Colquitt linebacker Marcus Anderson (9) chases Thomasville's Chad Mascoe last Friday. How often will he and other Packers get to Valdosta's Tate Rodemaker this Friday?

MOULTRIE – While Grayson High’s loss to Bergen Catholic of New Jersey last Friday is giving the Colquitt County High Packers a firmer grasp on Class 7A’s No. 1 spot in all the state polls, the attention can shift to the national rankings. The Grayson Rams, after all, were a staple of nationwide top 10s coming into the season, all of last season and even in 2016’s state championship campaign.

Again, no consensus is found on who is Georgia’s best high school football team as compared to the rest of the USA, but two of the polls with MaxPreps’ name on them say it’s Colquitt County. The Freeman Rankings place the Packers at No. 11 while they get the No. 13 spot in the Xcellent 25.

Rome High School, the defending Class 5A champions, also has a top 20 national presence, No. 19 and No. 12 in the MaxPreps polls. Grayson is No. 22 in the Xcellent 25, and both the Rams and Rome represent Georgia in USA Today’s latest high school top 25 … but not Colquitt County.

Perhaps that will change in a week’s time as the Packers’ main focus remains rivalry based. After taking on and handling a 2A neighbor, Thomasville High, 50-3 last Friday on Tom White Field at Mack Tharpe Stadium, 3-0 Colquitt welcomes its oldest and most frequent foe to the Hawg Pen this coming Friday.

You can read off a lot of numbers about the 2-1 Valdosta High Wildcats – like how in a 24-10 loss to Tift County Valdosta gave up 290 yards of rushing and anywhere from 10 to 12 sacks to their quarterback; or how last weekend the Wildcats did some thrashing of their own, 50-0, over a shorthanded Bradwell Institute team with 16-for-18 passing and three touchdowns through the air – but none of them mean anything to Packer head coach Rush Propst. Some may wonder which is the real Valdosta team.

“Anytime we play Valdosta, we have to assume the best out of them and out of the rivalry,” said Propst. “It’s not like they are 0-3 or 1-2. When you start comparing scores is when you get yourself in trouble. It’s Colquitt County and Valdosta.”

This is a non-region game that could only affect these state and national polls, but Propst knows how costly overlooking a rival can be. He referred back to the 2011 season, where Colquitt – in his mind – did have the better football team but lost to the Wildcats at Wright-Bazemore Stadium in overtime. It was a region game – the regular-season finale – back then in Class 6A, and he said that loss was the difference between maybe playing at home in the semifinals and having to play at Grayson.

“We probably could have won a state title that year,” said Propst. “These kids hardly remember 2011, but it’s a great reference point that you better come to play the game. You have to throw the record books and the stats out the window and go play the game. I’ve always told them that 48 minutes isn’t a lot of time, and the game will be over with, there’s nothing you can do about it and you’ve lost. You wish you did something different. The biggest point of emphasis is the game’s only 48 minutes long, and they can’t go half-stepping into it.”

So if you say that Tift County’s Mike Jones gained 195 yards on the Wildcat defense, the only thing that means for Propst and Colquitt is they need to be consistent both in practice and the game. In the Thomasville win, he said that was the first of their three games where they played three straight consistent quarters (two 4th-quarter mercy rules).

When Wildcat quarterback Tate Rodemaker isn’t being sacked as often as the Blue Devils got to him, he can put up a good completion percentage as mentioned above. The son of head coach Alan Rodemaker, he had 222 yards vs. BI to bring his season total to 745 with eight touchdowns.

“He’s a coach’s son, so he’s going to know the game,” said Propst. “Josh Crawford is the offensive coordinator, who worked here, so he sort of knows the inner workings of what we do here. I think they will protect him better this week than they have in the past three weeks. If he gets protected, he definitely has the arm and they definitely have the players who can hurt you.”

Jahiem Bell, at 6-3, has six touchdowns already, four receiving and two rushing out of a wildcat set just in the Bradwell game. The leading rusher is Rajaez Mosley with 269 yards, most of which were last Friday (128). The Valdosta team averaged 6.75 yards per play on the ground in that blowout.

“We have to take that completely away,” said Propst. “You cannot let an offensive team be balanced. They have struggled running the ball, and we need to continue that trend and get them strictly into a throw game. If they can run the football, we’ve got trouble.”

One thing Colquitt hasn’t struggled with is putting points on the board, averaging 44.3 per game. There are some non-offensive points in recovering a fumble and returning an interception into the end zone, but it’s mainly the six rushing touchdowns by Daijun Edwards and six touchdown passes by Jaycee Harden.

But for Propst, it still comes down to consistency and getting better, not striving to be unstoppable.

“We have miles to go before we are a complete offensive team,” he said. “We’ve done some things to be good, and Jaycee’s gotten off to a good start. But it’s still a work in progress. To me, one of the biggest issues is we have to get (Ty) Leggett going, getting him more touches.”

Leggett carried seven times vs. Thomasville in his first game back since one carry in the second half on Aug. 18.

The Packer defense made a pair of statements early on Thomasville, one causing a safety on the first Bulldogs snap and the other Nyquan Washington’s fumble recovery that was really yanking the football away from a still-standing receiver.

“You set the tempo with the safety because it’s a turnover with points,” said Propst. “I think Washington’s play was very big. To me one of the keys nobody talks about is the ability of our punter to pin them deep. They were starting at the 1, the 5, the 13. Ryan Fitzgerald continues to pin people deep and put a lot of pressure on the (opposing) offense.”