As the team’s offensive coordinator from 2012-15, Taylor Leathers called countless plays for Lexington. The most important call he made is still benefiting head coach Jason Lard and the Golden Bears today.
At the outset of what turned out to be his final season as coordinator, Leathers convinced Lard to hand the reins of his triple-option offense to an inexperienced yet savvy sophomore quarterback named Tyler Pettus.
“I sort of talked Coach Lard into starting him,” said Leathers, who left after the 2015 season to become the head coach at Colbert Heights. “We had some seniors and juniors available, but Tyler was a real heady kid. He was smart, and he made good decisions with the football. That’s crucial for a quarterback in the triple-option.
“You have a split-second to decide, ‘Do I give it or do I pull it?’ Then you have another split-second to decide, ‘Do I keep it or do I pitch it?’ Tyler was really intelligent when it came to that kind of stuff.”
With Pettus at the controls of Leathers’ offense, Lexington went 6-5 in 2015 and made the playoffs for an eighth consecutive season. Last year, the Golden Bears improved to eight wins, including a 35-14 victory at home over Colbert Heights in which Pettus passed for three touchdowns against his old coach.
Now, heading into Friday’s critical Class 3A, Region 8 showdown at Amos Mitchell Stadium, Leathers and his former signal-caller are preparing to share the same field one final time.
Leathers knows all too well the challenges that await his defense in trying to contain Pettus, who rushed for three touchdowns in a 47-15 rout of Elkmont on September 8.
“He’s a veteran quarterback who is really talented and really smart,” Leathers said. “This is his senior year, so he’s really motivated and he’s playing really well. He has a lot of game experience. He’s played a lot of football. He’s been making the right decisions for three years now. He’s not gonna miss much.”
When in doubt, Pettus can always give the ball to senior fullback Everett Williams, a 6’1, 220-pound battering ram. Williams rushed for 165 yards and two touchdowns in the rout of Elkmont two weeks ago and then carried eight times for 47 yards before leaving with an injury in the second quarter of last week’s 12-0 win over Clements.
“He’s a bruiser,” Leathers said of Williams, another Golden Bear he coached as a sophomore in 2015. “He runs the football hard, and he’s physical. He’s not the type of back you’re gonna be able to tackle one-on-one. One person can’t bring him down. You have to gang-tackle him. You really have to fly to the football to get him on the ground.”
Leathers, a Winfield native and former defensive lineman at UNA, has a special appreciation for the triple-option offense. [He marveled at Georgia Tech’s 535-yard rushing effort in a season-opening loss to Tennessee, referring to Yellow Jacket head coach and triple-option guru Paul Johnson as “a wizard.”] He said it will take a selfless, disciplined effort from his Colbert Heights defense—which hadn’t allowed a first-half point all season prior to last week’s 45-25 loss at West Morgan—to get a win on Friday night.
“Number one, you have to play assignment football,” Leathers said. “You have to be disciplined on the defensive side of the football and carry out your responsibilities the way you’re coached to do it. Last Friday [against West Morgan], we did not do that, and we’ll have to improve in that area this week.
“The triple-option is so effective because it forces a teenager [on defense] to carry out a certain responsibility over and over—not just one time, but throughout the course of the entire game. It’s all about repetition. That’s why discipline and selflessness are so important. If it’s my job as a defensive end to occupy an offensive tackle, then I have to occupy that tackle on every play. If it’s my job to take the dive, then I have to take the dive every time they run the option. Because that one time where I get mentally fatigued and I can’t get where I’m supposed to be, it’s gonna be a big play.
“The triple-option can physically wear you down. It takes a toll.”
That’s the nature of the challenge awaiting the Wildcat defensive front on Friday. Linemen like Bud Pratt (22 tackles on the season), Cain Phifer (14 tackles), Chason Scott, Brannon Bradford and Tyler Tubbs (two tackles for loss) have to hold their own at the point of attack, allowing senior linebackers Dylan Chandler (team-high 35 tackles), Korey Saint (34 tackles), Brendan Borden (31 tackles) and Bevin Foust (24 tackles) to read their keys and attack downhill. Lexington (2-1, 2-0 region) is reloading with new faces at receiver and slot-back this season, but Colbert Heights defensive backs Carson Shaw (17 tackles, one interception), Tanner Rickard (13 tackles, one interception) and J.J. Michael must still remain disciplined in pass defense while also offering help in run support.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, Leathers hopes to see his team build on the momentum of its best offensive performance of the season. The Wildcats (3-1, 1-1) rolled up 312 rushing yards against West Morgan, including a season-high 149 from senior quarterback Kevin Shaw on 22 attempts.
“He played his best football game of the year,” Leathers said of Shaw, who rushed for two touchdowns and also connected with Saint on a 21-yard scoring strike. “We put him in a position to run the ball more downhill, and he handled it great. I also saw Kevin take on a leadership role that I really hadn’t seen before, and I’m proud of him for that.
“A lot of credit goes to our offensive line coach Justin Helms, too. He’s a new addition to our staff this year, and I put him in charge of the offensive line. He likes to play a physical brand of football. We struggled the first few games; one week it was the line, another week it was the backs. But he’s been consistent in the way he’s coaching our guys, and those five guys up front played their best game of the year last week.”
Unfortunately for the Wildcats, on a night when their offense finally found a rhythm and posted a season-high 375 total yards on 58 snaps, a defense that had been lights-out all season struggled to slow down West Morgan’s high-powered attack and surrendered 45 points. [Colbert Heights had allowed a total of just 20 points during a 3-0 start.]
“Our offense played fairly well,” Leathers said. “We certainly haven’t arrived on offense, but I’m hoping we can build off what we did. The first three weeks, we relied mainly on our special teams and our defense, but the other night our offense really carried us through that game. My main takeaway was, if all three phases are working together, we’ve got a good football team.
“We’ll have to play great on defense, offense and special teams to beat a good Lexington team in a really big region game.”
Perennial powers Colbert County and Lauderdale County are both off to 2-0 starts in region play, as is Lexington. West Morgan (1-1 in region play) certainly looks the part of a playoff team. Do the math, and it’s difficult to overstate the importance of this Friday’s game for both the Wildcats and the Golden Bears. The odds of both of them reaching the postseason this year appear slim.
“It’s hard to speculate what will happen the rest of the season, but this is definitely a big game,” said Leathers, whose team won two out of three on the road after opening the season with a home win over Red Bay on August 25. “I feel like the winner of this game will play in the playoffs, and the loser will have their work cut out for them. The winner of this game will earn their right to be in the playoffs, and the loser will have a very hard road.
“I think these two teams are evenly matched. It’s gonna be a huge night for our program. It’s just our second home game of the year. Coach Lard and me are really good friends. We talk often. I think both sides understand the importance of this game in terms of the postseason.”
