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JV looked real good against Ball. They have a quarterback that is in 10th grade that will take over next year. He's about 6'3" 185 and has a good arm, not the fastest guy, but fast enough. Reminds me of what a younger Byron Leftwich may have looked like. Running back is scrappy, couple of decent enough receivers. Lee never has a really good JV. If they were THAT good, they would be on varsity with our lack of numbers. The freshman team looked good against Vidor, but not sure against Ball. They scrimmaged at a different location than varsity. I would say they are going to be pretty good. I didn't see any talents that just jumped out at me as guys that are going to be contributing next year. They have a couple of good running backs and a stout defense. I'll let ya know more about the freshmen after Thursday when I see them play Central.

I thought you meant in the overall scheme of things. On this board he might not be, but statewide he is. Texas fans had no idea how good Robert Joseph was going to be. Jamaal was fairly highly ranked, but not high enough to do him justice. Earl Thomas is seen as one of the lower ranked guys that Texas has committed this year, but in actuality he may be one of the best.

Earl Thomas, because he's really good and Golden Triangle players have been underrated a of late. Jamaal, Robert Joseph and now Thomas.

New Caney should go in with Huntsville and Livingston. Lee can slide into New Caney's spot. New Caney may even be 5A by then? They look close to the cutoff in Dave Campbell's. I'll need to see what population zones they take from Lee before I decide how effective they will be lol

2008

Brian Johnson led a much better team than Drew Tate ever did at Lee. It's been since 2003 since Lee was good, so you're right about that. The influx of Hispanic students started long ago, so that's not a factor with the recent efforts. I think Olin had gotten complacent. The team has looked ragtag the last few years. There is a ton of talent in the program right now. The days of Lee being good again are about a year away. Next year they will have one of the best teams in the Houston area if not the state. I still think they are a year away, but they will be much better this year than last. Lee will become 4A, the new school will be 4A and Sterling will remain in 5A with their attendance numbers not affected too much. I'm not sure about the players being too small to be effective. I will guarantee you that Lee will be much bigger than Central and as fast in the skill positions. I tried to be as diplomatic as possible in my earlier replies, but if you think Central is going to outspeed Lee, then you got another think coming. You must be talking about Pasadena Rayburn with your description. Having said all this, Lee still has looked very unorganzied and made too many mistakes the last few years, so I could see Central winning, but your description wasn't really accurate.

I think he's one of the main guys behind it. Don't get me to lying and say he started it though, because I am not sure on that.

Yeah we have a ton back. Just been so long since we have stopped anyone on defense or had any pass protection. Seems like it can only happen in a dream at this point.

I did a little research and see that Central had a good 400 relay team last year. Hall, who ran anchor, seems to be back at receiver. He had a high yard per catch average last year. Most of Lee's speed is on offense, but they do have about three 4.5 guys on defense. Guess we'll see come Friday. I don't even want to make a prediction. I will believe Lee has a decent defende when I see it on the field. Until then, I'll assume that opposing teams will move through them like a sieve.

Dang, how much speed does Central have? Lee's defense is probably average in terms of speed, but Lee's offense has speed out the wazoo. Whether we can give the qb time to pass the ball and how well Moses is in sync with the receivers could be the deciding factor. That and we need to see what Lee's defense looks like against the run in a real game. Teams have been able to pretty much run all over them at will the last two years.

That's Plano East and Tyler John Tyler in that heartbreaking game.

1996 Baytown Lee vs. North Shore. Lee had one of the best defenses in the state that year. Only gave up 87 points in 10 games. We didn't have much offense though, for one of the few times under Olin. Ell Roberson was a soph at the time and we just didnt have much speed at receiver or running back. We ended up 7-3. We lost to Laporte 12-6 and West Brook 18-0 and North Shore. Even had we beaten North Shore, we wouldnt have made the playoffs. North Shore was an offensive juggernaut this year. They went to the semifinals, losing to Judson. They scored 471 points in 14 games. They had Ced Cormier, Lavar Johnson and Joe Walker as their main threats that year. Lee shut them down the whole game. North Shore's offense wasn't that complex and Lee was fast enough to contain Cormier. With about 2 minutes to go in the 4th quarter, Lee was up 7-3 and North Shore couldn't have had more than 100 total yards of offense. Cormier drops back from his own 20 and hits some receiver named Potter streaking down the right sideline. The Lee d-back had misjudged the ball and jumped too early and it went right over his hands. Bout an 80 yard touchdown and North Shore won 10-7. Like I said, it didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. I would have liked to have seen what Lee could do with that defense in the playoffs though. If we could have beaten Laporte like we were supposed to we would have made it regardless. The other game was 1997. Alief Hastings in the 3rd round of the playoffs. We were up early. We got the ball back, bout to go up 14 about 5 minutes into the game. Ell Roberson throws one of his 4 or 5 interceptions on the day. We end up losing to Hastings 30-20. Hastings went onto the state championship game. The next week Hastings was playing West Brook. Lee beat West Brook 35-12 earlier so that was looking pretty good for us. Lee beat 4A Texas City early in the year 41-18. This was TC's only loss as they won the state championship that year. I felt that was Lee's best chance to really do something in the playoffs. Just picked the wrong day to throw so many interceptions.

