North Crowley looks unstoppable on both sides of the ball in a blow out of Arlington

The North Crowley football team had high expectations heading into the 2023 season, and so far so good.

The Panthers had their way with their second opponent from District 8-6A, drumming Arlington High, 69-14, on Friday night at Crowley ISD Stadium.

North Crowley (2-0), No. 3 in the Star-Telegram Class 6A rankings, played well in every aspect outside of committing 16 penalties. Quarterback Chris Jimerson Jr. led the way on offense, accounting for six touchdowns.

Panther’s linebacker Braylon Turner recovered a fumble on Arlington’s opening series to gave the Panthers the ball at the Colt 33 yard line. Jimerson overthrew a couple of receivers on the possession and the Panthers wound up losing the ball on downs at the Arlington 31.

Jimerson and the NC offense settled in after that, however, and scored touchdowns on their next ten possessions with seven of the TDs coming from 43 or more yards out.

Cornelius Warren III got the scoring onslaught started with a 61-yard TD run around the right end to give the Panthers a 7-0 lead.

North Crowley also showed they could sustain a drive when the Panthers took 12 plays to cover 62 yards. It was capped by a one-yard scoring run by Jimerson to up the lead to 14-0 with 1:30 left in the first quarter.

Arlington (1-1) pulled to within 14-7 on a crazy play early in the second quarter. Colt’s quarterback Mason Hensley tossed a pass to Jamar Burton that was deflected up in the air by North Crowley defensive back Camden Hawkins.

Arlington running back Drelon Burton, who was following behind the play, came in to snatch the ball away from Hawkins in the end zone for a 17-yard TD.

North Crowley pulled away after that with explosive play after explosive play. Ashton Searl had touchdown runs of 67 and 66 yards and led the Panthers in rushing with 151 yards on just six carries.

Jimerson threw touchdown passes of 43, 73 and 60 yards to Mason Ferguson, Dekoryian West-Davis and LaMarcus Davis, respectively. Jimerson added touchdown runs of 15 and 43 yards.

“We’re big, we’re strong, we’re fast, we’re athletic,” said North Crowley coach Ray Gates. “We’re all the buzz words that you want to use when you talk about a team like us. And that’s part of the puzzle.”

Gates added that the work the players put in and his coaches being able to scheme to place players in advantageous situations plays a big part.

“What jumps off the page is the athleticism of our kids, but the schematics behind it and how we get the match ups that we want is a testament to our coaching staff and a testament to our kids being able to digest what we want to give them week by week,” said Gates.

Jimerson finished with 267 passing yards completing 10 of 14 tosses and rushed for 85 yards on six carries. North Crowley had 701 yards of total offense with 434 of it coming on the ground.

“It all starts with my offensive line and then my wide receivers,” said Jimerson, a junior. “At practice we get that connection that we need to be able to do it in a game. We practice on finishing our runs and being productive in the run game and it’s really fun to watch our players go around and make plays.”

Warren had 102 rushing yards on eight carries for the Panthers with Quentin Gibson picking up 70 more on six carries in a mop-up role at quarterback.

The North Crowley defense played just as well, allowing 14 rushing yards on 22 carries by Arlington. The Colts finished with 231 total yards.

“It starts with what we do in practice and then having a great game plan,” said Turner, who also picked off a pass early in the second quarter in addition to the fumble recovery. “Coach Gates is always going to make sure that we know how to beat the other team.

“We have a lot of young dudes that are hungry. Our twos (backups) are not twos. They’re just twos because they play for North Crowley, but they could go elsewhere and start. I love this defense.”

“We still have a lot to clean up,” said Gates, whose team scored 69 points for the second week after a 69-13 win over Arlington Sam Houston in Week 1. “It’s early in the season and there are things that we’re harping on that in close games will get you beat. We’re not satisfied with what we’ve done the first two weeks.

“We still have way too many mistakes that we have to clean up and we have to play a lot more disciplined football, especially next week when we play a great Lovejoy team.”

This story was originally published September 2, 2023 at 1:43 AM.