By MONTE DUTTON

The Friday-night lights are full of skilled high-school quarterbacks who fill the air with passes. Sometimes those who are merely efficient get lost in all the clutter.

Clinton High School has an underrated junior who came in handy in the Red Devils’ 42-18 victory over Palmetto on Friday night in the first round of the Class 3A football playoffs.

Kid by the name of Tushawan Richardson. He’s no secret in these parts.

Clinton was obviously expected to win. About 1,000 of the fans who normally frequent Wilder Stadium expected it enough to stay home. It was cold.

Sometimes a playoff back bencher like Palmetto (3-8) surprises the favored team with an unexpected tactic. The Mustangs tried. Their quarterback, Brooks Janssen, completed 19/36 passes for 261 yards, three touchdowns and was intercepted only once*. Palmetto actually led at the end of the first quarter. It was tight for a half.

The Red Devils grew frustrated by big plays that kept being erased by disagreements between what they thought they could do and the officials’ estimation. Clinton had 105 yards of penalties, 76 of them in the first half.

It was all very frustrating.

Clinton (9-2) needed a calm leader besides the ones on the sidelines. One of Corey Fountain’s common ways of referring to his quarterback is to say that Richardson has “a hot heart and a cool head.”

Richardson didn’t throw but 12 passes. He completed 10. Four went for touchdowns. One was intercepted. One landed on the ground.

“We knew we were a better team,” Richardson said. “We just hung in there, and Coach was, like, we’ve just got to fix it, get it right, keep pounding, get the scoreboard clicking and we ended up pulling away towards the end.”

Richardson didn’t run the ball but six times. He gained 30 yards. He knew where he was going on a night when others found the right direction mysterious. He knew he was going four times apiece to Kadon Richardson and Zay Johnson, each for four touchdowns and together for 95 yards (45 and 50). He knew where Kelaja Byrd and Zane McLendon were. They each caught one.

McLendon gave the rushing game a similar lift, rushing 10 times for 45 yards. He wasn’t the leading rusher – he was third on the list, behind Tray Cook with 79 and D.J. Clark with 77 – but gave the Mustangs a different threat to consider.

Richardson was the center of Clinton versatility, and versatility is what tamed the Mustangs. Palmetto passed for 261 yards, but rushed for a net of 26. The Devils rushed for 279 yards, split six different ways.

Crawford scored twice by air, once by land, snagged for 50 yards and toted for 35.

Palmetto’s effort was admirable, but the Mustangs spent the second half hemmed in on too many sides, and the predictable result was four consecutive Red Devil touchdowns from the 2:47 mark of the third quarter to the 6:23 mark of the fourth. A tense 14-12 turned into a comfortable 42-12.

The Clinton defense indulged Janssen and the Mustangs a face-saving bomb of 43 yards as a lovely parting gift, but the cohesiveness of both Red Devil platoons left no escape but a bus ride back to Williamston.

“We were ready,” said Fountain. “We had them prepared the way they needed to be prepared. You’ve got to remember, on the second play, we bust a touchdown and it gets called back. Another play, we had a false start. That would’ve been a touchdown. We just shot ourselves in the foot. We had the kind of stuff you can’t have in playoff games, but if you score and you execute those, you get momentum, and then the ball starts rolling and you get a fast start.”

Richardson didn’t shoot himself in the foot. Neither did Crawford and Johnson, McLendon, Cook, Brett Young and a dozen others. In the end, it was just about the way of Johnny Cash and June Carter that the Red Devils handled the Mustangs:

I’m going to Jackson / You turn and loosen my coat / Cause I’m going to Jackson /
Goodbye that’s all she wrote.

During 8 minutes, 47 seconds of second-half magic, order was restored in Clinton High’s universe. It took a while, but the rocket took off.

“Palmetto had a good game plan,” Fountain said. “A lot of credit to them. We didn’t execute well in the first half. We were in a dog fight.

“This will help us later in the playoffs because we’re becoming battle tested.”

*A couple Byrds, Kaleja and Mikevious, flew off with interceptions, but one was off Elias Govea, setting up Richardson’s 10-yard strike to Richardson.

Reckon I can find 20 people who like this site enough to chip in $20 to keep it going?

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Another way I can derive some revenue is if you purchase my books at MonteDutton.net. They’re quite entertaining in spite of the fellow who wrote them. Two of my novels, Cowboys Come Home and Lightning in a Bottle, are available in audio versions. The latest, The Latter Days, is about baseball.

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The next Fiesta Grande open mic is Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 8 p.m.