It was fourth-and-five in the fourth quarter of the last game of the regular season and his team was trailing 16-3. What hope Pace Academy had of reaching the playoffs was dwindling. The Knights needed a win over B.E.S.T. Academy to take the No. 4 seed from Region 6-AA, and they hadn’t moved the ball all night. But second-year coach Chris Slade was far from desperate.
When it would have been understandable to do so, he opted against putting the game on the line with one live-or-die, fourth-down play, and instead sent Samuel Sloman out for his second field goal of the game. The kick was good, cut the lead to 10 points, and put the onus back on his defense to give the Knights’ offense another shot.
“I just told our coaches, ‘we’re not going to panic,’ Slade said. “'Let’s just kick the field goal, get something positive on the board, and go from there.’ And from there, our offense just went to work.”
What followed was an improbable rally, with Pace Academy scoring 14 points in the final six minutes after being shut out of the end zone for three and a half quarters, to get a 20-16 win and get back into the playoffs for just the second time in the program’s nine years of varsity football.
It was a moment and a game that stands out, maybe even more than last week’s 49-28 win over Region 5 champ Bowdon in the first round -- the first playoff win in program history. And yet Slade said he’s not entirely sure that’s the moment he’d mark as the season’s most pivotal.
“I’d go back even further, to the second half of the GAC game,” he said. “We didn’t win that game, and we didn’t score. We had a lot of things go wrong in the first half, but in the second half we came out and didn’t hang our heads, and we played with them.
“That was big for us, because we said, ‘here’s one of the top teams in the state, not just in AA, but maybe the whole state, and we played right with them in the second half.’ That’s when we started believing.”
Since then, the Knights are 4-0, going from 2-5 and near the bottom of the region standings, to 6-5 and preparing for the second round of the playoffs and a date at Jefferson County on Friday.
Aside from a burgeoning self-confidence, the Knights can point to marked offensive improvement as a reason behind the winning streak. After averaging 14.3 points per game through their first seven, they’re averaging 37 per game in their last four – that includes a season-high in last week’s win.
Slade says the turnaround happened around the time they moved big freshman Realus George (6-2, 245) from defensive line to running back. George has since sustained an ACL injury and will miss the remainder of the season, but the boost he provided has carried over.
“That lifted our running game, and when the running game got going, that opened it up for the passing game,” Slade said. “We started to get an identity, and even when (George) got hurt, we didn’t stray from what we were doing. Jordan Payne stepped in at running back and has done a great job, and we didn’t change who we are.”
Slade also singled out his all-underclassman offensive line and versatile sophomore Deon Jackson among those who have risen to the occasion for the Pace offense.
Then there’s quarterback Kevin Johnson, a Division-I recruit who missed three games early in the year due to injury. Johnson had his best game of the season against Bowdon, throwing for four touchdowns and running for another, but Slade said the most important aspect Johnson has brought to the team has nothing to do with his stats.
“He’s given us leadership,” Slade said. “We’re a young team. We’ve only got six seniors, and only three of those start, so we need that. I had a conversation last Thursday and I told him, ‘I know you can throw it a mile and I know how skilled you are, but we’re going to need your leadership now.’ All the guys that I played with, the ones who were best are the ones who had that in the playoffs. It’s one thing in the regular season, but leadership is especially important in the playoffs.”
And when Slade is imparting this kind of advice, his players know it’s coming from experience. Slade was an All-American defensive end at Virginia and an All-Pro with the New England Patriots, playing under George Welsh, Al Groh, Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll in his career. It’s from those coaches that he’s learned and developed his strict, attention-to-every detail style. Even though he’s only been coaching for three years, including one year as Pace’s defensive line coach, Slade’s coaching philosophy is firm.
“I believe in certain things and I don’t deviate from that,” Slade said. “It may sound trivial, but everything from the way we do warm-ups to the ways guys tuck in their shirts is important.
“Guys think I’m a tyrant, but I’ve seen when you don’t pay attention to the small things, it just unravels on you.”
The Knights now enter the second round with a defense that has faced two of the top backs in AA – B.E.S.T. Academy’s Deshawn Waller and Bowdon’s Darnell Holland – in consecutive weeks. Led by a trio of juniors – defensive lineman Anthony Trinh (6-3, 230), linebacker Philip Markwalter (6-1, 210) and defensive back Mick Assaf (6-2, 180) – they’ll need to be at their best Friday night, because Jefferson County comes in with an offense that’s scored at least 49 points in four straight weeks.
Slade knows the task ahead of his Knights is a tall one and few will be predicting another Pace Academy upset. On the other hand, few outside of Pace Academy were expecting the Knights to win their last two games, so what does that matter?
“The kids have bought in," Slade said. “They really believe in each other and in what we’re doing. That’s brought us some self confidence, and that’s big. Now we expect to win.”
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Friday's games
Heard County at Screven County
Washington-Wilkes at Brooks County
Lovett at Macon County
Benedictine at Rabun County
Lamar County at GAC
Coosa at Vidalia
Pace Academy at Jefferson County
Model at Fitzgerald
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