Jackson shows it’s the best Class 4A team in history and this run is likely not over

 

 

BIRMINGHAM — Annihilation doesn’t capture it. Neither does incineration or obliteration. It’s best to say the state record book had no equal for No. 1-ranked Jackson’s 69-6 victory over Cherokee County Friday, which was the worst beating in the annals of the Super 7.

At times, you were tempted to avert your eyes from the carnage but then you would have missed history in the making.

The No. 3-ranked Warriors were in the Class 4A state championship game for the third straight year. They lost the first two 35-0 and 28-7 but those were nail gnawers compared to what the greatest Class 4A team to ever set foot on a field did to them at Protective Stadium.

“This is what they should have done,” Aggies coach Cody Flournoy said of his team, which demolished every opponent in its path this season except for its 35-27 loss to Saraland in the season opener — and what Jackson wouldn’t give for a rematch now.

“I think everybody got to see what Jackson football is about,” Flournoy said.

There was some thought that it would be good to see the Aggies get pushed in the finals just to check what they had under the hood but there was never a chance of that. Cherokee County’s players hadn’t seen anything this good unless they watch TV games on Saturday or Sunday.

“I felt like they were intimidated before we even kicked it off,” said Jackson quarterback Landon Duckworth, who long ago proclaimed himself a football wonder when he wore Superman cleats to his first pee-wee game. On Friday, he showed he has outgrown Superman and moved on to a level that can best be described as the finger of God working in him. The nation’s top-rated dual-threat quarterback in the 2026 class was 14-of-17 passing for 325 yards. He had more touchdowns (5) than incompletions (3). He showed an arm that made it seem as if he could hit the traffic racing past on the overpass next to the stadium. He and receivers Keeyun “Red” Chapman and Junior Payne scored whenever they had the urge against the vastly overmatched Warriors, who at least weren’t penalized, unless you count getting off the bus to begin with.

Perhaps a trifle miffed that a busted coverage allowed Cherokee County a long touchdown pass toward the end of the first half, Flournoy called a time out with 11 seconds left and a 34-6 lead.

“We were thinking let’s go ahead and put it away right there,” Flournoy said. “Let’s put the nail in the coffin.”

Call it touchdown on demand by simply dialing 1 and 6 for 7. Duckworth’s sublime 49-yard post route was plucked out of the chilly air by Chapman, who reached over a defender for the ball. It was as easy as an alley-oop dunk from a 6-foot-4 quarterback to a 6-foot-4 receiver, both of whom are among the best players at their position in the U.S. and both of whom can now add a Blue Map in football to go with the Blue Map they won in basketball earlier this year.

“Red was like, ‘If I’m not open, don’t throw the ball,’” said Duckworth, who wasn’t about to comply. “I said, ‘I’ve got to throw it — you’re tall.’”

Chapman knew what to expect.

“I knew he was going to throw it to me,” Chapman said. “It’s like normal to me, man. I knew Landon since third grade, so we’ve been playing for a long time. We have a chemistry together.”

Did the film study portend as devastating a mismatch in all phases as it turned out to be on the field? The Aggies never punted. They set a Class 4A Super 7 record with 546 yards of total offense. Duckworth was in such a zone that Cherokee County, with only one exception, didn’t come close to touching or breaking up any of the balls he released.

“I don’t think nobody can match up with us, so it’s always a mismatch,” Duckworth said. “We had a pretty good game plan. It was really the same thing we’ve been working on since the beginning of the year. I don’t think we could be beat by nobody.”

Duckworth didn’t need any additional kindling to throw on the blaze but he got some during the week when he saw a mysterious social media post featuring a photoshopped image of two hunters aiming their guns at his face, which was superimposed over a duck under the heading, “Duck hunting szn.”

But the Warriors are the ones who clearly forgot to Duck and by halftime, the only thing that could have saved them was a pardon from Joe Biden. It was an awesome and rare demonstration in a state championship game that, this time, schemes didn’t matter.

In fact, the only adjustment Flournoy and his coaches tried to make at halftime was trying to get the antenna on their sideline video screen to work.

“The stadium’s too big here, so we needed a better antenna and we just didn’t have one,” he said. “We tried to make the adjustment at halftime when we moved the antenna but then the antenna got too far away from the camera.”

And somehow, the headsets of Flournoy and his assistants got turned off around halftime, not that they needed them. Flournoy could have put on some Beats headphones and listened the rest of the way to some “good dirt-road country,” as he called it.

“They weren’t our sets, it’s a stadium set,” Flournoy said. “But it didn’t matter on the score. The guys went out and executed it. We win on Mondays and Tuesdays of the week, so all the work had already been done.”

Flournoy was concerned about Cherokee County’s size up front but that proved to be unfounded.

“We thought we had a speed advantage and that showed today, mightily,” he said. “But they’re a championship team. They’ve been here three times in a row. It was going to be a clash of styles. If they got first downs and held the ball and just ran the clock, that was their path to victory. Ours was to stop the run and hit explosive plays. … They just didn’t have an answer.”

If there is any doubt the Aggies are the greatest high school football team in Class 4A history, it should have been dispelled on Friday.

Jackson is even better than the 2004 Demopolis team which finished 15-0 and scored 761 points, the third-highest in state history for a single season.

The Aggies weren’t about to score 131 points against the Warriors to tie Demopolis, then again maybe they would have if Duckworth, Chapman and E.J. Crowell had played the entire game.

Also consider that none of the other 40 Class 4A state champions since 1984 (when the class went from the largest schools to where it is now) ever beat a Class 7A team that went two rounds into the playoffs, as Jackson did Baker this year. The Aggies’ strength of schedule is also far better than Demopolis’ was in 2004.

Demopolis had nine first-team All-State players, led by quarterback Devin Goodwin and defensive back Dontrell Miller.

Jackson will have at least four in Duckworth, Chapman, Crowell and defensive back Jamarrion Gordon. Duckworth or Crowell will be the Class 4A Back of the Year.

And none of the previous Class 4A state champions had the nation’s top-rated dual-threat quarterback (Duckworth) and the nation’s top-rated running back (Crowell) in the same backfield and neither are seniors. That the nation’s best quarterback and running back come from a populace of 4,500 in southern Alabama boggles the mind. I’m surprised the feds haven’t started an investigation.

“I try to tell some of my friends — because I’ve worked at different places, Central Phenix City being most notable — and I was like, ‘Listen, I’ve got eight to 10 guys that would start at Central Phenix City right now,’” Flournoy said. “And everybody thinks I’m kind of messing around. I was like, ‘No, you need to watch us play.’ I’m not trying to be boastful, I’m just evaluating talent. These guys can play and I think everybody got to see a picture of that.”

Imagine Duckworth, who was offered by Auburn last week, being even better as a senior. Offensive coordinator Chris Moore has such visions.

“I want to see what he looks like next football season because from last fall to this fall, he put in a lot of work to be where we’re at today,” Moore said. “He’s really worked. He was good when he came in as a freshman at throwing the ball down the field outside the numbers. But from last year to this year, he put his face into football and you see the difference. That’s something we talked about at the end of the game — this is another jump he’s got to make going into next year.

“He knew he was raw and, I mean, he’ll own it, The game came easy and then he started investing in it and putting work in it. He’s done a 180 this season. He’s taking football serious.”

That, and the fact the Aggies return 16 of the 22 starters from the state championship game, is apocalyptic news for the rest of Class 4A.

“I just want our guys to play well, just play to their best,” Flournoy said. “And if we do that, I think you’ll see us up here again.”