Bobcats run rampant to beat Tanner 53-6 on Homecoming

It was a Homecoming to remember for the Phil Campbell High School varsity football team (4-3, 4-1) on Thursday night. The Bobcats dominated their Class 2A Region 7 opponent, Tanner High School (4-3, 2-3), beating the Rattlers by a score of 53-6.

The final result represented the most points the PCHS offense has scored all season, as well as the fewest points its defense has allowed in 2026.

“This was the most locked-in we've been all year,” Phil Campbell head coach Jacob Hamilton told the Franklin Free Press, “and that’s a testament to our kids because with it being a short week for Fall break and with the Homecoming festivities, there’s a lot of distractions. This was huge.”

Freshman Colt Colburn’s 19-yard touchdown run opened up the scoring for Phil Campbell early in the first quarter. It was followed up by back-to-back 16-yard touchdown rushes by senior quarterback Hayston Scott: the first put the Bobcats up 12-0 late in the first quarter, and the second made it a 20-0 ball game early in the second quarter.

Senior playmaker Austin Elliott became the third of six Bobcats to score a rushing touchdown on the night when his 17-yard sprint put the hosts up 27-0 with 5:40 remaining in the first half.

Not long after Elliott’s score, junior running back Braxton Downey dashed into the endzone, too, giving PCHS a 34-0 advantage at the break.

Phil Campbell’s dominance continued in the final 24 minutes.

Early in the third quarter, senior Brady Williams, a team captain on the offensive line, recorded his first touchdown of the campaign to extend his team’s lead to 40 points.

Scott added his third rushing touchdown of the evening, a long, 58-yard run, midway through the third quarter. Senior Chandler Benford capped the contest’s scoring early in the fourth quarter with a 16-yard touchdown rush to give the game its 53-6 final.

After the game Hamilton praised his offensive line for their excellence performance, allowing the skill players behind them to rack up huge stat lines.

“Our offensive line played absolutely the best game that you can ask for as a coach,” he said. “If you run the ball 36 times for 460 yards, handing the ball off to multiple people, that comes straight down to the offensive line.”

In addition to their 460 rushing yards, the Bobcats had 60 passing yards to give them 520 yards of total offense, their second-best tally in that category this season.

Defensively, the six points Tanner scored were the fewest PCHS has allowed since October of 2022.

Hamilton said the Tanner win on Homecoming represented the most complete game his team has played thus far this season.

“We’re so locked in right now,” he said. “We played well against Colbert County (on Sept. 18), but we still had some slip-ups here and there. (Thursday) night I felt like was the first time we’ve played a full game up to the potential of what we can be—and it’s awesome to see.

“We ran the ball well, we played great defense, we flew to the ball, we had great energy. We didn’t celebrate too much because it was always about moving on to the next play,” Hamilton added. “It was a great night, and it was a lot of fun.”

The victory over the Rattlers, the Bobcats’ fourth-straight region win, puts Phil Campbell at 4-1 in the region and in prime position to secure a home first-round playoff game. As things stand, PCHS is tied for first place with Lexington and Colbert County and has the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Indians.

But all of that, at least for Hamilton and the Bobcats, is background noise.

“What I’ve been preaching to our kids is, ‘We can’t look at what everyone is doing. We only control what we can control, and what we control is winning out,’” the fourth-year head coach said. “We’ve got to continue to play well, continue to build on our strengths and continue to get better every week.

“If we can continue to focus on what we do and what we can control then it’s all going to play out exactly how we want it to,” Hamilton added.

Phil Campbell hosts region foe Sheffield at Parrish Stadium for its final home game of the regular season on Friday, October 16.