By Michael V. Hannigan/HCN
CORSICANA — Call them the Red Menace.
The Cardinal D has been on fire to start the 2017 season and Saturday night the defense was the key to a 25-19 SWJCFC win over Navarro Bulldogs. The Cardinals also added three more takeaways to bring their total to eight for the first eight quarters of the year.
Saturday night it was Pat Peek and Cassius Grady with interceptions and O’Shea Jackson with a fumble recovery.
“We preach that every day,” said Defensive Coordinator Will Reed.
The Cardinals needed the defense to step up against Navarro with the offense beset with injuries and struggling against a very good Bulldog defense.
“You could hear them on the sideline saying, ‘Hey let’s just stay the course. Let’s just keep playing keep doing what we need to do and everything will be alright and that’s how we ended up where we ended up tonight,'” said Reed.
TVCC sprinted out to a 17-0 first quarter lead, but the Bulldogs exploded in the second quarter and the score was 19-17 at the half. It was the worst quarter of the year for the Cardinals, who have given up a combined 6 points over the other seven quarters.
“They did a great job of trying to speed it up on us,” said Reed, “and our guys understood that we were the ones who were responsible for allowing them to climb back in this thing.”
Reed said he thought his group missed some tackles in the second quarter that also allowed Navarro to move the ball.
“I think that’s what kind of hurt us in the first half,” he said. “We didn’t do a great job of tackling. In the second half we did a much better job of tacking.”
The Cardinals never stopped grinding, however.
“We knew the whole time, they don’t score they don’t win,” said Peek, who made a great play on special teams to pin Navarro deep in its own territory to go along with his interception. “We knew we were going to get in the end zone one more time. We trusted our offense and we trusted everybody out here.”
The big moment came with about three minutes left when Grady stripped the ball away from the Bulldog running back to give TVCC possession in the red zone.
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“That was the best feeling in the world,” said Peek. “I knew we had the game won from that point. Everything on our shoulders just lifted off.”
“We knew we were going to get the job done because we’ve been (in these spots) three for times last year,” Peek said. “Nobody was panicking, nobody was freaking out. We knew we had it, we just had to play our assignment.”
That’s the secret to the Cardinals defensive success so far this season.
“Guys just keep going and keep going,” said Reed.