After completing only the second undefeated regular season in school history, Chattahoochee head coach Terry Crowder knows the expectations for his team are high as they head into the 2010 playoffs and he likes it that way. Crowder, in his seventh season, thinks his Cougars can absolutely win it all. "I think there's about six teams that have a chance to win the state championship and I think that we're one of them," Crowder says bluntly.

After outscoring opponents this season by an average of 33 points a game, the Cougars are definitely a favorite to make it to the Dome or are they?

Was Region 7-AAAA Weak?

Crowder and his Cougars ran the table in the regular season with dominating win after dominating win, but they had trouble moving up the polls. The main reason: the perceived weakness of Region 7-AAAA, a region where every team played all region games – meaning there were no non-region games to cross compare Region 7 with other regions.

Crowder isn't listening to the talk that his region was weak, "I don't have concerns about that," the coach says of the region's perceived weakness. "Teams in our league are well coached and nobody knows until you get into the playoffs which region is better."

Even though the Cougars lack playoff experience (the current senior class was freshmen when Chattahoochee last made the postseason), Crowder isn't too worried about his team getting playoff jitters, "If we had played some close games, then I might be a little bit more concerned, but we took care of business every week and so I feel like we're a very good football team and we'll come to play."

In his seven seasons at Chattahoochee, Crowder has taken two of his prior teams to the postseason. He thinks his current crop of kids is different from his first two playoff teams, teams, he says, were just happy to be in the postseason. "This isn't like the other two years we made the playoffs," Crowder says. "In the other years, we were out there, happy to be one of 32. But this team wants to win on Friday and they expect to win on Friday. That's the difference between them and the previous teams."

Quarterback Timmy Byerly and wide receiver Kane Whitehurst [pictured] will headline the almost unstoppable offense that Chattahoochee will bring into Friday night's first round game. Byerly finished the regular season with a TD-to-INT ratio that makes college scouts drool: 22 touchdown passes to one interception. The speedy Whitehurst was on the receiving end of 12 of those touchdown passes. "With Timmy and our receivers and our offensive line, we're very hard to defend," says Crowder.

The Opponent

The onus of trying to stop the Chattahoochee offense will fall on the Pope High School defense. Like Chattahoochee, the Greyhounds dropped down to AAAA after spending the last several years playing AAAAA ball.

The two teams haven't played each other since 2003 (a 49-7 Chattahoochee win), coincidentally, 2003 was also the year of Chattahoochee's last playoff win. The Cougars are the second undefeated team that Pope will have played this year, back on October 1, the Greyhounds fell to the currently 10-0 Kell Longhorns 35-21.

Friday night's first round game between Chattahoochee and Pope will kickoff at 7:30 p.m.

Photo by Randi Risman