Fresh off their second playoff win in as many seasons under athletic director and head coach Chad Worrell, the 9-2 Pilot Point Bearcats head to McKinney for a second-round matchup with the 8-2 Commerce Tigers on Friday.
The Tigers roll into Ron Poe Stadium with a 40-14 bi-district win over the Jefferson Bulldogs, where they forced five turnovers and reached the end zone six times, with five scores from quarterback Aidan Brown.
“They’ve had some big wins against really good teams,” said Chad Worrell, Pilot Point athletic director and head football coach. “… Their offensive line is big, and they do a good job up front opening up running lanes for their backs, and defensively they play a 3-3 stack, so they’re going to have everybody in the box. Their defensive tackles and nose guard can control the line of scrimmage, and their linebackers and secondary are athletic with a lot of speed, so it’s going to be a huge challenge for us.”
Commerce’s offensive attack is spearheaded by Brown, who leads the team in passing and rushing, with 1,775 yards passing, 1,419 yards rushing and 41 total touchdowns.
“He’s the focal point of that offense,” Worrell said. “He’s a big, athletic kid who can throw and run. … They also have a lot of speed out wide, so they’re going to challenge us vertically, but we can’t give up big plays. It’s going to be a challenge for our defense, but we’re going to have to play assignment football and make sure we tackle well in space.”
On the other side of the ball, the Bearcats; offense may also have its work cut out for it against an opportunistic Tigers’ defense that has tallied 22 takeaways on the season.
“We’re going to have to fire off and get a body on a body,” Worrell said. “It’s going to be hard to move them, like we found out with West. It takes some time for us to get people worn down to where we can start turning smaller plays into bigger plays. That’s really what happened against West … and Commerce is going to be that way as well, but there’s going to be a lot more speed behind that front line than what we saw last week, [so] we’re going to have to execute, get on our blocks, and our running backs are going to have to read their blocks and take care of the football.”
Not one to rest on what happened last week, Worrell added that the Bearcats fully understand that the level of competition improves every week in the postseason.
“Anytime you get to the second round of playoffs, you’re facing good people, so it gets harder,” he said. “This is a quality opponent, so this week is going to be a little bit tougher than it was last week. They upset the No. 1 team in the state, Winnsboro, earlier this year and beat them badly. … We’re going to have to play well to have a chance. They’re the favorite going in, so we’re going to have to go in, play well and do what we do. That’s all we can control.”
