Arlington Seguin’s defense stuns in shutout victory over Burleson
It still may be a little early to use the old adage that defense wins championships for the Arlington Seguin football team.
However, the Cougars won their homecoming game on Thursday because of defense. Seguin had a defensive score and another turnover set up a late touchdown in a 21-0 win against Burleson on Thursday at Choctaw Stadium.
There were a lot of new faces making big plays for head coach Joe Gordon’s squad that lost 22 seniors to graduation. Last year’s team went 7-4 and posted the school’s second-ever back-to-back winning seasons.
The game was the District 3-5A Division II openers for both squads and the Cougars are 3-0 overall and 1-0 in district play for the second year in a row.
“I’m really proud of those guys on defense,” Gordon said. “You know, there’s going to be games like that where one side of the ball is going to really step up and carry you through it. And tonight, we needed our defense and they showed us that defense can win games. And we believe the defense can also win championships.”
Seguin used its offense to set the tone early. The Cougars got the ball to start and marched down the field and scored. On 4th-and-9 from the 34, quarterback Chevy Andrews scrambled for 18 yards.
The next play, running back Ka’darrius Trotter scored on a 16-yard run. The two-point conversion run failed and the 6-0 score would stay up on the scoreboard for quite a while.
That would be the score going into the break.
The Elks (2-1, 0-1) put themselves in a position to score in the third.
On their second possession, the Elks got a 58-yard pass play from quarterback Andrew Sparks to Jayden Hernandez, getting the ball down to the 17-yard line.
Sparks ran for 9 yards on the next play, but the drive fizzled. Facing a 4th-and-1 from the 8, the Elks benefited from an offsides on Seguin.
Two plays later, an illegal substitution on Seguin moved the ball to the 2 yard line.
Two rushes followed and defensive lineman Kyle Johnson made a stop behind the line of scrimmage for a 1-yard loss. An incomplete pass set up 4th-and-goal from the 2.
On the pivotal play, junior Caryell Brown broke up the pass at the goal line for the Cougars.
“’All Grit, No Quit’ is our motto this year,” Gordon said. “You know, you may get us down, but you don’t get to keep us down. We are a young football team. I was really proud of them when we had our back against the wall. They got the next play, and they got the stop that got us off the field.
“If we play together and everyone does their 1/11th, we are OK. We are not a team of superstars. We don’t have 3 stars or 4 stars. We’re just a bunch of neighborhood guys that believe in playing together, that believe in playing together, believe in working hard and believe in playing for 48 minutes.”
Brown, who has offers from Texas State, Utah State, Wake Forest, Western Kentucky, Arizona State and Sacramento State, talked about the big play.
He said he read the formation by the Elks off the line and stepped in front of the pass near the front pylon.
“The whole team stepped up today,” Brown said. “People really noticed Seguin out like this. For us to do that and come out and execute like that means a lot to us. We’ve been practicing since December. No one was practicing like us. It means hard work pays off. You’ve got to stop sleeping on the boys on those boys from Seguin.”
The final 55 seconds of the third quarter featured three turnovers — two by Burleson. However, the first was a pick by Lynden Kilgore by Burleson off a tipped pass near the Seguin sideline.
Seconds later, Seguin returned the favor when De’Shaun Marable stepped in front of a pass and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown with 10 seconds left.
Johnaven Polk, a Washburn pledge, ran in the 2-point conversion to make it 14-0.
The final play of the third quarter was a run play by Burleson and a fumble happened and Seguin picked it up.
Burelson made it three turnovers in a row in the fourth quarter when Marable intercepted his second pass and ran it back to the 10-yard line.
Trotter got the ball and scored with only 5 seconds off the clock. The PAT was good to make it 21-0.
To put an exclamation point on the win, the final Burleson drive ended on a sack by linebacker Quantay Watts, which forced a turnover with 3:12 to play.
This story was originally published September 12, 2025 at 12:13 AM.