Steers take down Knights, wrap perfect district schedule

Things got a little wet and wild in Graham’s regular season finale against Eagle Mountain, but the Steers maintained the course and finished their regular season with a 49-3 win.

With a rainy victory Friday, Nov. 8 over the Knights, Graham put the bow on a perfect district schedule. The team went 5-0 and outscored all their opponents by a combined 257-3 for an average of 51.4 points per game.

The Steers completed the final test last week on a stormy evening against a team in its first year of existence. Eagle Mountain opened its doors this year and fielded a young team with no seniors on the roster.

Graham’s team, meanwhile, is full of seniors and the difference in experience levels was notable. The Steers were led on both sides of the ball by their veteran players, and came a few feet shy of ending the regular season with a perfect district scoreless streak.

In the final minutes of the first half, after Graham had scored its fourth touchdown of the evening, Eagle Mountain received the ball and worked a solid kick return which was aided by a facemask call against the Steers.

Graham was later called for another facemask and tagged a late-hit penalty on separate plays to give the Knights the ball at the 29-yard line with a few seconds left.

Eagle Mountain’s kicker lined up a 46-yard field goal and punched it through the goalposts by only a few feet to record the first points Graham had given up in all of district play and the first points since Friday, Sept. 20 against Decatur.

Not that any of that mattered because the Steers went into halftime leading 28-3 and proceeded to shut out Eagle Mountain the rest of the way.

“We had some uncharacteristic big plays against us. We’ve been really good in the kicking game, and (Eagle Mountain) got a couple of good returns on us,” head coach Clay McChristian said. “We got a couple of penalties. One thing, if I had to say negative, was just penalties. We were just sloppy in the penalty area, which kind of gave them some of those short fields.”

Aside from those issues, Graham played another dominant game all around, beginning with the defense.

The Knights received the ball first, ran the ball two times and lost yardage. On the next play, Eagle Mountain’s first pass attempt of the game, defensive back Ryder Taylor intercepted the ball and ran it back approximately 20 yards for a pick-6 touchdown.

It gave Graham a 7-0 lead just over a minute into the game, and then the Steers special teams made a big play on the kickoff.

Eagle Mountain’s kick returner bobbled the kick, lost control, and the Steers’ Thomason Burkett jumped on the ball to give Graham great field position at the opposing 11-yard line.

Two plays later, quarterback Ty Thompson found the end zone for a 9-yard touchdown run to put the Steers up 14-0 exactly two minutes into the game.

“When our defense gets out there and gets that pick-6 right off the bat, it just sets the tone,” McChristian said. “We love putting our defense out there first, and then the offense got going.”

Due to the rainy, wet conditions, the Steers turned to the run game for a majority of the offense. Running back Rylan Monsey was a workhorse in this game, carrying the ball 21 times for 144 yards and four touchdowns.

Monsey helped the team get the ball down the field and was rewarded near the end zone as he scored two touchdowns from three yards out, one from four yards and another from 20 yards. While the rain may have affected other teams, Monsey felt he and his team performed well despite the conditions.

“We did pretty good. Our offensive line was blocking perfect…I feel like I did pretty good,” Monsey said. “If you ever go to any of our practices, coach Walton’s always (talking about) ball security. He’s yelling at my ear every single day. So I feel like I did pretty good with the ball.”

Graham’s defense held Eagle Mountain’s offense in check. The Knights only completed one pass all game and managed just 29 yards in the run game on 29 carries.

In the second half, safety Bruin Wright made a difference as he blocked a 30-yard field goal attempt by Eagle Mountain and later intercepted a pass deep in Knights territory to set up Monsey’s 20-yard touchdown.

Graham’s final touchdown came midway through the fourth quarter when the Knights fumbled a snap and their quarterback kicked it in a futile attempt to knock it out of bounds. Santiago Zamora brought the pressure on the quarterback and eventually backup linebacker Denton Lauster fell on the ball in the end zone for a fumble recovery touchdown.

Graham had clinched the district championship a week ago after beating Brock. But they got to celebrate after demolishing Eagle Mountain and they’ll prepare for their bi-district game at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14 against Fort Worth Dunbar in Aledo.

“For our kids to come back and finish (the district schedule) out strong, that was our word of the week: finish. I thought we finished this out the way we’re supposed to,” McChristian said.