Young Trinity team shows bright spots, but can’t solve Briarwood speed in season opener

The season’s first game always teaches you a lot about your team. 

Friday’s revealed there’s a lot to like about the scrappy defense, physical rushing attack and young upside the 2026 Trinity Crusaders bring to the table. 

But it also showed they’ll need a good bit more speed in order to hang with teams like the top-rated Briarwood Bucs, who separated themselves with the quickness of a few top athletes in the open field. 

It was two in particular – tailback Orrin Wynn and receiver Carson Callaway –  that Trinity couldn’t catch any time either was able to gain a step. Both stamped the gas pedal, and easily held off the Crusaders’ fastest in pursuit, on footraces after carries or catches that were the pivotal plays. 

After matching the game’s methodical early pace for about a quarter and a half, Briarwood throttled up and rattled off touchdowns on six possessions in a row to win it 47-6. 

“Their speed was the difference in the ballgame,” said Trinity head coach Bruce Lane. “I was really pleased with how we played other than giving up the big plays, and that’s something where we’ve got to get better on the back end of our defense coming up tackling, taking better angles. Being able to break down and make an open-field tackle. I think if you go back and look at their big plays, we missed a lot of tackles, or we were not in position to make plays.”

Wynn rushed for 153 yards and two big scores in the second half. Callaway had 105 on his pair of touchdown catches bookending halftime. 

The Crusaders kept Bucs quarterback Cutler Fleming under some slightly better wraps than they could a year ago, as his 400-plus total yard effort led a rout of similar margins on the scoreboard that got away much more quickly. The senior was 9-of-15 passing for 206 yards, and rushed for an additional 46. 

“They have a lot of weapons,” Lane said. 

Trinity’s offense, decidedly less the big-play type, took on a ground-and-pound identity with bruising backs Will-J Harris and Tayt Evans the best matchup they had for a defense that might have been a touch undersized, but didn’t lack for any of the toughness typically displayed by Briarwood teams under head coach Bo Fleming, for whom this was an eighth-straight victory over the Crusaders. 

Harris rushed for 68, Evans for 51, and the team for 127 out of a decent 180 yards total offense. 

Passing success, for an all-new signal caller and receiving corps, was hit or miss. Freshman quarterback Jude Evans completed six of 14 attempts for 53, with a touchdown and a pick. Tayt Evans, Jacob Helton, Mason Lane and Hein Schaaf had receptions. 

Trinity’s longest pass went only 15, and its biggest rushing gain was 22. Big plays, which the visitors used to roll up 483 total yards (277 rushing), were nonexistent for an offense that, at present, is able to rely on only one dimension. 

Third and fourth downs with less than five to go were a strong proposition all night, but the Crusaders put themselves in only three of those situations, and converted just two, while picking up the same number out of eight against longer yardages. 

“We are going to have to be very methodical in trying to move the ball until we develop some guys with some confidence catching the ball, because probably everybody that caught a pass tonight, that was their first catch in a varsity football game,” Lane said. “And for some of them, it was their first carry, and for our quarterback, it was his first pass in a varsity football game. I’m not disappointed. I’m disappointed in the score, but not disappointed in how we played overall.” 

Time, not on their side…

Though the Crusaders made some considerable progress, a little at a time, on their first-half possessions, they somehow weren’t successful at chewing clock. 

As a result, the second quarter kind of ambled along. And a stubborn four minutes-or-so remained on the clock as hopes of getting a 7-0 deficit most of the way to halftime were frustrated on a couple more of those thirds-and-long as Trinity punted it away for a fourth and fifth time. 

The Bucs, starting from their own territory on both opportunities, and needed only two minutes and change to get down the field and punch in a second touchdown of the night via Dominic Aviles with 2:26 remaining. 

The Crusaders moved the chains once, with the help of a clever hook-and-ladder play followed by a several-yard Harris rumble for a fourth-down conversion, on the following possession. But they still only managed to consume another minute. 

A key first down conversion fell through as a roughly 22-yard completion from Evans to Sam Owens was wiped out by offensive pass interference, ultimately forcing Trinity to kick it back again.

This time, Briarwood ran six plays, and scored for a third time, in only 26 seconds.

Fleming found Callaway with a 25-yard ball into double coverage on the left side of the end zone to make it 21-0 with 47 seconds to play. And what was a manageable game moments before quickly became unmanageable, considering the Crusaders’ state on offense, as things went to halftime. 

The Bucs’ biggest hit of the night put it fully out of reach just after their return from the locker room. 