How big is Chase Ferguson?

Tell me more about this running back.

how'd earl thomas look

I'll be as unbiased as possible. I don't think Lee is THAT good. I've watched every game of Lee's for the past 20 years. Lee will be much better than last year in my opinion. We were playing with a bunch of 10th graders last year. But, I don't think we're THAT good yet, maybe next year. Also, I don't really look too much at Lee's second string, because, although we may have depth compared to Vidor, they are not really that good. Particularly our second string qb is a big dropoff, so it's hard to judge once Lee's first team comes out. Having said all that. I thought Vidor had very good interior defensive line play and linebackers. I think they are a bit slow around the corners. They played good in the defenseive backfield. The right cornerback laid a good lick on one of the Lee receivers. Also, that same right corner made a very good breakup on a deep ball. Vidor has a pretty good offensive line, and I'm sure it will be much better once Gooch starts playing. They don't have much speed at the skill positions, so I think their best work will be quick hitters up the middle. The quarterback was pretty scrappy but doesn't have a cannon for an arm. It's really hard to say from today's action. There was virtually NO scrimmage work. It was all a big practice. They had like 5 plays where they went 1 vs 1 in scrimmage type atmosphere. There was a lot of goalline situation, but it's tough to say what you can learn from that. I'd say Vidor's defense surprised me. They looked stiff. You can probably run on the perimeter on them if you have a lot of speed, but I'm not sure how many teams will hve the speed necessary to do that. It will be VERY tough to run up the middle on Vidor. Now, the offense.....I'll just say the defense better be stout. It will take a lot of long, methodical drives for Vidor this year I believe. I don't see much in the passing game or on the perimieter in the running game. It's going to be a lot of 3 yards and a cloud of dust.

Well I guess I missed that. If it wasn't goal line situation and it was 1's v 1's then I am very surprised and maybe I underestimated Vidor. The 1's vs 1's that I saw, from freshman and varsity both, Lee was just too big and too fast. Any time Vidor actually broke the line of scrimmage and made positive yards it was party time and celebrations all around. I'll just have to wait til Lee plays Ball High to really see what's going on.

I guess we were. You realize it was the freshman inside the stadium right? Out in the practice fields was the jv and soph. I saw Vidor moving the ball out there, but in the stadium, where the freshmen were playing, Vidor didn't get a single positive yard in the 25 or so plays I saw. I will admit that I left towards the end to go to the restroom and then went around to the varsity area out in thge practice fields. Unless these touchdowns were in the goalline portion, then I don't think Vidor could have scored if you gave them 100 plays. They just didn't have enough team speed. Lee had about a 70 yard touchdown pass, a 55 yard touchdown run, another 40+ yard touchdown run when their better running back(#21) got in the game. I don't know man, maybe Vidor turned it around and turned into the 85 Bears for the last 5 minutes that I missed. I can't say for sure, because I wasn't there. The first 55 minutes they didn't get more than 10-15 total yards on 25 or so plays

Also, if we're reporting underclassmen... Lee freshmen scored about 4 td's to Vidor's 0. I can't remember for sure, it was either 3 or 4 td's I didn't get to see the JV. I did see Vidor score one long td catch in the JV scrimmage, but couldn't tell you what else happened.

I agree that you can't put a score on it. Now, would it have ended up 35-0 anyway had they played the scrimmage? It probably would have been something similar to that, but in my first post I simply put what happened at the practice/scrimmage. Vidor couldn't really move the ball for positive yards at all on about 32 of their 35 plays they ran. I didn't ever say the final was 35-0. I did mention that Vidor had a couple good runs 2 of the last 3 plays of the scrimmage. I really liked Chase Ferguson. Is he a senior?

