The Eagles ran out 41-24 winners over the Tigers at Mike Johnston Field in Week 2 of the 2024 football season. Just like that, non-district is over and the 19-6A battle starts next week against Morton Ranch.
Off to a quick start
Katy played an excellent first quarter against the Eagles and looked dialed in across the board. The Tigers were stuffing the Eagles’ offense early, and the offense did its part to capitalize. Katy’s #21 safety Garcia made a great deep sideline interception early on. Katy led 14-0 and had the ball with a chance to extend the lead as the first quarter ended and second began. The Tiger offense had a 3rd and 5 near midfield and called a full back dive that only picked up a couple of yards. These are the moments you have to take advantage of as a team, and that will painfully stand out on film review especially given what happened next.
On the punt attempt, Katy airmailed the snap and that ultimately led to the Eagles’ first points of the game and woke them up. From this moment in the second quarter on, Katy was outscored 41-10. Atascocita completely erased the early deficit to tie it up at 14 apiece before Katy recovered a field goal to take a 17-14 lead into the locker room.
Katy received the ball to start the third quarter, but went three and out and immediately ceded the ball to the Eagles. Cita lined up in a four receiver set with three receivers bunched and tight to the formation. Their tall receiver #8 ran a nice route and caught the Katy safety #21 to turning his hips to the outside, anticipating he would go up the sideline it appeared, and he made an inside move instead causing the safety to stumble. The pass wasn’t great, but the WR was open enough to where it didn’t matter. Instant explosive touchdown to start the third.
The Eagles warming up
The Tiger offense responded with a clock draining drive that ate up most of the rest of the third quarter and, importantly, ended with a touchdown. Katy retook a 24-20 lead. On this drive, Katy converted a couple of third and longs and also benefitted from two pass interference calls. They were both good calls. There was no controversy about the first. On the second one, the Eagle DB had a hand on the Katy WRs downfield shoulder to prevent him extending that arm towards the ball. It’s something you see the veteran NFL guys try and get away with by using subtle tricks.
Katy stopped the Eagles on their next drive to get the ball back with a chance to extend the lead and claim some control over the game. However (deep sigh), Katy ran up the middle three consecutive plays to start the drive towards the one guy the Tigers couldn’t block (#99). #99 folded in on Hill from the side and forced the third down fumble that gave Cita the ball in Katy territory. This turnover allowed the Eagles to retake the lead 27-24, and one they would not relinquish again.
After the fumble, Cardae Mack took the game over down the stretch in the fourth quarter for the Eagles and Katy simply ran out of steam in the match-up. I’ve talked about it a lot, but it’s hard enough to play against talented teams without the big momentum changers. Basically all of the major moments in the game went against Katy from the second quarter on. Championship-caliber teams have game-breaking players. Katy’s had these players in every one of its championship winning teams.
Post game thoughts
The only thing Atascocita did in this game that surprised me a bit was going exclusively with Mack at QB. They didn’t do that against Lamar, and had #5 Rocket Rasheed take a majority of the snaps while Mack played four positions overall.
The challenges are many for Katy’s internal development going into district play. I don’t know if it is quite a 2008-level rip everything down to the studs renovation/revolution, but the Tigers need to try and establish a reliable fundamental foundation on offense. The running game is nowhere near where Katy needs it to be in order to exercise more control over games. Defensively, the Tigers need to find a way to keep Jeremiah Smith hassling backfields and not pulled out into coverage as much when teams spread us out.
Mack was able to spring loose as the game went on due to Katy fatigue and due to the Eagles finding a way to keep Smith further away from the box where he was wrecking them earlier in the game. You are never going to spy a QB like Mack unless you have Paddy Fisher at MLB. “No Paddy, No Party” as far as spying is concerned.
On to district play
I will be interested to see to what level Katy tries to change things as district progresses. I would expect there is plenty of determination in both the coaching staff and the players to do something great this season, and a big determining factor in team renovations depends on the available talent in the building. If the talent is there in a group, there’s a chance to turn things around if the correct moves are made.
We will have to wait and see if Katy has the talent in the field house to move chess pieces around, and put this team in a better position to win against top level competition. I guarantee you Coach Joseph didn’t cry himself to sleep last night. I guarantee you neither he or anyone on the coaching staff are going to hand the district title to Jordan and start planning Thanksgiving vacations.
Katy Tigers go to work, and I think you’re about to see the program get its HGTV on and start knocking down some drywall.
