In last week’s 2021 Georgia High School Football Brackets playoff between Brunswick (11-0) and Tucker (2-9), the contest began with major upset implications when Tucker took a 6-0 lead into the second quarter.
On the Pirates’ first possession of the second quarter, they went nowhere and punted back to the Tigers. After a 16-yard pass by Tucker, the Pirates regrouped and started playing Pirates football. An 8-yard tackle for a loss and a fumble, recovered by Brunswick, was followed by a 12-yard run by Chuckobe Hill, which led to a 6-yard TD run by Patt Leggett, to give the Pirates a 7-6 lead with 7 minutes left in the half.
Tucker was energized by the lead change and completed a quick touchdown drive to take back the lead at 13-7. This time, it was Leggett’s turn to go on a long run and set up Hill, who scored from 2 yards out to put the Pirates back on top, 14-13. Now it was the Pirates’ turn to be fired up; and on the next possession, the defense pinned Tucker back and subsequently nailed them for a safety and a 16-13 lead.
Keeping it rolling, Brunswick took possession after the safety free-kick and scored on a 2-yard run by Hill to make it 23-13. A couple of pin-point desperation passes by Tucker found gold, and the Tigers scored with under a minute left in the quarter to close the gap to 23-20 in favor of Brunswick at the half.
In the second half, the football world realigned and Brunswick played Pirate football the rest of the way. Brunswick took the second-half kick-off and marched 80 yards in less than a minute ... easy to do when quarterback Jeffrey Waye found TJ Mitchell for a 79-yard score.
But Tucker came back one more time with a long 80-yard drive in 4 minutes to make it 30-26. The Pirates went into power mode and scored on a 22-yard run by Ree Simmons 37-26 with 4 minutes left. A Tucker drive ended with an interception by Adam Mweemba and the Pirates struck again on another Hill TD, this one from the 10 to end the third quarter at 44-26.
A minute into the fourth, Brunswick made it 51-26 on another bomb, a 64-yarder from Sutton Ellis to Mitchell, and they got the ball right back on a fumble recovery and capitalized with a 30-yard Leon Charlton run to make it 57-26.
A 25-yard field goal with 4 minutes left by Mcclain Fineran put the final score at 60-26.
Waye completed only 2 of 5 passes, but they went for 82 yards, and Ellis was 2 for 7 for 72 yards. Mitchell caught two, both TDs, for 143 yards. Mitchell also returned 3 kickoffs for 117 yards.
The Pirates gained 315 of their 469 total yards on the ground and had two 100-yard rushers. Simmons carried 15 times for 105 yards, and Hill was good for 100 yards and 3 TDs on 19 carries. Charlton gained 58 on 5 carries and Leggett picked up 47 yards on four tries.
On defense, Mweemba had 7 solo tackles and an interception, and Staffon Stanley had 6. Devin Smith and River Creel had sacks.
Brunswick has now outscored their opponents 422 to 135. So, what does a team do for an encore, when they are 11-0 and they have just knocked off a playoff opponent by 34 points?
We will see on Friday when they take on the Dacula Falcons (7-4) in the next 2021 Georgia High School Football Playoff Brackets game.
The two teams have one common opponent – Tucker, which lost to Dacula 32-7.
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