Vidor/Lee wasn't even what you could call a scrimmage. More like a glorified practice for the most part. Lots of 7 on 7 action and inside running drills. For some reason, they played on a field that Lee practices on that is adjacent to the stadium. Freshmen played in the stadium the same time that the JV was out in the field. then, when those two were done, varsity played on the field outside the stadium. Made no sense really. They said something about the fact that it was a practice and not a scrimmage, but cmon, that doesn't mean you have to use the field that you normally practice on lol Anyway...after all the drills, they finally got to some goal line(from the 7 yard line) and then some punts and kicks and finally about 9 or 10 real plays of 11 on 11. Those were split up between first and second team, so first team O and D for each team got about 5 simulated plays. You could still get a good gauge of the two teams from the action. It looked as I suspected. About like one would figure a 4A vs 5A matchup would look. Lee scored 5 or 6 times from the 7 out of about 10-12 plays and once on a punt return. Vidor only gained positive yards once out of about 12 plays from the 7 yard line, but they didn't score on that one either. Lee's first team got 3 first downs out of 6 plays they ran in the simulated part, but didn't score. Vidor got 1 or 2 yards total out of their first 8 plays, then broke a couple of good runs on two plays right near the end. Gooch didn't play for Vidor. Vidor has two really good defensive tackles I thought. They were big ol boys. They also have a good center(I'm sure he's one of the defensive tackles as well, but they didnt have numbers) Lee will have a much better gauge of what they're going to do this year next week against Galveston Ball.

Man, if we get beat by Vidor then we're in for a world of hurt again this year. I just can't see Vidor beating Lee. I'll say 35-14 Lee. Lee always starts slow though, so you never know. Still have a very young team overall.

Vince Young is far and away the best high school player I have seen at any position. I was at that 61-58 game too. Had you traded the quarterbacks, and given Vince to North Shore and given Willie Gaston(a good high school qb in his own right) to Madison. North Shore would have won 80-10 had they wanted. You could have stuck Vince on Houston Reagan or Vidor or Houston Smiley and they would have been a threat to win a state championship. I don't think some people appreciate how horrible that Madison defense was. Courtney Lewis was good on offense as were a couple of their receivers, but it was typical HISD team other than that. They had poor fundamentals and despite having a little bit of talent, they would not have been above .500 had they not had Vince. Put him at the helm and they are a few plays from the state championship. Other than him, Drew Tate, Ell Roberson, Odell James, Ced Cormier, James Brown, Chip Ambres. PAJ had a guy that i liked. I can't remember his name. He was there when Lendon Henry was there. His name might have been West. I always thought hewas a productive qb for high school. Beasley of course is great. I seriously said when I saw him that if he were 3 inches taller, he would be one of the top ranked qb recruits. His passing was pretty good if you ask me. He of course had excellent quickness. I'd put him right there with Drew Tate tied for second place. But both are light years behind Vince Young.

David Boston, from Humble High School, single handed eliminated Lee back in 1995. They went on to the state semi-finals that year. He made a spectacular diving grab in the corner of the end zone and played some stellar safety too. I believe the final was Humble 10 Baytown Lee 7. funny part of it was, my friend had been making fun of David Boston the year before when he was a junior. He was back returning punts against North Shore in the first round of the playoffs. I hadn't heard of Boston at the time, and I must admit he wasn't the most obvious looking guy to be returning punts. He was so tall and thin. But we sure knew about him the next year. Also, Jamaal Charles against Lamar in the playoffs. Luckily, this game was in Baytown and the stadium is about 1/2 mile from my house. I went ahead and went to the game. Jamaal was a one man wrecking crew. PAM really didn't have any other plays. Every play they called that was not a run by Jamaal, you could tell it was just to buy time til Jamaal could catch his breath a little bit to tear off another 12 yard run. He must have had 50 carries and well over 300 yards. Lamar won unfortunately in about the 5th overtime.

Prepxtra was great to me, til they put their team previews on premium content lol. Guess I'll just have to fork over the 10 bucks for one month access once all the teams have been previewed to view them all. Were you at the 7 on 7? Or were you just getting updates from someone? Lee is very good in 7 on 7, because they don't have to change much from their regular season offense. I'm a homer, but I think we will be much improved this year in the fall as well. We had 4 soph offensive line starters last year and that killed us.