WARNER ROBINS — Over the course of any football game, there are bound to be highs and lows.
But how a team responds to those lows directly plays into the odds of winning or losing, and the Greyhounds answered ebbs and flows of adversity multiple times on Friday at Veterans, going on to beat the Warhawks 34-12 in the debut of new head coach Justin Montgomery.
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“We saw a lot of good things (Friday),” Montgomery said. “We saw some areas where we can clean up and grow from.”
Jones County blew the game open in the second quarter on an 80-yard touchdown up the middle by Kaden Canty before an Andre Hall pick six nearly the length of the field sent the Hounds to the locker room at halftime up 24-3. Both of those game-defining plays came right after Jones County ran into bad fortune.
“We’re trying to teach our guys that every play has a life and death of its own and that the most important one is the next one. We want to play with an ‘I’ve got your back’ mentality,” Montgomery said. “Something is going to go wrong, so the thing we focus on is, ‘who are we when those things go wrong?’” One play before Canty’s run, Jones County had a first down nullified by a penalty. Hall’s interception, one of his two on the night, was a play after a Cason Taylor pass was returned inside the JCHS 10-yard line.
“Any time you are playing your best football in the last four minutes of a half, you have a good chance of winning,” Montgomery said. “We were really fired up; it was huge.”
Having passed one early rest, the Greyhounds now turn their focus to region play, which opens Friday at Woodland. The Wolfpack is also 1-0, having beaten Woodland Cartersville 48-13 last week. Woodland should provide a test for the Greyhounds secondary in senior quarterback Brayden Rogers, who threw for 255 yards last week.
Jones County heads into that matchup coming off of a well-rounded night against Veterans in which it got touchdowns on offense, defense and special teams. That output included the recovery of a fumbled punt in the end zone by Ayjuan Fuller and second-half touchdown pass from Taylor to JR Clark.
Speaking of special teams, it actually gave Jones County its first 10 points of the season as a Jacob Watts field goal from 25 yards away with 8:00 to go in the first got the Hounds on the board, just before the Warhawks’ botched snap made it 10-0 in favor of JCHS.
Up 24-3 coming away from the half, Veterans chipped into the Jones County lead with a safety, but the Veterans’ run-heavy offense could mount little the rest of the way. The Greyhounds final touchdown, a 21-yarder from Taylor to Clark, came on the heels of two bad snaps and an offensive penalty before a late field goal by Watts ended up being the final JCHS points of the night against Veterans, which did not get into the end zone until final minutes.
“Our guys were excited to play the game, which made me happy,” Montgomery said. “We just have to continue to grow each week.”
