El Dorado targeted Benton running back Braylen Russell as the player to stop on Friday. The junior 230-pound Arkansas commit ended up making an impact, bruising his way for 128 yards on 25 carries.
"He ended up making a couple big plays down the stretch. We had to limit those explosives and we gave a couple up," said El Dorado coach Steven Jones. "They were able to be multiple offensively because of their field position. They were able to take shots and do different things just because of where the ball was on the field. That’s an advantage."
Curtis Jefferson led the Wildcats in tackles with 13. Senior noseguard Takoi Steward had a monster game with 10 tackles, including five tackles for loss. Safety Jordan Ford had 11 tackles and defensive end Trey Cook accounted for eight tackles.
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According to Benton’s statistics, the Panthers held El Dorado to minus-6 yards rushing in Friday’s 56-28 win. Some of the negative yardage could be attributed to a bad snap on a punt but most of it came from sacks.
El Dorado led 21-20 after DeAndra Burns, Jr., caught a 70-yard touchdown pass from Kolin Parker with 4:32 left in the half. At that point of the game, the Wildcats’ offense had zero lost-yardage plays.
The Panthers regained the lead 27-21 with 2:12 left in the second quarter and then sacked Parker on consecutive plays to start the ensuing drive. Benton would finish with five sacks plus an illegal grounding call.
Jones said the Panthers’ pressure on the quarterback was a factor in the game.
“First half we handled it pretty well. Second half there was some pressures there we didn’t pick up or we didn’t get the ball out hot,” he said. “It’s not always the (offensive) line. It could be that we made a wrong call. A lot of things could go into that but we had too many Benton guys in our backfield in the second half.”
The Panthers also prioritized shutting down El Dorado’s ground game.
“They were trying to add an extra hat to the box with one of their safeties coming down. They outnumbered us at times in the run game,” said Jones. “We didn’t make a ton of big plays tonight.”
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El Dorado was flagged 11 times for 135 yards. One of those was an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Burns for hurdling a defender diving at his legs.
“You can print this. I have zero comments about the officiating crew,” Jones said.
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The Wildcats passed for 329 yards with Parker, Jon Brooks Elia and Shadarious Plummer all throwing for touchdowns.
Unofficially, Parker was 10-of-15 for 204 yards with one interception. Elia was 7-of-9 for 80 yards.
“I think we were better throwing the football than we had been over the course of the first three games. That’s definitely something we can build on,” Jones said. “We have to string it all together. We’ve had games we felt like we ran the ball well and then tonight, we were a little bit better in pass game than we had been.
“There were positives out there. One thing I felt like was the biggest positive was the effort. No matter what anybody else says, no matter what the scoreboard said, our kids competed for four quarters as hard as they could. We can build on that. You can’t teach effort.”