Scott's Weekend Rewind: PC North, Edmond Santa Fe, Douglass with big wins in Week 2

The opening of Yukon's new Miller Stadium was one of many events during a busy weekend of football.

I can already tell this is going to be a long week. Since Sept. 1, I haven’t gone more than two days without covering a high school football game. Friday can’t get here soon enough.

And after the three games I covered this weekend, it’s going to be hard for the next 13 weeks of football to live up to the standard.

On Thursday night, I watched Putnam City North knock off Mustang in double-overtime when sophomore kicker Richard Gallegos booted through a 17-yard field goal to clinch it. Friday brought the debut of Yukon’s new stadium, and a late rally by Edmond Santa Fe to spoil the opener at the Millers’ new home. Then we had the usual amount of drama on Saturday afternoon at the Soul Bowl.

Here’s a look back at what we learned about the teams in those three contests, starting with the double-OT thriller at PC Stadium.

What we learned about Mustang: The Mustang offensive line is getting better, but defenses are still finding ways to attack that young group of players. Fortunately, they can battle through their growing pains in the non-district, and hopefully be ready by Week 4 when district games begin.

Brandon Taylor is doing well throwing on the run and moving the pocket when he needs to, but the experienced PC North secondary was able to give him trouble, coming up with four picks on Thursday. At running back, I’ve been impressed with A.J. Ashman early this season. Obviously, the Broncos toss the ball around a lot, so he doesn’t get a ton of carries, but he takes advantage of his opportunities and is viable in the passing game, too.

Putnam City North senior Dre Holman rushed for 201 yards Thursday against Mustang.

What we learned about Putnam City North: The run game is vital to the Panthers’ offensive focus, but their ability to stay balanced is what kept them alive on Thursday. Dre Holman’s 201 yards were huge, but the fact that John Robert Simon was 8-of-10 passing in the second half and overtime — with two touchdowns — was the turning point of the game.

Defensively, it’s clear that the Panthers’ strength is in the secondary, so I’ll be curious to see if teams try to focus on running the ball against them more, especially in the early part of the season until the new players in the front seven develop.

After the ugly fourth quarter in the opening loss to Putnam City, finishing strong against Mustang was valuable to this team. Getting back to the playoffs is a definite possibility for this team, based on the district schedule, but giving away very many fourth-quarter leads won’t get you past Week 10.

What we learned about Edmond Santa Fe: This team has battled through several close losses in the last two years, but I don’t think anyone — on the outside, at least — saw this strong start coming. With so much talent on both sides of the ball, along with a good mix of experience and youth, the Wolves are clearly a team that’s going to make some noise in 6A this year, and Friday’s 38-28 win at Yukon was a breakout moment.

People are quickly becoming familiar with guys like Justice Hansen, Trevan Smith and Phillip Sumpter. But here’s another name to keep an eye on: Khari Harding. He’s a big, athletic defensive back who could very well land at a Division I program. He’s only a junior now, so the Wolves get to enjoy him terrorizing opponents for a couple seasons.

I had heard a lot about Michael Onuoha coming into the game, and he’s an athletic specimen with a lot of talent. But the Wolves’ defensive line overall was very impressive. They were getting a good push most of the game, and getting into the backfield to disrupt the Yukon offense. With the amount of talent at the skill spots, the Wolves can really be a dangerous team if the lines start playing in a dominant fashion.