackle. Jaden Carmichael, who replaced Perry behind center, fumbled on the Owls' next possession to set Cleveland up past midfield with just more than two minutes to play.
On second down, Cleveland quarterback Drew Lambert threw a deep ball in the left corner of the end zone to Kley McGowan, who caught the 34-yard touchdown pass to bring Cleveland within two. After a pass hit the ground as the conversion failed, the Blue Raiders' ensuing onside kick fell perfectly into the arms of a Cleveland receiver, who then downed the ball on Ooltewah's 48-yard line.
With less than a minute on the clock, Lambert marched his team down the field with four completions for 33 yards before Boyd's winning touchdown run. The score completed a 12-point comeback and ended the Owls' season.
READ MORE: Final scores and photos from Friday night's Chattanooga-area high school football games
"This game says a lot about where we're going as a program," Cleveland coach Marty Wheeler said. "I've been in a lot of close games, and I've never seen a team find a way to win more than these guys just did. We've been trying to learn how to win, and sometimes the only way to do it is to pull games out like this."
Cleveland (5-5, 3-2) scored the game's first points with an 11-yard run by Boyd midway through the opening quarter.
In the second, Ooltewah's Perry ran seven times on the same series that reached Cleveland's 1-yard line before being stuffed three times in a row to turn the ball over on downs. From there, Ooltewah (4-6, 2-3) forced the Blue Raiders to go three-and-out, scored two points on a safety on a high Cleveland snap out of the back of the end zone and proceeded to outscore the visitors 23-0 before the Cleveland offense began to wake up in the third quarter with back-to-back touchdown passes.
The Blue Raiders scored the last 14 points of the game to regain the lead and keep their season alive.
"I think we did a better job of working our way down the field instead of throwing deep balls every play, and we just straight up executed better," Wheeler said of the second-half adjustments. "I really felt like in the first half it was more about what we weren't doing than what they were doing.
"It looked like nothing was going our way for the longest, and we'll work on figuring out why. The biggest thing is we found a way to win tonight."
Contact John Mitchell at sports@timesfreepress.com.