THOMASVILLE – With a dominating win over Bacon County on Friday night, Thomasville advanced to round two of the state playoffs. This Friday they will host Temple at home. 

Thomasville is favored in this game, but not by a very wide margin. The teams are separated by just three places in the power rankings with the Bulldogs at seven and Temple at ten. Both teams sit at 9-2 and both have one region loss. The only difference on paper is Thomasville won their region, while Temple came in second.

The Tigers are a solid team with an extremely dangerous run game. Their best wins are a 62-8 win over Clarkston and a 43-21 win over South Atlanta where they rushed for over 400 yards. In round one of the playoffs, the Tigers beat Putnam County 40-27. They rushed for 255 yards led by senior CJ Gray’s 117 yards on the ground and four rushing touchdowns. 

Temple is an extremely run-heavy team. This season they have 82 pass attempts as opposed to their 418 rushing attempts. They’ve recorded just five passing TDs with seven interceptions this year. On the ground Temple has 49 touchdowns and is averaging 7.8 yards per carry, 297.5 rushing yards per game, and has 13 100-plus yard runs this season.

The team is led by senior CJ Gray, who is averaging 113.5 rushing yards per game and leads the team with 17 total touchdowns. He is backed by two other running backs who are averaging over 65 rushing yards per game in Serge Jones and Maclann Metayer. Jones has 13 touchdowns this season.

For the Bulldogs, they simply need to stop the run, something that is much easier said than done. Though Thomasville’s defense has been solid this year, allowing an average of 13.1 points per game and allowing just 12 points in their last four contests, they have struggled to stop the run. In games where stats were reporter, seven, they have allowed an average of 174 rushing yards per game and 11 touchdowns on the ground. Granted, higher classification teams like Central and Cairo contribute to that quite a bit. Even if you remove those games, however, the Bulldogs have only held teams to less than 100 rushing yards twice and have given up more than 150 twice. Against the Tiger’s high-powered run game guys in the trenches like Keymon Jefferson and Geremiah Humbert are going to have to be on their A-game. In addition, the Bulldog’s second and third levels have to be ready to chase down any rusher that escapes that d-line. This is a game that will be won at the line of scrimmage.

Thomasville will face Temple at home this Friday with the game scheduled to begin a 7:30 p.m.