2022 Dougherty Trojans Football Preview

ALBANY — It’s almost game time. The Dougherty Trojans have been working for months and they will open the football season Friday night at Hugh Mills Stadium against crosstown rival Westover in the Hamp Smith Classic.

After several years of struggling to find the W, the Trojans surprised everyone but themselves by putting together a 10-3 season and ending the season a field goal away from making the state semifinals. Can they improve on that?

A poll released Sunday has Dougherty ranked ninth in Class AAA with defending champion Cedar Grove on top and region opponents Crisp County and Carver-Columbus second and third, respectively.

“We are really excited about the upcoming season and ready to get started,” said Dougherty head coach Johnny Gilbert. “We lost a lot of good seniors last year, but we had a big junior class last year and we feel like these guys who are now seniors can fill in those holes.”

The Trojans got a taste of the new season last Thursday night when they played Dooly County in a scrimmage game and came home with an 18-8 win.

“We were really focused on improving the passing game in the scrimmage,” Gilbert said. “We saw some good things in the passing game and on the blocking for the running game. On defense, our defensive line and our blitz package really shined with sacks and fumble recoveries.”

His quarterback was slightly disappointed in Thursday’s passing game.

“(The scrimmage) was good but we have had a lot of four and five-hour practices this year,” said quarterback Kameron Davis. “I felt like we should have not had all the issues we had during the scrimmage and we should be further along going into the game against Westover.”

The Trojans will again be led on offense by Davis, who rushed for 1,363 yards and passed for 1,787 more yards. Davis earned preseason All-State honors from Georgia High School Football Daily and was named the top player in AAA. He committed last year to play college football at Florida State University. If Davis isn’t running the ball he will likely be handing off to senior running back Jacob Stallworth, who rushed for 834 yards last season.

The defense will include senior Stantavious Smith (6-foot-3, 265 pounds), who recently committed to Florida Atlantic University over offers from Georgia, Florida, Notre Dame and 20 more schools that wanted him.

The Trojans are definitely not the 1-9 or 0-10 teams from a few years back, but being among Georgia’s best won’t be easy, even with extremely gifted athletes. Dougherty has dropped down to Class AAA along with rival Monroe, and into arguably the strongest football region in the classification. In the Maxwell Ratings released earlier this month, Dougherty was fourth in the new region behind Thomasville (AA state runner-up), Crisp County (AAA Final Four) and Carver-Columbus (AAAA state runner-up). Monroe was fifth and Columbus was sixth.

“I’ve said in the past the Bainbridge and Cairo were the measuring sticks for our program,” Gilbert said, “but now we have new measuring sticks.”

Carver-Columbus is the team that knocked the Trojans out of the state playoffs last season in the quarterfinals by a 16-14 score. The Tigers lost to Benedictine (Savannah) in the state championship game 35-28.

Gilbert said he was on hand Thursday and Friday to put an eye on two of his upcoming opponents — he was there Thursday to watch Westover play Mitchell County and was in Leesburg Friday night to watch Carver.

“Westover looked much better than they did against Monroe in the spring,” said Gilbert. “I think there are some things in there we can attack, but really it’s more about us executing the way we are supposed to instead of what they are doing. We’ve got to stay injury-free and play our game.”

“Carver looked really big and fast, but I feel like we will be able to compete with them,” the coach said.

Gilbert is also counting on his three coordinators to keep the Dougherty program flourishing. Roderick Moore is leading the offense, Ronnye Nelson leads the defense and Kenyon Connors leads special teams.

Joe Whitfield