Second-half surge fuels 21-10 win for Northeast over Lamar as Raiders punch ticket to quarterfinals

By the time the second quarter was over, Northeast’s offense was really rested.

After all, the unit was on the field for all of three snaps from scrimmage in that second quarter, as Lamar County ran 15 more plays and took a three-point lead.

But the No. 8 Raiders didn’t let that get too much into their heads, stepping up on defense and getting a little sharper on offense for a stronger second half en route to a 21-10 win Friday over the No. 9 Trojans at Thompson Field in the second round of the GHSA Class A-Division I playoffs.

It was a historic night for the Raiders, who now have the program’s first 10-win season in history on their resume and the team’s second quarterfinal trip in history, the first coming in 2021.

Lamar County finished the season 9-3.

Nick Woodford had a workmanlike night with 19 carries for 159 yards. 

His was uneventful until late with the Raiders holding on to a 14-10 lead. Woodford took a carry to the left — sprinting, spinning, bouncing and defender-carrying in a whirlwind of a run — and got a 37-yard gain, his biggest of the night, to put Northeast on the 13-yardline.

Then Woodford got it again and went left into some traffic before stretching the run wide into more bodies, one of which seemed to upend him. 

Except the senior put his right hand down, kept his right knee off the turf by about two inches, avoided the sideline maybe four inches away and finished the limbo-like run for the game-sealing touchdown with 3:30 left on the clock.

So Lamar County thought Nick Woodford was down, but the thing is, he wasn’t. It’s a 13-yard score to extend the lead.

3:30 4Q: @NEHSRaiders 21, Lamar Co. 10@GPBsports pic.twitter.com/TFHARsF79j

— Bibb Athletics (@BibbAthletics) November 23, 2024

“With my injury, one of the things in my recovery stage was making sure I stretch,” said Woodford, who missed about half of last season with an ACL injury. “It’s a big (part) of my recovery, and the coaches are on me about stretching. The routine that we do in practice, we work on balance. In therapy, you work on single leg balance.

“I just continue doing it consistently, continue working on it.”

He got whistled down earlier this year on a similar run against East Laurens.

“I was a little heated,” he said with a smile. “ ‘I’m not down.’ I had to keep my composure.”

Lamar County quarterback Kaden Carter battled for 105 yards on 17 carries, quieted other than two runs of 35 and 24 yards each that came on back-to-back plays — a busy rushing night for the quarterback in the Trojans’ single-wing system.

The 10-2 Raiders will have a lengthy road trip for the quarterfinal, visiting top seed Fannin County. The Rebels won their Round 2 game 28-21 over Jeff Davis.

Things went as expected with a pair of run-loving teams, although the Trojans love it a lot more and rarely try more than five passes in a game. It was working for the first half after Northeast went 13 plays on its opening drive and came up empty, failing on fourth down on the Trojans’ 22-yardline.

“We started out fast, then we had a couple of mistakes slowing us down,” Northeast head coach Jeremy Wiggins said. “Two or three mistakes that hurt.”

Northeast had a short field thanks to a personal foul on a punt and went up 7-0 on Woodford’s 1-yard run with 1:43 left in the first quarter, finally getting the point-after on the fourth try thanks to penalties.

The offense didn’t touch the field again until the 2:59 mark of the second quarter.

Lamar County cruised along with a 15-play drive that took up 6:27, converting three third downs along the way before Carter spun his way in from the 7 to tie it with 5:13 left in the half.

The squib kickoff touched a Raider, giving Lamar County’s Kenyon Holloway a chance to recover it on the Northeast 27-yardline just before two Raiders could pounce on the ball. Northeast’s defense wasn’t so worn out after all, forcing a 36-yard field goal at the 2:59 mark.

Three plays later, the Raiders punted in their first and only possession of the quarter, not including the half-ending kneel-down. Lamar County ran 18 plays for 84 yards to three plays for 9 yards for the Raiders.

“Just stay composed,” Wiggins said of his halftime message. “When you’ve been playing how you’ve been playing all season and dominating, adversity comes and you kinda act different. They had to just calm down and start playing.

“They did, in the third quarter, and I was proud of that.”

A trio of three-and-outs started the third quarter before the Raiders began moving for the go-ahead score. 

The drive was sparked by a 12-yard pass from Reginald Glover — who was notably quieted on the ground — to Keandre Jackson on second and 11. A 20-yard touchdown by Woodford on a swing pass was nullified by a hold, but Glover lobbed to 6-foot-4 Zahkie Denson, who reached over 5-foot-9 Jahnizae Few for a 29-yard touchdown on the first play of the fourth quarter.

“We finally got in a rhythm once we got the ball back in the second half,” Wiggins said.

Northeast’s defense kept things clamped down, allowing only two fourth-quarter first downs.

“They’re just big,” Lamar County head coach Travis Ellington said. “They’re huge up front and they’re hard to block, and their linebackers are two of the best linebackers in the state. They played really well, played downhill, and we couldn’t get our run game going to start running counters and stuff.”

Santana Balkcom and Tailen Sampson are the linebackers, who had plenty of help from several up front.

“We didn’t really change, we just played better,” Wiggins said. “We were misaligned on a couple of plays and we had to correct that. We knew we were good enough on defense to slow them down… We had a plan, and we just stuck to it.”

Now Wiggins has to corral the Raiders for practice while school is out and keep everybody focused while figuring out how to deal with a trip of about three hours on Black Friday.

“Just getting kids to practice and be able to make sure we can do what we need to do and be successful,” Wiggins said of the focus. “Hopefully we can take all this next week going up to Fannin County.”