98 weeks. 686 days. 21 games. That’s how long it has been since the Coffee Trojans lost a football game. It seems like a lifetime ago since the Cartersville Purple Hurricanes defeated the Trojans in Cartersville. The date was November 25, 2022. It was the third round of the state playoffs.
Friday night, Coffee’s nearly two-year, 21-game winning streak came to an end. The Lee County Trojans defeated Coffee 48-14 in Leesburg. Coffee is now 7-1 on the season and 1-1 in region play.
A lot has happened over the last couple of weeks. Seven days after beating the Mainland High School Buccaneers from Daytona Beach by a score of 10-7, Hurricane Helene battered Coffee County, bringing widespread destruction that ground the county to an abrupt halt. The storm led to the postponement of Coffee’s game against the Northside (WR) Eagles, which had been set for September 27 in Douglas.
As a result of the storm, Coffee missed four days and had to play Northside in Warner Robins on Monday, September 30. Coffee won big but it wasn’t hard to see that the storm had taken a toll.
Coffee and Lee were supposed to play on Friday, October 4. However, Coffee head coach Mike Coe wanted to postpone the game until Saturday, October 5. The two programs didn’t see eye to eye on moving the game and eventually, the GHSA stepped in. The game was moved to October 11, which was originally an open week for both teams. And some of these off-the-field issues regarding moving the game didn’t set well with Coach Coe.
All of that led to a few interesting story lines leading up to the showdown in Leesburg. Lee was ranked #2 in the state, Coffee #3. Lee had the top-rated offense while Coffee had the state’s stingiest defense. It was a clash of two 5A titans that was one of the state’s most anticipated games.
While the hurricane certainly affected Coffee, it’s not fair to Lee to ascribe the outcome of the game solely to Helene. Lee is a perennial playoff team with a state championship palmares. This year, they’ve been consistently ranked as one of the top teams in Georgia. They’re big, they’re fast, they have maybe the best running back in the state in Ousmane Kromah along with a quarterback who can make plays with his legs as well as his arm, and they have a defense that had an answer for everything Coffee threw at them on Friday night.
So what happened on the field? Less than a minute into the second quarter, Lee was up 15-0 after a 46-yard touchdown run by quarterback Weston Bryan (the two-point conversion was good) and a 12-yard run by Kromah. On Coffee’s drive following Kromah’s score, quarterback Bray Coe threw a screen to Jayden Hancock on 3rd and 14 that Hancock turned into an 86-yard touchdown. With 10:10 remaining in the second quarter, Lee had a 15-7 lead.
Lee scored again on its next drive, this time on a 28-yard touchdown pass from Bryan to Jaden Upshaw. The score gave Lee a 22-7 advantage with 4:16 left in the first half. Following a Coffee punt on its fifth possession of the first half, Lee drove down and kicked a 40-yard field goal to go up 25-7 at the end of the second quarter.
All year long, Coffee has been a second-half team. It looked like that might be the case again Friday when, on another 3rd and long early in the third quarter, Coe threw another screen, this time to Tyrese Woodgett, who went 82 yards for a touchdown. A minute into the third quarter, Coffee trailed 25-14.
But that’s as close as they would get.
Late in the third quarter, Bryan scored again on a three-yard run. Lee went for two but didn’t convert. That touchdown put Lee ahead 31-14. Early in the fourth quarter, Kromah scored on a 59-yard run that saw him stay on his feet when two different Coffee defenders looked like they had him tackled for sure. That gave Lee a 38-14 lead. After that score, the Coffee side of the stadium started emptying as fans headed to the parking lot.
A couple of minutes later, Bryan scored his third touchdown of the night, this time on a 10-yard scamper to put Lee up 45-14. An interception on Coffee’s ensuing possession led to a 34-yard field goal that put Lee out in front 48-14 with 5:27 remaining. Neither team scored again, though Lee’s starters never left the game and they were very close to another touchdown with less than 60 seconds remaining.
Things weren’t over when the last second ticked off the clock, either. Presumably due to the off the field issues surrounding changing the game date and time, Coach Coe wouldn’t shake Lee head coach Dean Fabrizio’s hand following the game. That led to a heated exchange between the two coaches that resulted in a few minutes of post-game chaos. Thankfully, none of the players from either team got involved.
Coffee has three games remaining in the regular season: October 18 against Houston County (home), October 25 against Veterans High School (home), and November 1 against Thomas County Central (away). Next Friday’s game against Houston County is scheduled for 7:30.