ATLANTA — Blake Sims, Tai-Ler Jones and a few thousand Gainesville fans probably woke up this morning after nightmares starring a face they didn’t recognize.
But they sure know the number of the uniform — 28.
Luke Crowell, and about a dozen of his closest friends, caused some big-time tossing and turning Saturday night in parts of Hall County.
Fortunately, the main exit at Gainesville on I-975 is 22, not 28, or people would’ve taken a detour to get home.
A variety of Trojans — OK, everybody on defense — came up with plays against an offense that had numbers galore. Like Peach County, Gainesville hadn’t lost a game before walking into the Georgia Dome early Saturday afternoon. Then again, it’s a safe bet Gainesville hadn’t played a defense like Peach County’s all season long.
Peach County’s 13-12 win over Gainesville in the GHSA Class AAA championship likely did the hearts of old coaches — and plenty of young ones — good.
The Trojans had their own high-flying offense with quarterback Patrick Taylor, receivers Lamar Zanders and Isaiah Miller and running backs Travis Richmond and LeBrandon Johnson, among others. Peach County was used to racking up yards and putting up points.
But this state title trophy takes up residence in Fort Valley because of defense, pure and simple.
Sims, the Alabama-bound quarterback, had to feel like the Trojans were sneaking a 12th and 13th defender on the field a few times. Peach County’s three-man front got help, as usual, from a blitzer or two, but several times made a push on its own and flushed the athletic Sims from the pocket.
Normally, that’s something of a comfort zone for him. Not this time around. He was behind receivers, overthrew them and otherwise had to take off to escape and avoid a sack, which he did well, rather than find an open man.
Only on one drive, a big one, did the Red Elephants look like they had all season, and it was the drive of a lifetime ... almost.
Two passes in the final minute had Gainesville near the red zone against a defense that had only one real breakdown all game long. And then Sims threw a 25-yard touchdown pass on the final play of the game, taking the snap with three seconds left and firing a big-league strike.
But Crowell ended the dream. Standing all of 5-foot-7, Crowell’s final play as a Trojan was his biggest.
He guessed right, read the play and batted down Sims’ pass to Jones on the two-point conversion.
“He plays big; he plays a lot bigger than he is,” Peach County head coach Chad Campbell said of the youngster who didn’t play a down of football as a freshman to focus on baseball. “He’s made plays for us all year. He will be hard to replace.”
Indeed, Campbell wasn’t the only one in black and gold happy that Crowell gave the gridiron another try three years ago.
Yet after the play, as one half of the Dome slumped and the other half jumped, Octavious Hall and Kelcey Lewis were the only two Trojans to go immediately to Crowell and pile on. Everybody else ran toward midfield and danced around and screamed.
But there around the 15, Crowell — who had what almost looked like a game-clinching interception with 7:14 left in the game — was on his back and looked up at the Georgia Dome ceiling between the heads of two teammates, a football and Gainesville’s dreams of a miracle comeback laying several feet away.
And the Trojans’ fantasy of a perfect 15-0 season ending in a state title coming true.
“The way we played, nobody’s going to remember we won by one point,” Crowell said. “They’re going to remember how we shut them down. An offense that averaged 44 points a game, they’re going to remember how we shut them down the whole game.”
As thousands of Peach County fans hollered “Luuuuuuke,” Crowell stood on a podium and held up the state title trophy with a grin the stretched from sideline to sideline.
There were certainly no worries about Crowell dropping the trophy. Anything in the hands of somebody on Peach County’s defense on Saturday wasn’t going anywhere.
Contact Michael A. Lough at 744-4626 or mlough@macon.com
