Rez

4 minutes is a long time. This one isn't over.

Which side?

Is this the first signature win of the Beaumont United era? Easily the biggest win so far.

Sounds like the defense is coming together well. Offense doing enough. Just need to get better every week. Good signs.

It's hard to tell about this PNG team. I think the first two games have shown some real strengths and some real weaknesses. Here's hoping it comes together. I think we're going to be a force to be reckoned with in district. Also, I agree we need to clean up the secondary. Also, Bost seems a little out of sync with the receivers at times. Against Silsbee has was near flawless at times. But against Huntsville it seemed like everything was off, though that probably had more to do with the Huntsville D than anything else.

Silsbee is going to run all over most teams they play. I'm really excited for the WO-S game, to see how that Mustang defense stacks up against this particular Sislbee running back squad. The Silsbee line is big. After the PNG game, I'd say the biggest weakness is being mistake prone, for Silsbee, and everyone has mentioned the conditioning. But if Silsbee can avoid fumbles and interceptions, they are going to give Nederland a good game, and maybe shock WO-S again. This running back group from Silsbee is the best in the area.

When do they release the cutoff numbers?

That's a heartbreaker. Tough loss for him. I can't imagine how that must feel (physically and emotionally).

Does anyone know when was the last time anyone from SETX beat WO-S two years in a row?

Dayton wasn't in our district that year. Nederland and Central both made it too, I think.

LCM beat the snot out of us in 2013. I don't remember the score from 2012, because everyone beat us except for Lumberton and Silsbee. I do remember the 2013 loss. LCM was good that year. The playoff dark horse of the district. Ya'll took the fourth spot, I think.

This joke is something like 5 years old, and it never gets old, in my opinion.

Silsbee does pre-season as well as any team in the area, perhaps better. And the same thing happens every year: Silsbee plays a tough pre-season schedule, loses a few games to teams from bigger schools or to a highly-ranked team from their classification, and the consensus becomes, "Silsbee is weak this year." Then they tear through district (West Orange being the sole real roadblock) and get into playoffs. Last year Silsbee looked weak at the beginning, then it turned out they were one of the best in the state. The point in mentioning this is, win or lose against PNG, Silsbee is building a playoff team, not necessarily an "undefeated regular season" team. If I was a Silsbee fan, I wouldn't even worry about the PNG game. Silsbee is playing bigger, deeper teams to get ready for a long playoff season. I predict PNG wins handily. I'm thinking something like a 17-point win. Not because Silsbee is bad, but because PNG is usually a bad matchup for Silsbee (13-0 in the last 25 years). This makes sense, as PNG has something like 800 more students than Silsbee. Schematically, I think a run-heavy offense is easier to cover than a well-run spread (unless the running team has enormous size and speed -- Silsbee has some good size and some good speed. But unless they are fast and big like Marshall, who destroyed PNG on the ground in the playoffs last year, Silsbee isn't going to breeze past or over PNG). So PNG will be able to put up a lot of points while containing Silsbee enough to stay ahead. Even with the weakest team PNG has had (2012) in the past twenty years, PNG managed to beat Silsbee by one point. Silsbee had a decent playoff run that year, with a QB who went on to play some D1 (Patrick Reed, right?). When PNG has been a reasonably good team (decent in 2013 and good in 2016 and 2018), PNG has scored easily and often against Sislbee and played defense well-enough to survive vigorous comeback attempts (Even with Calvin Tyler putting up something close to 300 yards against us in 2016).

PNG wins against Silsbee -- 48-22.

In any case, Crosby is guaranteed a win against PNG because we'll find out someone had a 27-inch TV streaming playback of the game up in the press box.

History is very often predictive, though I get what you're saying. Anyone can beat anyone on any night, and there is no reason that any team in this district won't pull out a victory against any other team in the district. My point is to look at trends. We aren't slaves to the past, but we shouldn't ignore it either. Vidor has only beaten PNG a few times in history, after playing over most of the last century -- It is usually a safe bet that PNG will beat Vidor (not that it is ever guaranteed, just that the odds favor it). BH is a little different -- BH usually plays us quite close (21-20, 21-14, and I think 34-28 in three of the games), so it's more of a toss-up. BUT, at home, all other things being equal, I'd favor PNG. It should be a good game. I may even drive into town for this one.

