Saraland’s win was deserved; E.J. Crowell’s suspension was not

 

 

     

JACKSON — Saraland enjoyed five undeniable advantages in its 17-6 victory over Jackson Friday night in a game that stirred months of preseason hyperbole plus 4,500 fans at Legion Field, including some who stood four deep peering through a chain-link fence behind one end zone until it started raining.

No. 1, Saraland is Saraland. The Spartans are what Murphy was in the 1970s, Vigor was in the 1980s and Blount was in the 1990s — the preeminent team in the Mobile area and among the best in the state. Saraland coach Jeff Kelly has inculcated the belief among his players that they are supposed to win no matter how many great players come and go and no matter if they undergo a substantial roster turnover.

No. 2, the Spartans’ Jamison Roberts was the best quarterback on the field for those three hours, a fact that will immeasurably boost Roberts’ confidence and career and push the Aggies’ Landon Duckworth to make fans remember he is one of the nation’s top players at his position.

No. 3, Saraland made far fewer mistakes than Jackson.

No. 4, Aggies five-star running back E.J. Crowell didn’t play due to an undeserved suspension. You heard that right — it was undeserved. His godfather let him borrow a luxury vehicle and Crowell derived no benefit from it aside from a few photos.

(No. 4A has nothing to do with Saraland but prayers are needed for all the other teams in Class 4A which will be used as floormats as Jackson wins another state championship. (“Y’all done woke up a monster,” the suspended Crowell warned the day before the game.)

No. 5, the Spartans wanted to prove a point that they should not be considered an underdog unless they’re playing an SEC team or being forced to hop onto the field with their feet bound together. “Our guys had a chip on their shoulder,” Kelly said, one that Jackson could not knock off.

Saraland receiver Deshawn Spencer said he was happy to send a message to those who felt the Aggies were a vastly superior team.

“I hope it did,” he said. “Coach Kelly said don’t worry about the internet. You know, we do all our talking on the field. Everybody in the state had us losing this game. It feels good to kind of say, hey, we proved y’all wrong.”

The Aggies made enough mistakes to fill a barge floating down the Tombigbee River but whether that was due to Crowell’s absence is debatable. He would have made a difference, yet all the errors would have made it difficult to win even with the Alabama commitment on the field.

Jackson had four turnovers, two of them resulting in 10 Spartans points in the fourth quarter, and 14 penalties for 102 yards — including seven for illegal procedure, two for unsportsmanlike conduct, two for holding and one each for delay of game, intentional grounding and an illegal substitution. The Aggies could have been forgiven for expecting a yellow flag in the locker room at halftime for leaving the toilet seats up.

The holding penalties were especially damaging — one nullified Keeyun Chapman’s long kickoff return to Saraland’s 25 in the second quarter and the other wiped out Duckworth’s 48-yard scramble to the Spartans’ 15 in the fourth quarter. Crowell, it must be noted, was not involved in either.

Jackson coach Cody Flournoy could only accept the defeat with a promise about the future, as he did after Saraland’s 35-27 win last season that spurred the Aggies to scorch the earth the rest of the way to a Blue Map.

“We have to be better and we will,” Flournoy said the next day. “The sun came up. The jokes are not as funny. We missed a chance.”

On the damp and nearly abandoned field after the long-awaited game was over, Flournoy clearly saw the next steps for his team.

“The hardest thing for us is not to let it linger,” he said. “That’s a good football team. We thought they’d be good. We’ve got to bounce back and go back to work next week and just work out some of this stuff that we’re having problems with. Your biggest improvement for football teams is from game one to game two and I think we’ll be a lot better next week against Demopolis.”

As usual, the rest of Class 6A had better pay attention to the Spartans, who want a fourth straight trip to the Super 7.

“The job’s not finished,” Roberts said. “We’ve still got a whole season ahead of us.”

Kelly looked forward to seeing the tape, although not to savor the victory.

“We’re going to go back on tape and we’re going to see a lot of things that we can improve, that we can get better on, and we’ve got to do that,” he said.

Flournoy joked that he wants to find a way to trip up Saraland late in the season, not at the beginning.

“Credit to Saraland because they found a way to come up here in a hostile environment,” Flournoy said. “But, dang, here we are, two big games in back-to-back years and Saraland’s got the best of us. I’m thinking I’m going to try to move that game to game 10 or something. Let us work out the kinks and then play them.”