Merlin

I didn’t either. But …..

WJ up 35 - 0 at half. Poplarville might have 20 yards of offense.

Poplarville goes for it on 4th and 4 from their 33. And snaps over qb head. Qb recovers and gets back to the 30. Wj takes over from there. West Jones 35 Poplarville 0 1 minute till halftime.

So I picked west 31-10. I didn’t expect it to be a beat down if this proportion. Yikes.

After poplarville gets their first positive yardage of the game, then their first first down after going on 4th and 1 from their 27, they throw deep and got picked off. West jones responds with a 64 yard bomb of a td pass WJ 28 Poplarville 0 3 minutes left in half.

West jones 21 Poplarville 0

First play if 2nd q West jones converts a 4th and 1. Next play 18 yard td run. WJ 14 Poplarville 0 just over 11 minutes left in 2nd. I don’t think poplarville has a positive yardage play yet.

West Jones 7 Poplarville 0 3:58 left in first.

Oh please. South’s Jr high was undefeated 3 or 4 years in a row around 2012-13 and from 14-18 in high school they had 2 seasons over .500 and both years they went out first year playoffs. Also Laurels Jr high went undefeated for the last few years and it hasn’t translated to much at the high school level.

The Jones County school district takes the larger percentage of ticket money from every home game of the 3 schools and pools it and distributes it evenly amongst the 3 at the end of the year. Doesn’t matter if nej accounts for 10% of it, south jones 10, and west jones 80. They will all get 33% of the total returned to them. Games they play against each other basically a larger boon for the district to to put in the pot vs any of the 3 playing host to anyone else. So the district will “encourage” the 3 to play each other regardless.

About the schedule. West can’t help it that they’re in-county natural rivals and next door county rivals of the last 20 years, all decided to just suck it up at the same time. South Jones has done this since the late 80’s so no surprise. Northeast jones was a power till 2007 and honestly just need better coaching but no one wants to be there. Laurel was thought to be good this year and Wayne county has been a bit down for 5 years but their last 21 years of history shows that this shouldn’t be normal for them.

Every single skill position player on wests offense will be back next year. Actually so will the biggest o lineman (6’6 320 lb 10th grader) and one other starting o lineman. Rb #10 at 6’3 235 lbs. is a junior. Laurel kept hitting him low last year and injured him enough to end his season. I feel if he played again picayune in the playoffs west wins that game as they would not have went so one dimensional in the 2nd half and could have ate up clock. RB #6 is a 10th grader. He was having decent game vs picayune last year till a couple fumbles before halftime caused west coaches to totally abandon the run. I sent a picture of wests mammoth 8th grade o line to slick 2 seasons ago. I told him all were 6 foot one was 6’3 all over 230 at the time. Well now they are 10th graders. 1 starts. The rest are 2nd string but 2 of them get a lot of playing time as is. West should be set on offense for the next 3-4 years.

WJ qb is a 9th grader.

Wouldbit make you feel better to know WJ didn’t move the ball at all against laurel, northeast jones, or south jones in the first quarter of any of those games as well? Cause it doesn’t make me feel good. But every game has been like that. I don’t know if it’s part of the game plan to be completely predictable and see if they can make things happen while doing so or what. I do t know if they came out throwing more if they score more early or what. Also I hate running from the spread with 1 back in backfield. But this very thing with the slow starting offense is my biggest complaint so far.

They got beat worse than the 41-7 score indicated. At half Wayne had less than 60 yards of offense and 2 first downs. They don’t cross 80 yards till WJ put in backups on defense in mid 4th up 34-0 and Wayne drove to the Wj 12 and Wj put starting d back in and promptly created a turnover. After that west put backups back in on defense and Wayne was able to score. Wayne’s last 2 drives gave them more than 2/3 of their total yards for the game.

Also keep this in mind. Wayne county’s student population isn’t growing. It’s shrinking. That will pull some level of potential talent to pull from out of the school.

Poplarville won’t score more than 14 against west starting defense. Actually I don’t think anyone on the remaining regular season schedule will. They only gave up 1 touchdown so far this season. Laurel scored 1 against wests starters, a safety, then a td against backups. Wayne got a td against backups late and that game wasn’t as close as the score indicated. The offense is held back by inexperienced 9th grade qb and receivers that can’t seem to get much seperation. The last 4-5 years west was turned the ball over no less than 3 times per game. Turnovers specifically lost them the games vs Hattiesburg the last 2 years and also playoffs against picayune as the 9th grade rb (10th grade rb out hurt) was dropping the ball in the first half so coaches abandoned run 2nd half. If Wj ram the ball 3 times and punt in the 4th picayune wouldn’t have had time to complete that comeback. This year they have 2 turnovers total through 4 games. WJ 31 P’Ville 10

Just wait. Laurels MO this year is to self destruct in the 2nd half. Maybe they starting early this game.

#10 is a stud. Would love to see how he could do if we lined up a fullback in front of him.

Laurel honestly is too talented to be as bad as they are. I had heard of some grumbling going on over there after last season and into the spring. Bunch of drama with fans/parents thinking they should play for state like West Point every year. Filling the kids heads with crap. The junior high teams been blowing out everyone they play for 3-4 years and getting to the high school not wanting to listen to coaches. And then there is the school administration who’s slowly been killing laurel athletics since todd breland was coaching there. Friend of mine used to teach over there and said last year and again before this season, those kids will crumble as soon as some teams punch them in the mouth. They think they on a pedestal and won’t handle the adversity well once they get down. Looks like he was right. They hung with west jones for 2 and a half quarters before falling apart after a long Wj touchdown run. They completely imploaded and choked away the Hattiesburg game and blew 2 score leads twice in the 2nd half. They had no business loosing that game. They will for sure drop 2 of next 3, with this week being the only chance for a win. Will be interesting to see if they continue to spiral after the mccomb game.

mead updating my post as you posted with reasons. I’ll expand on it here a tad. Offensive playcalling been very vanilla. They didn’t move the ball vs south jones till they started running stuff that hasn’t been seen first 3 games. So coaches maybe sandbagging the offense in these non-district games. I don’t know. But I’m worried about the offense.

Im not sure they are to be honest. Really worried about the offense. They are starting every game really slow. Had trouble moving the ball for a quarter vs northeast jones and then the entire first half vs south jones. WR’s a tad slow off the line and not creating separation. Running game would be better if they didn’t run from the spread with only the rb in backfield. Needs a blocker out front imho.

Hattiesburg 37 Laurel 27 final. Laurel blew 2 score leads twice. Was up 27-18 with 6 minutes left.

Laurel 15 Hattiesburg 12 mid 3rd

West jones 35 Northeast Jones 0 running clock in 3rd