Patterson leads Cougars by Legacy

Whenever Coronado's football team needed a big play at Legacy on Friday night, the Cougars would turn to senior running back Jordan Patterson, and he delivered.

Patterson rushed for 249 yards and three touchdowns – all in the first quarter – on 32 carries to lead the Cougars to a 24-15 win.

"I just saw the backs of my linemen and they would lead me through the holes," Patterson said. "I'd trust them and follow their blocks. We'd watched Legacy film, and I didn't think I could put up quite the numbers I did. But, I was confident that we'd have a good showing against them the running the ball."

Though the final margin was close, the game was pretty much over after Patterson's first-quarter outburst.

The Cougars (1-1) caught the Longhorns off guard on the opening kickoff by recovering an onside kick. Seven plays later, Patterson bulled his way into the end zone for a 5-yard scoring run and a 7-0 lead.

After the Longhorns (0-3) went three-and-out on their first possession, the Cougars put together a five-play, 64-yard drive capped off by a 15-yard scoring run by Patterson. Justin Serafino's 51-yard run sparked that scoring drive.

After another three-and-out by the Longhorns, the Cougars drove 43 yards on six plays, capped off by a 29-yard scoring run by Patterson.

"It felt so good just seeing my teammates get hyped for me, and that makes me a better player in my mind," Patterson said. "That carried me the whole game. I was so beat up, but I'd look at their faces, and they'd inspire to me to go make another play and another play."

After the explosive first quarter, Coronado's offense struggled with turnovers and penalties, which kept the Cougars from running away with the game.

"We lost our center and it was just sloppy handling on two of those plays – direct snaps," Coronado coach William Froman said. "It bounced off the fullback's chest so we changed fullbacks, and the next guy did it too. We'll either get rid of that play or get better at it.

"Thankfully, (Legacy) seemed to be stalled most of the night because we surely gave them the opportunity to make this a worse game. If we had played as clean as we did at Palo (Verde), this game would have been done in the first half."

The Longhorns' offense finally got on track at the end of the half. After the Cougars fumbled another snap, the Longhorns took advantage and scored on a 20-yard gallop by Naim Geeslin, who finished the night rushing for 83 yards on 13 carries.

Geeslin, who rushed for 410 yards on 33 carries in his first two games, never seemed to get on track against the Cougars defense.

"Their big back who looked scary on film, was dinged or something," Froman said. "We prepared all week or him. He is a hell of a football player, and if you watch his film, you know he is for real. Going forward, they'll do well with that kid. I'm curious to see how his season turns out."

In the second half, the Cougars put together another long drive and appeared to score another touchdown, but it was negated by another penalty. The Cougars eventually settled for a 37-yard field goal by Gavin Wale to push their lead to 24-7.

The Longhorns put together another scoring drive late in the game that was capped off on a 1-yard run by Justin Whitehead.

"With the bye week, we were (upset) for two weeks after a close, tough loss to Palo," Froman said. "So, we had the salt of that for two weeks. We just worked and worked. We are so young. We only returned three starters from last year. The rest are all new players in every spot, either they were on JV, varsity and didn't play, or the freshman team last year.

"We start eight sophomores, and going forward you are going to see us get better week by week because we are so young and so raw. We tackled so poorly against Palo; that is all we've worked on for the past two weeks. It was still not that great because one of their scores was due to poor tackling."