Cedar Grove’s Labron Morris had a career day, posting 270 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 33 carries to lead the Saints to a 46-20 win over Maynard Jackson on Friday.
For the most part, the Saints offense was simple – quarterback Jelani Woods in the shotgun, takes the ball, sticks it in the gut of Morris, and he dances through the hole.
But whatever Cedar Grove (4-1, 1-0 in Region 4-AAA) lacked in variety it made up for in effectiveness.
Morris may not have exactly been the only cog in an offense that posted more than 400 rushing yards, but he was certainly the biggest and toughest for Jackson (2-3, 0-1) to bring down.
Constantly continuing to churn his legs with defenders hanging on him, Morris ran over, around and through the Jaguars defense, adding 36 receiving yards to go with his huge rushing total.
For their part, Jackson was doing enough to hang with the Saints early, and they were down by just a score when the Saints took the ball at their own 19-yard line with 3:44 left in the first half.
Eleven plays later, Woods ran a naked bootleg untouched into the end zone, giving Cedar Grove a 14-point lead, and the advantage would only grow from there.
Most of that was thanks to Morris, who had 18 runs of 7 yards or more, and rarely went down from the first hit. He did have some help, though, as teammate Dennis Miller provided a fresh set of fast legs and had his own share of success.
His 44-yard touchdown run early in the third quarter – the longest run of the day – effectively put the game away. The drive started on the Saints’ 18 with 10:41 left in the quarter. Morris ran on the first four plays to take them to the Jaguar 44, and then Miller did the rest.
That run helped him add a relatively pedestrian 128 rushing yards to the Saints’ rushing haul. Cedar Grove had amassed 631 rushing yards through the first four games, and added more than half of that in one night against Jackson.
For the Jaguars, quarterback Keenan Moore was 10 of 16 for 217 yards, including a wild 61-yard touchdown that should have been intercepted but bounced off a defender’s hands directly into the arms of Orenzo Smith, who waltzed in for the first-half score.
But it wasn’t nearly enough to match the Morris-led Saints offense that scored a touchdown on every possession it had until the backups took the field in the fourth quarter.
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