Vigor star edge rusher Jabarrius Garror stands frustrated in the rain during Thursday night’s 25-0 loss to Moody in the Class 5A state championship game at Protective Stadium in Birmingham. Garror, a great pass rusher, had just two tackles as the Blue Devils pressed their running game. (Helen Joyce/Call News)
BIRMINGHAM — As well versed as Vigor is at this state championship thing, nothing could have prepared the Wolves for the water torture they endured Thursday night in the big wash basin known as Protective Stadium.
No. 3-ranked Moody was as unrelenting as the rain, beating No. 2 Vigor 25-0 to inflict the worst loss the Wolves have ever absorbed in a state championship game — and they’ve been in eight of them now, winning four, and the 1988 team is still rightfully regarded as the greatest in state history.
But the way Vigor lost was particularly galling for a prideful program that has long regarded defense as its ace in the hole.
This time, the hole was in the Wolves’ defense, which was rated the third-best against the score in Class 5A but was as leaky as the clouds. Moody coach Jake Ganus, whose offense had featured 3,000-yard passer Jake Lowery, instead eagerly stuffed the football at Vigor as if shoveling coal into a furnace behind an offensive line that had four new starters at the beginning of the season.
“Lots of rain,” was Ganus’ reasoning for staying grounded. “You have to run the ball and stop the run to win these games and with the weather that was amplified, so we wanted to get big and run the ball,” he said. “If you told me we would have won the state championship 25-0 with, I don’t know if we had a completion, that would be tough to comprehend.”
The Blue Devils scored on their first two possessions on drives of 60 and 92 yards — all on the ground — and it was 15-0 before the Wolves could get off the field for some shelter in their crowded sideline tent. Moody finished with 277 yards rushing and hoarded the football for 30:44.
But that wasn’t all.
Already ahead 15-0 and in complete control, Ganus wasn’t taking any chances that Vigor might be thrown a life preserver by the Coast Guard in the second half, so he had Ryan McPherson tee up a rare 50-yard free kick — the first in Super 7 history — on the last play of the first half to make it 18-0. Did the Wolves then know they would not take a fifth Blue Map back to Prichard?
McPherson — “Legatron” to his coaches and teammates — has rehearsed such a scenario and sent the free kick swimming through a curtain of water before it cleared the crossbar with room to spare, making everybody in the press box rub their eyes and scramble for the rulebook.
Indeed, Kevin James made a fair catch of Dylan Jackson’s punt at Vigor’s 40 — the only way by rule a free kick can follow.
“They’ve got to be backed up,” Ganus said. “You’ve got to have enough time. It just worked out perfect. Legatron, man, there was no doubt. I was going to do it from the 50. I’ve seen him hit it from 63.”
The Wolves still had their chances but Demetris Johnson, who was averaging 6.2 yards per carry coming in, was stopped on fourth-and-1 at the Blue Devils’ 31 in the second quarter and Vigor squandered a blocked punt deep in Moody territory in the third quarter.
Miguel Wilson blocked McPherson’s punt, gaining a small measure of revenge for the free kick, and it was recovered at Moody’s 11. But Sammy Dunn, one of the state’s top dual-threat quarterbacks whose business is creating touchdowns (he had accounted for 45 this season), threw two incompletions out of bounds, then got intercepted by the Blue Devils’ Kylan Baker to end the threat — three straight passes from the 11 despite the fact the Wolves had run for more yardage to that point (83) than passed for (37).
In the end, it was the first time in 63 games Vigor had been shut out and only the second time in 110 playoff games it failed to score.
Nevertheless, first-year Wolves coach Renardo Jackson — who showed himself to be a capable coach after going 3-27 at LeFlore — would love to follow Moody’s path of losing in the finals, as the Blue Devils did to Montgomery Catholic 17-14 last year, only to return to finish the job.
“When I took this job, we had to replace 10 starters on defense and six starters on offense, so we might be a little bit ahead of schedule,” said Jackson, who barely spoke above a whisper due to bronchitis and a three-hour soak in 40-degree weather. “We’ve got a lot of pieces that will learn from this opportunity. I think they’ll be excited to work in a position where we can compete for a championship in the future.”
Ganus has been there.
“It was a tough offseason,” he said. “Six a.m. (workouts) isn’t fun when you lose. We did a study on teams that lose the Super Bowl, how often they get back, and I think it was seven of the last 50, so it’s tough.”
Vigor’s two main stars, Dunn and four-star edge rusher Jabarrius “Chicken” Garror, a junior who is committed to Alabama, were left to wonder what would have happened on a dry field.
Garror — so named not for a lack of courage but because he was told he resembled a wet chicken when he was born — has been a pass-rushing terror with 21 sacks, 18 hurries and 32½ tackles for loss but was rendered nearly invisible because Moody didn’t have to throw.
“If they would have threw the ball more, my game would have been on 10,” Garror said. “But they ran the ball, so that kind of took me out of my game. I knew if it was gonna rain, they were gonna run the ball. But they ran the ball pretty well and we didn’t stop it pretty well.”
Dunn, a three-star senior who has committed to Jackson State, succinctly summed it up when asked if the outcome would have been different on a dry field.
“Yes.”
He elaborated: “We did kind of let that get to us a little. But it’s football weather. If you want to win a championship, sometimes you’ve got to play in weather like that. We just didn’t execute enough.”
His coach would like another chance at the Blue Devils, too, but it won’t come until next year in Mobile at the earliest.
“I would love to see them and kick it off tomorrow on a dry field,” Jackson said. “But, man, they played a great game.”
