Red Bay finishes a perfect 5-0 in region with 44-21 win at Tanner

The Red Bay High School varsity football team (8-1, 5-0) continued its winning ways on Friday night, dispatching the Tanner High School Rattlers 44-21 in its region finale to record a perfect region campaign for the first time since 2019.

The hosts Tanner (3-6, 2-3) kept within striking distance for much of the game, but the Tigers were ultimately able to come away with the 23-point victory.

“I think we started off pretty good, but we kind of let them back into the game. Hats off to (Tanner’s) team; they played a really good game, and played hard—they’ve got a good football team,” first-year Red Bay head coach Tyler Jeffreys told the Franklin Free Press. “We made some adjustments to get the win, but we made too many mistakes that we can’t make.

“Tonight I thought we had several kids that stepped up for us and helped us win,” he added.

The Tigers got off to a hot start with three unanswered touchdowns before the first quarter buzzer sounded.

Senior Jaxon Vinson opened the scoring in the contest on a six-yard touchdown run in the first quarter to give the visitors a 7-0 advantage after the extra point. It was Vinson’s 21st instance of finding the endzone on the ground this season.

Vinson’s TD was followed up by a long, 76-yard touchdown pitch-and-catch from senior quarterback Jeremiah Thorne to sophomore receiver Davien Colburn, who tip-toed down the sideline and made two or three defenders miss along the way to put the Tigers up 15-0 after the two-point conversion.

The quarterback Thorne had a hand in Red Bay’s third touchdown of the quarter, hitting his brother Joshua Thorne on a screen pass that went for 56 yards and the score with 0:38 left in the opening period of play. That touchdown made it 22-0, RBHS, after the extra point.

“Joshua Thorne stepped up for us tonight and made some big plays,” Jeffreys said.

Tanner answered with its first score in the second quarter to make it 22-7 at the halftime intermission.

After the break, the hosts cut their deficit to one score on a touchdown to start the second half, making it 22-14.

Red Bay responded with its second rushing touchdown of the game, but this time it was the receiver Colburn who took the pitch on the end-around and went 48-yard for his second touchdown of the night. That put the Tigers back up 28-14 in the third quarter.

Jeremiah Thorne added a rushing touchdown to the two he had already tossed to make it 36-14.

The two teams would trade scores in the final period of play. Tanner scored on a long touchdown pass to make it 36-21 before Joshua Thorne capped the scoring with a short touchdown run from inside the five yard line with 38 seconds left to give the game its final 44-21 scoreline.

Red Bay, still yet to break into the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s top 10 in Class 2A despite receiving votes over the last few weeks, has known its early playoff fate since October 17 when it demolished region foe Decatur Heritage to claim the region title and home field advantage. Now the Tigers know who they will host in the first round of the AHSAA playoffs on November 7—that will be Sand Rock.

However, there is still one more team left for the Tigers to play in the regular season before they can host the Wildcats; and that’s rival Phil Campbell, who beat the Tigers 64-22 last year.

Jeffreys said the Tigers won't be looking two weeks ahead; the focus is now on the Bobcats.

“We can’t be complacent,” he said. “Our kids have definitely come on and done a great job—I feel like I say that week in and week out. But at this point every game is a playoff game. Phil Campbell is a good team, they’re a playoff team, and they’re that caliber of team.

“It’s as simple as this: (Phil Campbell) is a good football team. They’re capable of getting after us, and we’ve just got to take it as another game and we can’t do anything different,” he added. “It’s a rivalry game. We’ve gotta prepare for them and keep doing what we do.”