By the end, though, Tascosa’s defense had just been in the ring too long.
On a night where their offense didn’t get going soon enough, the Rebels had their defense on the field too long. After cutting the deficit to a touchdown, Tascosa gave up a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns as Cooper went home with a 27-7 victory.
It was hardly a shoddy defensive effort by the Rebels (1-2), certainly not for the first three quarters. However, they had to carry more than their share of the weight most of the night and appeared wobbly at the end.
“I’m very disappointed because we’ve just got to get ourselves off the field,” Tascosa coach Ken Plunk said. “(Austin) Jackson is a good running back and he just kept on bouncing through there and we weren’t getting him on the ground. I think we were trying to tackle the ball a little too much.”
Offense seemed like it was at a premium in the first half, and defense was what kept the Rebels afloat as they trailed 7-0 at halftime.
Tascosa never fully got going offensively and finished with a mere 150 yards. The Rebels were as ground-oriented as usual and didn’t complete a pass until their final offensive play of the game, a 12-yard throw from Coltyn Fulton to T.J. Tillman.
After suffering through a three-and-out to open the second half, the Rebels punted it away, then held Cooper (3-0) on downs. But they couldn’t sustain any momentum offensively, and after giving the ball back to the Pirates, they gave up a score on a 9-yard pass from Ryan Rodriguez to Michael Dever to go up 14-0 with 49 seconds left in the third quarter.
Tascosa finally got on the board as Tillman made a nice return on the ensuing kickoff to Cooper’s 42-yard line. With 10:25 left in the game, Fulton scored on a 2-yard run to cut it to 14-7 and a tense finish looked possible.
However, Cooper marched down the field following the ensuing kickoff. That set up a 21-yard scoring pass from Rodriguez to Dever and gave the Pirates all the cushion they needed at 20-7.
The Rebels were still in the game and faced a fourth-and-one at their own 39 on the ensuing possession. They opted to go for it, but Fulton was stopped short, pretty much eliminating their final hope.
“Offensively we’ve got to sharpen up.” Plunk said. “We got stopped on way too many fourth downs. We really don’t really get stopped on fourth and short very often. We also missed some wide-open receivers and that made a huge impact on the game from the first half on.”
Cooper took advantage of that last stop with back-to-back runs by Austin and Deuce Johnson which totaled 51 yards. Johnson carried it in from three yards out with under three minutes left to conclude the scoring.
The only score of the first half came late in the first quarter when Austin scored on a 22-yard touchdown run where he went virtually untouched. That was one of the few real lapses Tascosa had on that side of the ball in the first half as the Rebels bent but didn’t break.
For the game, Tascosa gave up 352 yards, the bulk of which seemed to come starting late in the third quarter, as the Pirates scored on their last three possessions.
“When you play good opponents and you don’t play well you’re not going to win,” Plunk said. “But three quarters we played as good of defense as we’ve played around here since I’ve been here.”
The Rebels found yards hard to come by and points harder. Early in the second quarter, they had their best chance to score when they were stopped on downs at the Cooper 11.
Tascosa knows what it must do to become the perennial playoff team its been for the last six years. That status is what drew Cooper north to play the game.
“We’re a long way from any playoff talk but we try to do stuff that’s beneficial for down the road,” Cooper coach Chip Darden said. “For us this was a playoff type game in a playoff type atmosphere in a neutral site. We traveled further than (the Rebels) but it’s an awesome atmosphere so we used it as that. I was just proud of how our guys handled that.”