There are just 32 days remaining until the kickoff of the 2025 high school football season. But make no mistake, preparations for the upcoming campaign got underway months ago. And teams throughout northeast Georgia already are in full countdown mode.
With that in mind, we spent the last couple of weeks catching up with programs around our area to get a feel for how spring practice went, how the summer is going, and what coaches believe the fall will look like. Our "Two-a-Days" series honors those old-school grinding sessions that lead us out of summer and into fall, asking each area coach two key questions about the state of their respective programs.
Over the next two weeks, AccessWDUN's Friday Game Night will get you prepped for the start of gridiron action with responses from coaches throughout northeast Georgia.
(Teams run in alphabetical order)...
CHEROKEE BLUFF (11-2 in 2024; lost quarterfinals of Class 3A playoffs)
The Bears are coming off their best season in program history after making their deepest playoff run to date. The good news is they return experience up front on both sides of the ball and bring back an experienced backfield with junior running back Jackson Pirkle, who was one of the breakout players in the area in 2024.
But they also come into the 2025 campaign with questions at several key spots, including at quarterback and linebacker. And they will once again be in the ultra-competitive Region 8-3A, which saw Jefferson reach the Class 3A championship game.
We asked Coach Tommy Jones how the battle and quarterback is shaping up this summer and who will they look to to replace their top two tacklers on defense from last season.
QUESTION: Coach, y’all are having to replace a lot of production on the offensive side of the ball. But the biggest question may be who will start at QB. How has the quarterback battle between rising senior Cooper Dean and sophomore C.J. Payne coming along?
ANSWER: Both of those guys have had a tremendous spring and summer. Cooper has been our primary backup for the last two years. He has great size, a big arm, and is incredibly smart. He has a high-level understanding of our offense and has improved a ton during his time here. He has worked extremely hard to put himself in position to have a huge impact this season. CJ is talented and eager to learn. He has an outstanding feel for the game and a very high ceiling. And it’s obvious that he has a hunger to be great and goes about his business the right way. We are very grateful to have a couple of guys that we feel good about at the trigger spot coming into the season.
QUESTION: On defense you're having to replace your two leading tacklers at linebacker. Who are some guys that have merged during the summer at that spot?
ANSWER: I’m not sure that you ever replace guys like Connor Griffin, Caleb Cooper, and Rylan Ackerman at the linebacker position. They all played a ton of football over the course of their careers here and made lots of big plays. But in saying that, we feel really good about the next group. Brett Pierce was a starter inside last year and played really big through our playoff run. He has worked hard and stepped up through our off-season to take a real leadership role on our Defense. Connor Cook, Maddax Sutulovich, and Erik Johansen also played important roles and made significant contributions on last year’s team. We are fired-up that they are back to man the other linebacker spots this season.
- Up Next in Two-a-Days: CHESTATEE
- Previous Two-a-Days: BUFORD