Trinity was on the verge of turning momentum with a big stop, as its D backed ’em into a third and 20 on the opening series. 

But Callaway went unaccounted for up the seam on the following snap, and Fleming dumped the ball off to him for an 80-yard spring into a four-score lead. 

Trinity dented that slightly with its lone scoring drive in response, and one of only two possessions eclipsing four minutes on the night. 

Harris and Tayt Evans carries, plus an acrobatic Schaaf catch near the sideline, helped get the ‘Saders to the Briarwood 5, where they’d recover from two lost-yardage plays to finally punch one in on Jude Evans’ 7-yard touchdown pass to Lane. 

A blocked point made the score 28-6 with 3:28 to go in the third. 

“We just started running right at them,” Lane said. “Will-J had a few big carries on that drive. He’s a load.” 

But the Bucs responded with three more touchdowns going away, and all on sub-minute drives, as Trinity got increasingly worn down. 

Wynn got outside and shook the pursuit the whole way on a 40-yarder, then hit a 33-yard play to start the next drive. Caden Johnson finished it off with 9:30 left in the fourth quarter. 

Callaway jumped a route and picked a pass a couple plays into the next Trinity possession, and Wynn found the field again to go 27 to the house on the very next snap. 

Briarwood relented on threats to break 50, taking a knee after Jey Edwards broke free on a 35-yard pickup against Trinity reserves who caught him with 10 yards to spare in the last couple minutes. 

An encouraging start…

The first of the Bucs’ many big plays keyed their 92-yard scoring trip that was the lone exception to a pattern of punts in the game’s first 19 minutes. 

Wynn broke loose for the longest so far on an exterior run to launch Briarwood from its own red zone to over midfield late in the first quarter, and that seemed to open something up for the Bucs inside, as Fleming kept for another decent gain on the next play. 

Briarwood pieced together some smaller plays to reach goal-to-go, as the field flipped ends with the change of quarters, and used space again on a lateral sweep for Banks DeMore, who kept the chase at arm’s length on an angle for the end zone. 

And the first of Callaway’s five successful extra point kicks, each testing just how close he could cut it between the crossbar and right upright, just good to make it 7-0. 

Other than that, Trinity’s defense played the Bucs well for most of the early going, showing off some strong pass rush with pressures (and a combined sack by Lane, Corbin Albritton and Gavin Hightower) on some ill-fated drop backs to force a punt their first series.

The Crusaders rebounded after the score, with Lane (who was all over several big defensive plays on the night) sniffing out a Wynn sweep to force a 10-yard loss on first down of Briarwood’s next turn, and eventually another punt. 

They played some impressive bully ball on the first handful of drives, even a first that failed just before midfield due to some early jitters. 

“We were a little nervous,” Lane said. “We had three penalties in four plays, and we had great field position. You can’t get behind the sticks like that.” 

But the second got rolling and got a ways into Briarwood territory before a key second-down loss also led to a punt. 

Lane saw some good early glimpses, as well as growing pains, from his reworked offensive line that will have to find ways to prevent the type of negative plays that knocked things off track. 

“I don’t want to say we need to do a better job on the line of scrimmage, but we’ve got to be more consistent on the line of scrimmage and we can’t allow penetration,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to step up and double team a guy and not let guys get penetration.” 

Trinity had a slight edge on the Bucs in total numbers, and definitely in size at several positions too. But Briarwood’s lineup, returning most of its core from a nine-win season that reached last year’s semifinals, was sound, well-rounded… and fast. 

All are marks of potential to go far again. 

“They’ll be playing into November,” Lane said. “They’re a Final Four-type team.”  

As for the Crusaders, this was the first of many learning experiences to come in the early part of the fall. And some more really good teams are coming up soon on the schedule. 

A visit to last year’s Class A state champ Robert Toombs in Lyons is next week before the Crusaders host its runner-up Edmund Burke on Aug. 28. Dreaded two-time defending AA champion Brentwood comes to town Sept. 11. 

“We’ve just got to keep plugging away,” Lane said. “I think we’ll have a good little football team before we get through with this whole thing.” 

There are some steps to go before a shot to compete with this caliber of team for four quarters. But that Trinity was able to hold its own for portions of this game was a sign that this young roster has potential to get there with time. 

“After having watched (Briarwood) play last week in their scrimmage, I thought we played really really well in the first half, and then it kind of got a little out of hand in the second half,” Lane said. “But overall, I’m encouraged going forward.”