GHSA Class 5A championship, Cartersville vs. Warner Robins: One coach knows what it's like to lose by 3 to the Canes and Demons, and has thoughts

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

            Jason Strickland sure would like to be in Atlanta with his Ware County football team.

            And the Gators weren’t far off, reaching the quarterfinals. His consolation prize is watching the GHSA Class 5A state championship from Fernandina Beach while the two teams that beat Ware County this season play for that championship.

            At the end of October, Warner Robins came back to eke by the top-ranked Gators 22-19 at McConnell-Talbert Stadium. A month and a half later, Ware County crossed the state for a quarterfinal game and lost 34-31 to No. 4. Cartersville.

            About the only similarities Strickland sees are that the defenses employ an odd-man front most of the time. That, and they’re both 12-1. Otherwise …

            Some numbers are mighty close.

            Warner Robins outscores Cartersville 37.62 to 36.23, but the plan on offense – despite both having dynamic playmakers at quarterback – is different.

            “(Cartersville) is multiple spread formations.” said Strickland, who Gators finished 10-2 in his second year. “I think their game is probably built more off of the RPO game, quick screens, and dropback stuff. They do it out of many different personnels.

            “Warner Robins is more true H-back personnel stuff. They want to run the football, whether that’s with Jalen Addie or the (Jahlen) Rutherford kid.”

            But Strickland is quick to point out the Demons’ ability to move through the air.

            “That’s not trying to say they can’t throw the football,” Strickland said. “I think Addie throws it really well.”

            Cartersville quarterback Carlos Del Rio-Wilson is on his third high school, having started out at McEachern and then transferring to Grayson only to be ruled ineligible there for 2020. He wasn’t cleared by the GHSA to play at Cartersville until mid-October.

            He is 84 of 126, completing 66.7 percent, for 1,374 yards, 12 touchdowns and four interceptions. Del Rio-Wilson went for 254 yards on 12-of-19 passing in a 31-14 win over Calhoun, and was 17 of 26 for 228 yards last week in the semifinal win over Coffee.

            Addie is 119 of 197 for 1,944 yards and 21 touchdowns with five interceptions, adding 947 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns.

            Strickland watched Addie go 14 of 22 for 173 yards in the air and for 114 yards on the ground in the Demons’ win over the Gators this year.

            “I thought he threw the ball better in person than what we saw on film,” Strickland said. “

            So, the two quarterbacks have hefty numbers doing things very differently, but defenders will see a similarity: size.

            Strickland said he was warned during the scouting process of Cartersville that Del Rio-Wilson was bigger live than on tape.

            “ ‘He looks like Godzilla,’” Strickland said one coach described. “He’s out at pregame warm-ups that Friday night, and it’s like, ‘Holy cow, he’s gigantic.’

            “Both these guys are huge kids. When you look at ‘em and start talking about the prototypical look for a Division I power 5 quarterback, they both look the part.”

            Both quarterbacks are listed at about the same size, 6-3 and 210 pounds. But there’s much less chasing of Del Rio-Wilson than there is of Addie.

            “Addie is such a big ol’ creature to try to get down,” said Strickland, owner of a 117-45-1 record at Ware County, Pierce County, Fitzgerald, and Lamar County. “He was much faster in person than what we saw on film. He’s long, so it doesn’t look like he’s running very fast, but his is, eating up chunks of yardage in a hurry.”

            Del Rio-Wilson is much less apt to take off, and him running isn’t much part of the Canes’ design. He has 289 yards on 40 carries, an average of 7.2 yards a shot with five touchdowns.

            “What he does well is he knows when to run, what to get to,” Strickland said. “He’s not trying to go for a 30-yard touchdown run. He’s going to scramble on a third-and-6 and get seven. He keeps those drives alive.”

            Florida-bound Del Rio-Wilson also has the fastest release Strickland said of anybody he’s coached against.

            Addie has 947 yards on 138 carries with 11 touchdowns, and five 100-yard games, against 7A Archer, Northside, Ware County, Woodward Academy and Jones County.

            And that’s third in the Demon backfield, behind Rutherford (173-1,030/8) and Malcom Brown (102-1,000/9).

            Which is one reason Strickland likes the Demon offensive line.

