Jackson Dean, Berrien head coach
Today’s interviewee is Berrien coach Jackson Dean, whose team defeated No. 2 overall seed and previously undefeated Lamar County 7-0 in the Class A Division I first round. Berrien entered with the No. 31 seed and a 3-7 record, with losses to five top-10 teams and eight playoff teams, including No. 1 Worthy County, the Region 1 champion. The Lamar County victory was Berrien’s first over a top-10 opponent from the same classification since 1993, against Waycross. This is Dean’s first season as Berrien’s coach. He has worked on staffs at Cook, East Coweta, Lowndes, Hillgrove and South Gwinnett. He was a player on Valdosta State’s 2007 national championship team. Berrien will play at Rabun County, 300 miles away, a five-hour trip, in the second round.
1. So, how did you pull that off, beating Lamar County? “We threw a trick play on the first play of the game, a double pass for a touchdown, and I basically looked at the defensive coordinator, Doug Cain, and said we’re done for the night. If you can just shut them down, we’re good to go. But we just executed, and the kids played well. Coach Cain got them schemed up and fired up. We were super confident going in. We were battle-tested against the heavy hitters in our region. I told them before the game, ‘We’ve been dragged through the mud and come out scratching and clawing on the other side, and there’s nothing left to do but put it all on the line.’ We finally got a chance to showcase that we’re a good football team and belong in this league.”
2. Tell us about the opening play. How did you come up with it and decide to use it? “We’d been practicing it all week. We threw a little bubble pass out to Cole Stone. We lined him up a little deeper. He threw it to Jerrion Brown, who acted like he was blocking for a second, then caught it and took off. It looks like a play that we run a lot. It’s one of those plays where when you call it you’re scared to death because so many things can go wrong, but if it’s executed, it can be a big play. So, I thought we’ve got nothing to lose, let’s set the tone early and get the momentum on our side, and it worked. I’ve run that play at some previous schools where it worked, but that’s the best I’ve seen it work and the most important.”
3. What’s the itinerary for the Rabun County trip? Have any of your players ever been to the mountains? “I haven’t asked them, but when we got back on the bus Friday night and found out, somebody said, ‘Are we getting snow gear?’ I looked at the weather next Friday, and it’s 71 degrees with a low of 57, so I told them don’t worry about that. The debate for travel was to get a hotel Thursday or drive up there Friday. We’ve elected to drive up. We’ve got a charter bus reserved for the kids. We’ll take a couple of rest stops every couple of hours, getting off the bus and moving around. We’re stopping at a rest area first, then we’re stopping at Mill Creek High School [in Gwinnett County]. Coach [Josh] Lovelady was my offensive line coach in high school [at South Gwinnett], so I got to hit him up for that, so we’ll hang out there and do our stretch routine. We’ll go eat at the Golden Corral after that and head up to Rabun and see if we can give it our best shot.”
4. What do you think of the GHSA’s playoff model for Class A Division I, which allows teams outside the top four in each region to qualify using the points rating model? “It’s one of those deals where we definitely benefited from it. At the same time, our region is absolutely brutal. It’s definitely the SEC of South Georgia football and single-A. We've played a gauntlet. Even our non-region schedule was tough. What we were able to do Friday against a team that’s 10-0 and seeded No. 2 just shows that a lot of teams were getting left out before with the one-four model. Berrien is definitely blessed to have this model to be sitting in the spot we’re in now.”
