Many pundits thought the District 13-6A title would be decided between Pflugerville Hendrickson and Round Rock Cedar Ridge on Oct. 12. But that game might not matter at all after Vandegrift followed last week’s win against Cedar Ridge with a 29-20 upset of highly-touted Hendrickson Friday at The Pfield in Austin.
“All I know is we’re 2-0,” said Vandegrift coach Drew Sanders. “We’re just going to take them one at a time but that’s a really good team we beat… so that’s a great feeling.”
The Vipers had fourth down at the Hawks’ nine-yard line with a six-point lead and barely more than two minutes remaining when a lightning delay sent the teams to the locker room for more than an hour.
Sanders kept his team fresh by feeding them Uncrustables and bananas and senior kicker Tim Barney kept his mind off the potential game-icing field goal by listening to rap music, specifically XXX.
Barney got to practice the kick from the exact spot during the 10-minute warm-up period in between the end of the delay and the resumption of play, and then calmly sent the 26-yard attempt through the uprights to send the few Vandegrift fans that stayed through the delay into a frenzy.
“Obviously (the kick) was on my mind (during the delay) but I was just sitting there, listening to music trying to get my mind right,” Barney said. “It felt amazing just to seal that win. It was a great win. We’re 4-0 now so we’re just going to keep it rolling.”
Hendrickson’s defense suffocated its first two opponents – Texarkana Texas High and Round Rock Westwood – in dominating victories. But Vandegrift found a way to handle the Hawks’ nasty unit.
The connection between junior quarterback Dru Dawson and senior wide receiver Ryan Merrifield was working all night. Dawson completed 17-of-24 passes for 189 yards and a touchdown with no turnovers. Nine of those completions – including the touchdown – went to Merrifield for 144 yards.
“Coaches put in a great game plan and we had a great week of practice and we knew what we were doing and executed really good,” Dawson said. “Everyone just brought their A-game today. Even though we were playing Hendrickson, we stayed locked in the whole game and I’m just super proud of our team.”
While playmakers tend to get the headlines, nothing would have worked without the exemplary play of the offensive line who kept Dawson upright against a terrifying pass rush and did enough in the run game to help senior running back Isaiah Whitehead gain 65 yards on 24 carries, including a 28-yard touchdown run in the second quarter.
“Their defensive line is tremendous,” Sanders said. “When you look at the size of those guys and how hard they play. They’re well coached. So (I’m) just really impressed with our ability to just move the ball some against them, and overall I thought we did well and we had very sustained drives, too.”
The Hawks aren’t the types to make excuses, but it was clear they didn’t bring their A-game. They had a number of back-breaking penalties including a roughing the holder that gave Barney a second chance to ice the game after missing a 38-yard attempt. They also turned the ball over five times while Vandegrift didn’t give it up once.
One of those turnovers was an unprovoked fumble near the end of the half that was picked up by Vandegrift junior defensive back Ryan Arnold and returned 27 yards for a touchdown that made it 23-6. Hendrickson also fumbled a snap on fourth-and-one from its own 19 in the fourth quarter. That play didn’t count as a turnover because it was recovered by the Hawks, but nonetheless gave the Vipers the short field they needed to hit the game-clinching field goal.
“We call them takeaways because we forced their hand on that. We did some run stunts that they hadn’t seen before so I’m proud of our guys for executing what we worked on all week,” Sanders said. “The biggest difference in the game tonight was our defense. We consistently did what we needed to do.”
The Texas Longhorns claimed the moniker DBU (Defensive Back University) in the early 2000s for its penchant of producing NFL-caliber defensive backs. In the Austin-area high school football scene, Pflugerville Hendrickson might as well dub itself DB High. The Hawks have had eight defensive backs in the last 10 years get FBS offers. Senior Myles Brooks – an Arkansas commit who made four interceptions last year – will lead the secondary in 2018.
“It starts with you got to have good athletes,” head coach Chip Killian said of his program’s ability to churn out high-quality defensive backs. “Then I think our coaches do a really good job of teaching those guys specific technique, and then third phase of it is keeping our scheme pretty simple. We’re not a complicated defense by any stretch. But those guys, they’re confident in what they do, they trust what they do, and it allows them to play fast.”
But Brooks and the secondary are far from an offense’s only worry. The Hawks have 6-foot-4, 330-pound senior defensive tackle Shaylon Roberts clogging up the middle. He frees up senior linebacker Clifton Styles – gifted in both run-stopping and pass coverage – who cleaned up with 135 tackles last year. The most dangerous man on Hendrickson’s defense, however, is senior defensive end/linebacker Curley Williams, a California commit coming off a season where he made 90 tackles (18 for a loss) with seven sacks.
“I don’t know what you really call that guy (Williams). You can call him a rush end, or you can call him a rush backer, whatever you guys feel like calling him, to be honest with you,” Killian said. “I think we’re going to be solid in the front seven.”
Anybody who watched the Longhorns last year knows how a strong defense and great punter can feed off each other. Ex-Texas punter Michael Dickson consistently put his defense in advantageous situations position with booming punts that pinned the opposition deep in its own territory. Hendrickson has its own version of that in senior Adam Cousins, who also plays safety and was the backup quarterback last year (starter for two games).
“Just having an athletic guy back there gives you a lot of different options. You got different types of fakes you could do. He’s always a threat to throw the ball or run the ball,” Killian said. “But his ability to rugby kick… We can always get a pretty good net on our punt with that skill so it allows us to flip the field and play a field position game where we’re not worried about having to go for it on fourth down a whole lot and can kind of set our defense up in some positive field position.”
Hendrickson also has a history of producing great running backs. Washington Redskin Samaje Perine (who starred at OU) comes to mind. Kenny Williams enjoyed a nice career at Texas Tech. D.J. Jackson rushed for 1,508 yards and 15 touchdowns last season. He’ll pass the torch senior Timieone Jackson for 2018. Will the younger Jackson take off and run with it?
“We sure hope (he can),” Killian said. “Timieone is an explosive young man. He’s done a good job of working in the backfield with D.J. the last couple years and getting quality carries… It’s just making sure he’s comfortable and getting used to his offensive line and where the holes were… Timieone has phenomenal hands. He played a little bit of slot for us last year and caught the ball a little bit so we’re excited with him out of the backfield catching the ball as well as running it.”
Senior quarterback Blaine Barker will be tasked with putting all the pieces together. Barker is a capable passer and runner who averaged 6.7 yards per pass and 5.2 yards per rush last year. He also accounted for 22 touchdowns (14 through the air, eight on the ground) with only 10 turnovers. But what Killian loves best about him is his intangibles.
“I always feel good about Blaine in a leadership role. He’s such a competitor,” Killian said. “It’s a great thing and then it’s also a thing that kind of gets him into a bind sometimes because he takes a lot of hits because he wants to compete. He doesn’t want to go down. He runs angry for a skinny dude. You wouldn’t recognize him coming down the hallway. He’s not a big guy at all so he just does a super job of leading the team and he’s very much a huddle-presence and the guys play hard for him. He gets along with everybody and he’s just kind of that prototypical leader that you want in that position.”
