Sprayberry travels to Sequoyah on Friday for a matchup of top-10 teams in Class 5A that will establish the favorite to win the Region 6. Sprayberry won last year and took the region title, although both teams made it to the state quarterfinals. No. 2 Buford hosts No. 4 Douglas County in a high-profile Class 6A non-region game, and Calhoun goes to Jefferson for a game featuring two state finalists from 2024.

Below are Georgia’s 459 11-man football teams by county and ranked by the computer Maxwell Ratings. The teams include those from the Georgia High School Association, the Georgia Independent Athletic Association and the Georgia Association of Private and Parochial Schools. The list provides a different way of looking at the state’s teams, grouping them as county rivals, and offers some insight into the strength of certain counties relative to others.

Rabun County's Reid Giles and Buford's Tyriq Green made a big impact all over the field in their teams' Week 4 victories, while quarterbacks Turner Stevenson of Aquinas and Traviion Miller of Clinch County and wide receiver Brady Marchese of Cartersville put up big numbers to help their teams remain undefeated.

Two No. 1 teams lost last week. One kept its spot; the other did not. Worth County is the new No. 1 in Class A Division I, replacing defending champion Toombs County, which lost 49-28 to Rome, the 10th-ranked Class 5A team. Toombs beat Rome last season. Maintaining its No. 1 ranking was Calhoun in Class 3A. Calhoun lost to Class 4A’s No. 4 team, Cartersville, 38-35 on a field goal with 12 seconds left. Calhoun won 3A last season.

North Cobb Christian’s Cooper Bazarsky and Newnan’s Brodie Campbell and John Matthews are the GHSA’s leading rusher, passer and receiver after three weeks of the regular season. All three play for 3-0 teams. Bazarsky has rushed for at least 150 yards in each of his games for a total of 662. Newnan's quarterback-wide receiver pair got most of their yards in a single game, a 60-56 victory over East Coweta on Aug. 22, when Campbell passed for 516 yards and Matthews had 257 receiving yards.

Region play heats up in Week 4 as Stockbridge and Eagle's Landing of 2-4A, Whitewater and Troup of 2-3A and Ringgold and Rockmart of 7-2A meet to determine the early pecking order in their playoff races. Elsewhere, south Georgia rivals Thomas County Central and Thomasville will face off for the 58th time.

More than 135 former Georgia high school players are on active rosters ahead of Thursday night’s NFL opener between the Cowboys and Eagles, according to GHSF Daily research. There are dozens more on injured reserve or practice squads. Hillgrove and North Gwinnett have the most active NFL players with six each. Three of North Gwinnett’s six are rookies Barrett Carter, Jordan Hancock and Jared Ivey. Hillgrove’s six include former first-round draft picks Myles Murphy and Bradley Chubb.

Wide receivers Josh Stanley of Bleckley County, Ty Kemp of North Hall and Kyle Cummings of Northwest Whitfield combined for more than 400 receiving yards and accounted for 11 touchdowns in their teams' victories in Week 3 of the high school football season. Parkview's Zandon Mullins rushed for 326 yards, and Mill Creek's Jayde Beasley ran for 269.

The football rankings remained largely the same after almost no upsets involving top-10 teams in the third weekend of the season. Thirteen top-10 teams were beaten, but only one lost to a lower-ranked, instate opponent from the same class. That was former No. 5 Colquitt County in Class 6A. North Gwinnett, playing at home, beat the Packers 21-7 and moved up one spot to No. 7 while Colquitt fell to No. 10.

It’s early to be talking playoffs with only 12 of 1,281 region games complete, but Loren Maxwell of the Maxwell Ratings churns out playoff projections each week on AJC Varsity, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s new high school sports product. The GHSA changes the region playoff pairings each year, so each new season brings a different landscape to the brackets.

Two of Georgia's defending state champions will be tested by top out-of-state competition Friday night when Thompson of Alabama visits Grayson and McCallie of Tennessee hosts Hebron Christian in top Week 3 action. Cherokee Bluff and North Hall will battle for supremacy in Hall County, and Colquitt County travels to North Gwinnett to renew a North-South rivalry.

New football coaches often ask for patience. The request is more than fair. New GHSA coaches are 53-96 this season. Those same teams were 65-94 one year ago. So yes, it takes time. But these five have made their fan bases happy so far: Rance Gillespie (Rabun County), Nelson Stewart (Westminster), Corey Richardson (Norcross), Kevin Saunders (Apalachee) and Brett Vavra (Etowah).

Offensive players were in the spotlight in Week 2 of the high school season. Newnan quarterback Brodie Campbell passed for 516 yards in his team's victory over rival East Coweta, and running backs Gene Watson of Berrien, Devon Caldwell of Hebron Christian, Henry Pullen of McEachern and Andrew Davis all went over the 200-yard mark in victories.

Fresh off victories over two of Cobb County’s top programs, McEachern is in the rankings for the first time since 2020, checking in at No. 6 in Class 6A. The Indians defeated then-No. 6 North Cobb 21-0 on Friday after beating Walton 50-17 the previous week. North Cobb and Walton are Cobb’s two winningest teams since 2020. The No. 6 ranking is McEachern’s highest since the Indians reached the 2019 quarterfinals ranked No. 2.

Grayson and Rabun Gap, two of the top four Georgia teams in the High School Football America rankings, will headline the Week 2 schedule when they meet Friday night at Grayson. Elsewhere, North Cobb and McEachern will battle for Cobb County supremacy, and the private schools feature strong matchups that include Hebron Christian vs. Fellowship Christian, Holy Innocents’ vs. Blessed Trinity, and Westminster vs. Pace Academy.

Quarterbacks Turner Stevenson of Aquinas, Keyuntae Phillips of McNair and Hudson Hulett of North Murray hurt their opponents passing, rushing and even receiving in their teams' Week 1 games, while two-way players Casey Barner of McEachern and Elijah McEwen of Montgomery County were unstoppable all over the field.

Three-time defending champion Bowdon is out of the top spot in the Class A Division II football rankings after a decisive opening-night loss. The new No. 1 is Lincoln County, a program looking to restore its glory days. The other seven preseason No. 1 teams - Grayson (6A), Hughes (5A), North Oconee (4A), Calhoun (3A), Carver-Columbus (2A), Toombs County (A Division I) and Prince Avenue Christian (3A-A Private) - won impressively in the first week of the season.

The 2025 football season is under way, and it reaches full throttle tonight with about 175 games. Here are 10 of the better storylines fans will be following this season. Bowdon, the reigning Class A Division II champion, can become the fourth school in GHSA history to win four consecutive championships. Bowdon is ranked No. 1 in every poll in the GHSF Daily composite rankings.

Prince Avenue Christian and Kell opened the 2025 football season with victories on a rainy Wednesday in the Corky Kell + Dave Hunter Classic at Kell High. Prince Avenue Christian rallied from a 17-14 halftime deficit and beat Callaway 40-17. Kell built a 34-7 halftime lead and defeated South Paulding 44-21.

No Georgia kicking specialist had a better 2024 season than Denmark’s Jake Snyder. He averaged 45.8 yards on 27 punts, made 12 of 13 field-goal attempts and put 40 of 51 kickoffs in the end zone. He is Kohl’s No. 12 senior kicker nationally and committed to Memphis in June. Snyder is a member of GHSF Daily’s Georgia Power 100, a list that includes Aaron McWilliams of East Coweta and Carter Genchi of Hillgrove.