The Brownwood Lions missed out on a chance at a district championship last week with their loss to Stephenville, but the No. 2 playoff seed from District 4-4A Division I is already sewn up as head coach Jeryl Brixey’s squad looks to regain positive momentum in the regular season finale at Marble Falls Friday night.

Kickoff between the Lions (5-4, 2-1) and Mustangs (3-6, 0-3) is set for 7:30 p.m., and Brixey cautioned against Brownwood overlooking Marble Falls with a bi-district playoff date against either Big Spring or Pecos awaiting next week.

“They have enough talented kids that we’re going to have to go play well,” Brixey said. “In this district there’s not any game that we’re going to look at and think we’ve got this. I told the kids that fastest way to get beat by anybody is to think it’s just so-and-so or we got this. Yeah they’ve struggled some this year, but at points we’ve struggled this year and worked hard and have gotten better. If we don’t go play well we absolutely could lose a game we shouldn’t lose.”

The Lions are looking to return to form on both sides of the ball as against Stephenville, Brownwood finished with just 46 yards of total offense, including -8 on the ground, with three turnovers.

“I don’t want to diminish Stephenville, but from an offensive standpoint when you play teams that are bigger and stronger than you are, you have to lean on your technique,” Brixey said. “That was the one thing we didn’t do. All the improvement we’ve made technique-wise through the weeks, it’s like it went out the door Friday night. That’s the thing that’s frustrating as a coach. Whether it was panic mode or not being experienced in it enough to trust it, we went back to not doing those things very well and that creates problems for us. I feel like we stepped back last week.”

Center Gustavo Gonzalez left last week’s game with a knee injury. Aviud Gomez moved over to center and Omari McNeil filled the vacancy up front. Whether Gonzalez will be available this week or not was unknown earlier in the week.

Defensively, the Lions ended up yielding 403 total yards by night’s end, but at halftime Brownwood was down just 14-0 and Stephenville had produced only 145 yards of total offense.

“You get beat 49-0 and you think the defense had a bad night, but our defense played a really great game for 2 ½ quarters,” Brixey said. “But the short fields and the three-and-outs and the number of plays just wore them down. I don’t think defensively we stepped back the other night. In the second half it got away from us, but those kids were playing a lot of plays. When you’re offense isn’t supporting your defense, which we weren’t, you get worn out after a little while. It’s a game that could have been a close football game that ends up being a blowout, and those are things we have to fix because our long term plan is hopefully getting another shot at those guys, but it’s going to take a lot of improvement on our part.”

Safety Caven Webster was ejected for targeting against Stephenville, but Brixey said he will be eligible for the entire game Friday as the UIL rules do not call for any type of suspension with a targeting call.

The Lions defense heads into Friday’s game allowing 26 points and 254 yards – 134 passing and 120 rushing – per game on average, with 20 takeaways.

Leading the defensive charge are Brinson Martin (70 tackles, 8 for loss, 3.5 sacks, 1 fumble recovery), Caven Webster (65.5 tackles, 2 for loss, 3 interceptions), Wyatt Wolf (61.5 tackles, 1 for loss, 3 interceptions), Isaac Gonzales (51.5 tackles, 3 for loss, 2.5 sacks), Christian Gray (48.5 tackles, 8 for loss, 6.5 sacks), Durham Brown (44.5 tackles, 2 sacks, 2 fumble recoveries), Sirr Beam (27.5 tackles, 1 for loss, 2 interceptions, 1 fumble recovery), Nick Rodriguez (26 tackles, 1 for loss, 3 interceptions), and Raul Eberhardt (24.5 tackles, 1 for loss, 2 sacks, 1 fumble recovery).

The Marble Falls offense manufactures 25 points and 249 yards – 143 rushing 106 passing – per game.

The Mustangs are led by quarterback Crawford Mattox (57 of 119 for 575 yards, 3 TDs, 8 INTs; 203 rushing yards, 3 TDs), receivers Atreyu MacHacek (24-237, 2 TDs), Kaden Langbein (22-273, 2 TDs), and Olen Dalton (9-133, TD), and running backs Joaquin Aguilar (549 rushing yards, 8 TDs), Diego Aguilar (343 rushing yards, 2 TDs), and Doak Timmerman (136 rushing yards, 4 TDs).

“Their quarterback is a sophomore that’s a good runner and they’ve got designed runs for him,” Brixey said. “He’s got a nice arm, but he’s thrown some interceptions and throws into traffic, so hopefully we can continue that. Their main running back is a freshman and he’s got pretty good speed, but they’ll run some other kids in there. They’ve got a couple of good receivers that they’ll try and get the ball to. They’re basically in the gun with two backs and three wide receivers most of the time, but they shift and move and try and create confusion.”

On the flip side of the ball, the Lions offense averages 25 points and 237 yards – 147 through the air and 90 on the ground – per outing, with 21 turnovers.

Quarterback Judson Coalson has completed 82 of 147 passes for 1,320 yards with 16 touchdowns and nine interceptions, while receiving threats include Carson Noe (37-692, 9 TDs), Connor Cornelius (11-179, 3 TDs), Raven Prado (6-70), Daylyn Ansons (6-25), Grant Gray (5-144, 2 TDs), Hudson Fry (3-53, TD), and Brinson Martin (2-11, TD). Weapons out of the backfield are Trent Buffington (418 rushing yards, 4 TDs) and Levi Pearson (412 yards, 2 TDs).

Marble Falls yields 32 points per game on average, with 11 sacks and 13 takeaways this season.

Standouts include Brody Graham (71 tackles, 1 for loss), Gregory Lemon (67 tackles, 1 sack, 2 interceptions, 1 fumble recovery), Timmerman (57 tackles, 3 for loss, 1 sack, 2 fumble recoveries), Quavyon Alexander (50 tackles, 2 for loss, 3 interceptions), and Kaleb Biefeldt (47 tackles, 10 for loss, 5 sacks, 1 interception).

“Defensively they’re going to be a lot scheme-wise like what we saw with Stephenville, a 4-2-5 and shift into an odd stack and stuff like that,” Brixey said. “They have a defensive end, big, tall good looking kid, probably 6-4, 225 and he plays their wide side. They give you a lot of different looks, stem and move, so we’re going to have to do a good job handling that. There will be a lot of the looks we saw last week and we just have to continue to improve because there’ll be some challenges for us in all that.”

According to Harris Ratings Weekly, Brownwood is a 35-point favorite. Dave Campbell’s Texas Football also lists the Lions as 20-point favorites.