I love all the predictions of Barbers Hill over PNG. Barbers Hill has been "about to be good" for years. The result? PNG is 6-0 against them, all games played since 2008. Why am I supposed to take as a given that Barbers Hill is going to beat us this year, when they've never been able to do so in any year? For that matter, I'm not sure BH has ever beaten Nederland either. .

Same apologies for taking so long to respond. We shared in a piece of the pie for two years prior to Roschon arriving. It is true that we won't have Roschon. But neither will Nederland. There is no reason, absent evidence from actual gameplay, to assume that PNG is going to have a drastic drop-off, while assuming, with the same not-any-evidence, that other teams are going to rocket forward. I tend to wish that coaching would be better, but I also have to acknowledge the good things the coaches are doing. Based on comparisons within the district, PNG's coaches are among the best in the district. A lot of us look at what PNG is not doing and say "Wow, the coaching is terrible," without acknowledging that we might not be even as good as we are but for the coaching. We definitely have room to improve, but so does Nederland, and so do the others. We have strong youth coming up, one of the top linemen in the country, and a proven, solid quarterback. We are going to score, and if we can put a defense together from the pieces remaining from last year's stronger-than-normal defense, we are going to be dangerous. In other words, my point in this and in my last post is not that PNG is going to win state, but that in reference to the DISTRICT, no one has shown any reason to project a drop-off year for PNG, OR to except a huge improvement from PNG, for that matter. I say, let's reserve judgment unless there is something substantive to support a prediction one way or the other.

WO-S' district before Silsbee got there. It wasn't much of a head-scratcher trying to figure out who would win that district.

What's the basis for PNG not winning district? The way I see it, PNG is bringing back a solid core from a solid defense and a solid core from a solid offense. Yes, we won't have Roschon anymore, but we have a good QB coming up who has already proven, at the varsity level, an ability to be accurate in passing, smart with the ball, and a strong runner. We will be a tough team. We also have one of the top offensive linemen in the state. Defense seems to be looking up. Don't count out the Indians -- We've had a piece of every district championship of the last 5 years (Co-District in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018). So it's not exactly far-fetched to suggest we end up at the top again. I see the district a lot like I did at the beginning of last year -- I think the champion will be either Nederland, PNG, or Crosby (even with all of their recent problems). I'm more skeptical about Silsbee beating West Orange. I'm not sure anyone has ever beaten West Orange two years in a row, at least not in the last 20 years or so. Someone tell me if I'm wrong about that. Silsbee will be hungry and they have the momentum of a state-championship run, but West Orange isn't going anywhere until they show us otherwise.

This says it all -- I think this is the best answer to the thread's initial question. A school whose leaders build failure into the coaching system by forcing the coach to hire people based on personal politics can hardly complain about a football team that fails. I'm guessing Westbrook doesn't do this kind of stuff. Change this one thing at United and all of the other things we've been talking about don't matter near as much. Get even a mildly decent coach and get out of his way, and Beaumont would have TWO solid teams.

To the extent students/families have some choice as to which school to attend, I think there is something to be said for past successes providing an incentive for students to go to one school over another, which leads to that school being better in the future, which leads to more success later. I don't think this is the whole explanation, but I think it is a part of it. If kids know that Westbrook tends to be more stable, organized, funded, supported, and has tended to win more games in the past, kids are more likely to (1) want to go, and (2) buy into whatever system Westbrook has that lead to that success, and then Westbrook has success, which cycles into students wanting to be there and buying into Westbrook's programs. If a school isn't like that, it's the same cycle, just in reverse. Though, I should add: This theory only makes sense to the extent students/families are choosing where to live based on what school they want to attend. There are definitely other things that go into what makes one school more consistently competitive than other schools, but this is one big one that I think helps explain part of it.

What about PNG's defense? How are we looking?

That's exciting. Am I wrong in my assessment that PNG's line had sort of a slow start last season? It seemed like they got better as the season progressed (setting aside Fort Bend Marshall, where none of our positions had much to say). It seemed like the line struggled, that Roschon spent a lot of time having to scramble. I know Huntsville's defensive line had its way with us. I'm hoping the line comes together earlier this year.

It's unclear to me what exactly what was accomplished by getting rid of the endzone stands at PNG. It improved the atmosphere to have seating all over. I guess the removal did make the track more usable for other sports.