            “That group to me is probably their bell cow on offense,” he said. “ ‘We gotta go have a drive here to kinda go get the momentum back on our side.’ You could see it, even our game. 19-14, for almost two quarters, and then all of a sudden, you could almost feel it, those guys saying, ‘All right, we got to go win the game here.’

            “And they did.”

            Addie’s impact registered a little more on Strickland for another reason, going back to what was essentially the region championship game. Top-ranked Ware County led, at The Mac, 19-14, and the Demons took over on their 11 with about six minutes left.          

            Warner Robins embarked on a long, clock-eating drive that ended with Walker in the wildcat diving in through a huge hole from a yard out. D.K. Sturn took a pitch from Addie and then passed under pressure to Andrew Magee for the conversion and a three-point lead with 2:12 left.

            The defense then held, and got the ball back with a little less than 90 seconds left, and that was it. Addie led the offense to a similar, yet under more pressure, long game-winning in the quarterfinal.

            “Against us, they had to go 95 yards to win the game, and they did,” Strickland said of the drive that started with lost yardage. “Same thing against Blessed Trinity. Tie ballgame there. They had to go 90 yards to take the lead, and they did.

            “The guy is just a clutch, clutch football player.”

            Cartersville allows 12.69 points a game, a little less than Warner Robins’ 14.46. And the plan is different there, too. Strickland said the Canes are a more patient, almost teasing defense.

             “They’re more about keeping everything in front of them,” he said. “They’re more of a movement-oriented defense. That front group is going to be moving every play and creating confusion for the offense.”

            And it’s part of a serious knack in creating turnovers. Two of them by Ware County led to 14 points in Cartersville’s quarterfinal win.

            “Moreso than with anybody else we played this year,” Strickland said. “It’s not a situation where you turn the film on and see any type of personnel that is just blowing your mind. ‘Oh my God, I don’t know about this kid’ … They play their assignment so well, they do a great job of disguising what they’re trying to do, and they create turnovers, and that’s every doggone game.”

            Teams gave it to Cartersville 27 times this year, compared to 18 turnovers by Warner Robins’ opponents.

            “Warner Robins is built more defensively like, ‘we’re going out right here, you’re going to run three plays and punt the football,’” Strickland said. “I think Cartersville is a little more of, ‘OK, we’re going to keep everything in front of us, we’re going to make you drive the ball 12 or 13 plays, and we know somewhere, we know you’re going to have a penalty, or there’s going t be a tipped ball and we’re going to intercept it.”

            Walker and Demarcious Robinson, the Demons’ all-time leading tackler, have gotten raves for a few years, and Strickland has no arguments about that. But he is dazzled by a younger teammate.

            “I think Warner Robins has the single best defensive football player I’ve ever coached against,” he said. “The Burley kid.”

            Strickland said the linebacker deserve every bit of praise, but sophomore Vic Burley – who played sparingly against Jones County and should be 100 percent Wednesday – is the one to watch.

            “To me, the difference is Vic Burley, and the amount of pressure that he got. He controlled our pass game. We really, really struggled. I think it was the worst passing night we had.”

            The Gators were 11 of 34 for 188 yards and an interception – they finished the year at 59.1 percent and 224.6 yards a game – with Burley getting two sacks and 11 hurries.

            “I don’t know what the answer is to block that guy. He is a freak.”

            Warner Robins brings one of the most experienced teams imaginable into the game, general experience, but also championship experience. This is the Demons’ fourth straight trip, so about a dozen players have been in uniform for at least three title games, with many getting quality time or starting.

            He wondered if big semifinal wins had a carryover effect – as well as hammering Bainbridge during the 2018 regular season – in the last two title losses, note Rome in 2017 was just one of those teams few could beat.

             The Demons have won their four semifinal games 31-7, avenged Rome 45-28, 55-3, and the 56-21 win this time over Jones County. Combine that with how Warner Robins lost the title games, and this season’s competition and schedule highlighted by the Blessed Trinity win with the massive experience, and, well, Strickland is interested.

            “They’ve got so many guys that have played a lot of ball over there. To me, that might be the difference in this group than what they’ve had the last couple years, the experience to understand that there’s still work to be done, and ‘Hey, I don’t care what it looks like on film, we’re playing a really  good football team and we’ve got to find a way to beat ‘em.’”