FOOTBALL: East Laurens puts up fight, but falls in finale as Northeast finalizes first-place finish

MACON – Northeast head coach Jeremy Wiggins has had better halftimes.

For one, his top-5 team was up by only seven points, at home, against a team it beat 32-7 a year ago and that lost last week at home to the least successful Region 2-High A team the past few years.

And it looked like his quarterback — also his son — would be out the rest of the game.

Northeast had to grind and battle more than expected, but did just that to ease further ahead for a 29-8 win over East Laurens at Thompson Stadium in the regular-season finale.

The Raiders move on at 8-2 overall and 8-1 in region play, a record good enough to win the region championship. Northeast and Dublin both finished 8-1, but the Raiders got the tiebreaker nod courtesy of their 20-0 win over the Irish. The region title marks the first for Northeast since 2009 and the first region trophy of Wiggins’ career as a head coach. 

The Raiders, seeded fifth, are set to host Fannin County in the first round of the state playoffs. East Laurens, which just avoided the cut as the 32nd team in, will travel to take on No. 1 Heard County on Nov. 14. 

Wiggins may wield some discipline when the Raiders return to work after a night of emotions, face-to-face discussions and penalties, to the point where officials called Wiggins and East Laurens head coach Jesse Hicks to midfield with 4:30 left in the game to advise them to get their teams under control.

Hicks, who in the final minute lost his quarterback to a physical hit, wasn’t happy and felt the officials didn’t corral players enough or early enough, although there were no real scuffles or ejections.

“Referees are supposed to control the game and call the game,” he said. “When things start to get like that, you have to send kids out. If you don’t do that, it’s going to continue. That stuff happened the whole game.”

Neither team was sharp, although the Falcons played well enough to hang around longer than expected.

“I just love the way that my kids competed,” Hicks said. “You know, at the end of the day, nobody thought we would come in here and play football.

“Football is a game that is played with execution and it’s played with sharpness, and you can’t win football games off reputation and I told our kids that we got to make them play football and I think we did a good job with that.”

It looked early on like a running clock in the second half might be on tap, when the first pass of new quarterback Bryson Hazley was picked off by Jaiden Center.

The Raiders moved 45 yards in three plays, 33 coming from quarterback Jordan Wiggins on the first play, who hit then Tavares Tinsley Jr. for the 7-yard touchdown pass.

Three plays later, Hazley was intercepted again by defensive lineman Chad Manuel on an ill-advised short pop pass into a pile.

But Northeast went nowhere. Hazley then returned the favor by intercepting a pass himself in Raider territory, but the Falcons fumbled it back at the 10.

Northeast covered 84 yards on six plays, the final 41 coming on Scottavian Thomas’s curl, catch and burst upfield for a 15-0 lead at the 11:26 mark of the second quarter.

The Falcons answered four plays later. Hazley, who spent the night scrambling and buying time, found a remarkably wide open J.J. Wright, who made a move to avoid one Raider just before two Raiders took themselves out of the play to give East Laurens a 55-yard touchdown pass.

The muddling resumed for both teams. The Raiders mounted a late drive, getting all the way to a first and 10 at East Laurens’ 16-yard line, but the drive imploded with two negative plays, including an intentional grounding and the play Wiggins got hurt on.

“We had some good big plays early in the half because we were spreading the ball,” Jeremy Wiggins said. “We tried to get our running game going, and we were a few blocks away from hitting a big one, but they kept the shoe-string tackling.

“We weren’t executing, we weren’t finishing, we weren’t finishing drives, weren’t protecting.”

Neither team showed that any halftime speech was impactful. A shanked punt set up the Raiders on the Falcons’ 20, and Bam Glover — last year’s starting quarterback and this year’s jack of all offensive trades — hit Jacory Sherman, who made a nice reaching catch, for a 20-yard touchdown and a 22-8 lead with 2:08 left in the third.

East Laurens, which battled ball control and muffed snaps all night, got to Northeast’s 22-yard line only to lose eight yards and then the ball. Hazley got his second interception three plays later, and the Falcons crossed midfield and lost the ball on downs.

All the while, players on both teams offered reviews after a few plays and had to be separated. The Falcons’ final threat ended when Maurice Wilson picked off a pass and returned it 40 yards down the right sideline with 2:33 left in the game.

Wiggins said the Raiders had a quality week of practice, but he was still concerned.

“Homecoming week, not really focused on anything, just came out and played bad,” Wiggins said. “I kind of knew what type of a trap game this was, and luckily, we didn’t fall in the trap. We were able to (stay) out of it.”

His son suffered a shoulder injury, and there’ll be no prognosis for a day or two. Regardless, Northeast will have some work to do.

“Probably this and Peach County,” Wiggins said if it was the Raiders’ worst game of the year. “First and last game. We just didn’t play good at all.”