Llano football meets London in playoffs
CAPTION: Llano senior receiver Austin Humphries does everything he can to score touchdowns for the Jackets, which will be imperative against Corpus Christi London. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
The Llano High School football team will face Corpus Christi London in the second round of the Class 3A Division I playoffs.
Kickoff is at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21, at D.W. Rutledge Stadium at Converse Judson.
The Pirates (7-4, 5-2 District 15-3A Division I third place) defeated Rio Hondo 49-42 for a bi-district championship last week in a contest that went back and forth until the Bobcats threw an interception deep in their territory. That allowed London to take a two-touchdown lead. And though Rio Hondo got the touchdown back on the next drive, the Bobcats couldn’t get another defensive stop.
The Yellow Jackets (10-1, 5-0 District 13-3A Division I champions) are facing a high-octane offense, averaging 295 passing yards and 88 rushing yards per game.
“(The Warriors) give you a lot of things to be concerned about because (they) have a quarterback that can get them the ball when they’re open and he can get them the ball in tight windows and then they have shown the ability to make those catches in those tight windows whenever they’re being guarded and it’s being contested,” Llano head coach Matt Green said. “So a lot of challenges. They are decent sized kids, they’re not necessarily just really huge receivers, but they’re not little, so they got good size and they are absolutely fast. You can see on film that they have really good foot speed and they run good routes. They are creative in their route running. They’re not robotic, they find ways to create space, and then when the ball gets anywhere around them, they tend to catch it.”
The Pirates are led by senior quarterback Alex Manning, who has completed 208 of 348 passes for 3,212 yards, 37 touchdowns and 10 interceptions and 86 rushes for 409 yards and four scores. He has thrown passes to 15 different receivers this season.
“He’s really, really good,” Green said. “He is a really good quarterback. To me, he has both both things that you would want a quarterback to have; he’s got a really good arm, he’s very accurate and then on top of it, he can run. So he’s a true dual-threat quarterback. He’s not just going to stand in the pocket when things break down. He can run, and he is extremely fast. He is very very talented. But he’s a good passer. He throws the ball really, really well. At times I’ve seen him force the ball into windows that, if I were coaching him, probably I might not want him to throw into. But he’ll do it, and he gets away with it. He’s very accurate. He’s talented and poses a lot of problems for our defense.”
His top receiving targets are sophomore Maddox Jennings, who has 63 receptions for 1,081 yards and 14 touchdowns, and junior Zach Tyrone, who has 54 catches for 988 yards and 14 touchdowns.
“He has two really, really talented receivers that do a good job of getting open,” Green said. “And they don’t just get open. They make tough catches, and we’ve seen those kids catch the ball in traffic clearly. Sometimes they just get wide open or they’ll beat the defender and they’ll make nice catches, but they will absolutely catch the ball in traffic and highly contested catches.”
Junior running back Jake Castenada has 110 rushes for 494 yards and seven touchdowns and 26 receptions for 292 yards and two scores.
“This team is very, very talented on offense, and they have scored points on pretty much everybody,” Green said.
Llano will counter with senior defensive backs J.D. Friday, who has 42 tackles, five interceptions, 10 pass deflections, a fumble recovery and two blocked field goals, senior defensive back Austin Humphries, who has 44 tackles, four interceptions, two fumble recoveries and six pass deflections, senior cornerback Niko Arms has 56 tackles, two sacks, an interception and cause a fumble, and junior linebacker Cody Greenwood has 73 tackles.
In all, the Jackets have 18 interceptions, 14 fumble recoveries, 17 sacks and 48 quarterback hurries this season.
London’s defense is led by a pair of seniors linebackers: Dayton Mason, who has 56 tackles and a sack, and Ethan Goff, who has 56 tackles, an interception, two pass deflections and a fumble recovery. Junior defensive back Paul McNorton has 46 tackles, four sacks, six quarterback hurries, a fumble recovery and a pass deflection.
Green noted that the Pirates will jump into different defensive fronts in an effort to confuse the offensive line so that sometimes they don’t play as aggressive because they’re not certain of who to block or what to do.”
“However, I would say that our linemen have been facing multiple fronts for weeks. Very few teams that we play tend to jump in one front and stay in it all that long,” he said. “So I think that’s a compliment to our offensive line. We have been throwing multiple front looks at our kids from the start of two-a-days (in August). We’ve seen it in football games really for the majority of the year. I think our kids have seen so many different fronts and looks that they’re prepared and you still got to go in there and do it.”
London’s secondary is a zone defense with an occasional man-to-man.
“Their defense flies around to the ball,” the coach said. “They do everything in their power to make plays. We see a lot of different kids playing. They certainly have some mainstays that they do go with every single Friday night, but there has been some rotation and again I don’t know if it’s due to injury, I don’t know if it’s to keep kids fresh. But they definitely do rotate kids around.”
The Jackets will counter with senior quarterback Grayson Lilie, who has completed 58 of 77 passes for 868 yards and eight touchdowns and has 41 rushes for 138 yards, and junior quarterback Luke Davis, who has completed 95 of 140 passes for 1,725 yards, 25 touchdowns and four interceptions and has 53 rushes for 285 yards and five scores.
A trio of senior running backs lead the ground game: Jose Sillas has 102 rushes for 654 yards and 14 touchdowns, River Thomison has 46 carries for 359 yards and three touchdowns, and Brayton Shaw has 56 rushes for 379 yards and two touchdowns. Freshman Cole Landers has 43 carries for 319 yards and five touchdowns.
Junior Cash Lynch has 52 receptions for 1,024 yards and 12 touchdowns, while senior Graham Prokop has 26 catches for 472 yards and six scores, and senior Austin Humpries has 19 receptions for 329 yards and four touchdowns.
CAPTION: Llano senior receiver Graham Prokop will be counted on to continue to help the Jackets extend drives by making some great catches in traffic. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
