High School

3 Takeaways: No. 1 Grayson Looked the Part in Rain-Soaked Rout of No. 7 Collins Hill

Led by UNC QB commit Travis Burgess, resilient Grayson squad weathered the elements to win in convincing fashion

Levi Payton

Senior quarterback Travis Burgess, a UNC commit, accounted for four touchdowns in the rain on Friday as No. 1 Grayson dismantled No. 7 Collins Hill 51-3 in a Georgia high school season opener.
Senior quarterback Travis Burgess, a UNC commit, accounted for four touchdowns in the rain on Friday as No. 1 Grayson dismantled No. 7 Collins Hill 51-3 in a Georgia high school season opener. / Colin Hubbard

Talk about raining on a parade.

Week 1 of the Georgia High School football season was a wet one for teams who were scheduled to play on Friday night. Opening kickoffs across the state were pushed back, including the highly anticipated showdown between Georgia’s No. 1 Grayson and No. 7 Collins Hill.

Originally slated to begin at 7:30 p.m., heavy rain pushed kickoff back to an announced time of 8:45, but by then Mother Nature still wasn’t having it. At 9:58 p.m., we finally had football.

In a game that started on Friday and ended just after midnight on Saturday morning, the time or day didn’t seem to matter much to the Rams, who scored twice within the first 1:34 of the second half and racked up 30 points in the third quarter and rolled to a convincing 51-3 win.

With the rain still coming down, things did get sloppy. There were two safeties in the first quarter alone and both teams struggled at times to hold onto the ball, but the Rams still managed to jog into the half with an 18-3 lead.

Almost as if they’d found a secret switch at halftime, the Rams turned it on in the second half, almost scoring at will before pulling most of their starters late in the third quarter with a 45-point lead and the mercy clock ticking. Dampening the mood a bit, the late start and poor weather certainly gave the game an odd feel.

Here are three takeaways from that game.

1. Travis Burgess is the Real Deal

Among legendary NFL coach Bill Belichick’s first high school recruiting class at North Carolina, “The Hoody” seems to have himself another dandy quarterback in Burgess. Then again, Belichick might need to make some calls soon to ensure the 6-foot-5, 210-pound dual-threat doesn’t change his mind.

His performance on Friday was no-doubt impressive, passing for touchdowns of 23, 32 and 74 yards while also running one in from 41 yards before being pulled with 5:05 left in the third quarter with a big lead.

Despite the conditions (he fumbled twice, losing one), Burgess looked the part of a future star Division I quarterback. He read the field well, exploiting busted coverages on the 32-yard touchdown to tight end Olafemi Hunter and the 74-yard strike to receiver Dawson Quarterman.

2. We Should Withhold Judgment

What did this game say about either team? This answer is we probably don’t really know that yet. Grayson is undoubtedly a juggernaut with highly recruited players up and down its roster. Are the Rams truly 48 points better than Collins Hill? Or did the conditions help skew the outcome bit?

There’s no sugarcoating Friday’s game, but the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Both teams had to play in the conditions, and the Eagles committed too many self-inflicted mistakes (bad snaps, turnovers, penalties and defensive breakdowns). The good news is that those are correctable mistakes, and it won’t be raining cats and dogs on most nights going forward.

On another night the Eagles likely score more than the three points they mustered on Friday and keep the Eagles off the board a bit more. Then again, Grayson also turned it over and still put points on the board.

The next two weeks will say a lot about both teams, but probably a lot more about Collins Hill. That’s when we can really look back at this game and start making sense of what happened.

3. Impact Players Made Impact Plays

If you looked up, you couldn’t see the stars. But if you looked down at the field, they were everywhere. We already mentioned Burgess, but he wasn’t the only playmaker.

Grayson junior linebacker Cam Jones was everywhere on defense and came away with a couple of sacks while finding himself around the ball all night. … Rams junior running back Ashton Turner, who caught Burgess’ 23-yard TD pass on a wide-open wheel route, also had a handful of nice runs.

Grayson’s defensive backs had a good game, particularly Rilee Drew, who reached behind him and made a sprawling, leaping pass break up to force a Collins Hill punt midway through the first quarter. That play directly led to the first safety of the game when a bad snap on the play went through the back of the end zone. … Rams tight end Olafemi Hunter had to fight a wet ball to secure his wide open catch, then met a pair of Eagles defenders inside the 5-yard line and used his big frame to bully them both into the end zone on his touchdown.

Collins Hill defensive lineman Deuce Geralds, an LSU commit, also had an impressive showing and made a big play when he thwarted a Grayson drive with 7:39 left in the first quarter by chasing down Burgess 20 yards from the line of scrimmage and causing him to fumble and turn it over at the Collins Hill 21.

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Levi Payton
LEVI PAYTON

Levi’s sports journalism career began in 2005. A Missouri native, he’s won multiple Press Association awards for feature writing and has served as a writer and editor covering high school sports as well as working beats in professional baseball, NCAA football, basketball, baseball and soccer. If you have a good story, he’d love to tell it.

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