Clay-Chalkville’s speed and balance too much for Saraland in 38-21 defeat

 

 

 

By JIMMY WIGFIELD

BIRMINGHAM — Jamison Roberts kept getting off the turf and launching pocket rockets after getting knocked down. Deshawn Spencer kept catching them.

But they and Saraland were still no match for the latest Clay-Chalkville quarterback to torment the Spartans.

Cougars quarterback Aaron Frye stretched Saraland’s defense so thin that it practically vanished at times as the No. 1-ranked Cougars took an early 17-0 lead and went on to defeat the No. 2 Spartans 38-21 Friday night to win the Class 6A state championship at Protective Stadium.

Frye vexed Saraland with 183 yards on 15 carries and three touchdowns on runs of 39, 4 and 56 yards and completed 8 of 10 passes for 167 yards and two more TDs as Clay-Chalkville (15-0) not only proved it is the best team in Class 6A but made a case that it is the best in the state — period — because the Cougars also beat Class 7A champion Thompson earlier in the year.

“We felt like we’re the best team all year and I think we proved that tonight 1A through 7A,” said Clay-Chalkville coach Stuart Floyd, a college teammate of Spartans coach Jeff Kelly at Southern Miss who now has the distinction of winning state championships as a player, assistant coach and head coach at his alma mater.

Frye became the third dual-threat Cougars quarterback to defeat Saraland in the Super 7, following Ty Pigrome in a 36-31 win in 2014 and Jaylen Mbakwe in a 31-28 win in 2023.

But while the first two were close classics, the Spartans never got close enough to truly threaten Clay-Chalkville Friday night.

While Roberts was 28-of-37 passing for 265 yards and three touchdowns, the Cougars sacked him eight times and didn’t let Saraland’s running game suck in a breath of air, holding it to 25 yards. The Spartans’ worst loss in the Super 7 sent them to their third straight defeat in the finals, one of only three teams to suffer that since the Super 7 began in 2014; Pleasant Grove and Cherokee County are the others.

“I told our players on Monday that we are the best team that Saraland has played this year — and I don’t say that in a derogatory way — but you can just tell when you watch different game films and compare team for team,” Floyd said. “I thought we were the best in the sense of a total defense that they had played. And then offensively, they really haven’t seen a run game with a quarterback that could run and pass. We really wanted to make them play on the perimeter and the box at the same time.”

Kelly — whose teams have brought an undefeated record into the last three Super 7 finals, only to lose all three — wasn’t about to dispute his old friend’s claims.

“The storyline is Clay won, we lost,” said Kelly, whose team finished 13-1 after an unprecedented fourth straight trip to the Super 7. “They’ve got a great team. They’ve got a talented front with good size and tremendous explosion and speed. Those guys have relentless pressure on the quarterback.”

Saraland fought back from the 17-0 second-quarter deficit behind Auburn signee Deshawn Spencer’s 10 catches for 135 yards, including a 28-yard TD pass from Roberts, but it took too long for the Spartans to acclimate themselves to the Cougars’ defensive speed.

“Deshawn’s a great player,” Kelly said. “He’s so competitive and he finds a way to make the play. He almost wills himself to make the play at times.”

While it was Saraland’s worst loss in the Super 7, Kelly said he doesn’t want his players thought of as losers.

“The thing that I don’t want to get lost in the whole deal is our guys and their consistency and being able to sustain it over time,” said Kelly, whose team is 40-3 in the last three seasons, with all three losses in the Super 7. “Nobody else has done it. I wish there was anything in the world I could do to put our team in a better situation and win the game tonight. You go into the season and there’s a lot of people talking about this person graduated, that person graduated, Saraland’s had a nice run, but these players up here on this stage, they didn’t want to hear any of that. They willed us here and I’m proud of that.”

Clay-Chalkville took a 17-0 lead midway through the second quarter after Frye threw a 66-yard touchdown pass to Jacari Johnson, ran 39 yards for another score and Joseph Del-Toro kicked a 38-yard field goal.

Perhaps the fatal blow to the Spartans came when the Cougars converted a second-and-32 in the third quarter, setting up Frye’s 37-yard TD pass to Nasir Ray on fourth-and-9 for a 24-7 lead.

“It just makes it hard for a defense when you’ve got vertical threats and you’ve got threats in the box,” Floyd said. “You can’t cover them all.”

Meanwhile, Saraland continued to have trouble with its running game in the Super 7, being held to 25 yards on the ground. The Spartans have managed just 84 yards rushing combined in the last three state finals.

With no threat of a running game to slow the pass rush, Roberts clung to a leaking life raft as Clay-Chalkville seized the 17-0 lead.

But in the final minutes of the first half, Roberts stoked up on gunpowder and started getting rid of balls to Spencer that should have required fire-retardant mitts to catch. Spencer handled the live ammo for gains of 16, 25 and 12 yards in the middle and on fourth-and-goal at the 2, Roberts stood in against the pass rush and squeezed one to Eddie Turner for a TD as time expired to make it 17-7. But Saraland got no closer.

“We were having some tough times with the pass rush and then we settled in and some of our younger guys started becoming more comfortable and we got in a rhythm there,” Kelly said. “We had them on the ropes, we just couldn’t follow through with it there when we had the pressure on.”

Roberts also found A.J. Martin on a 38-yard TD pass with 33 seconds to go.