2004 Cedar Park Timberwolf Football

Game-by-Game Narratives
2004

Week Twelve: Copperas Cove (Area)
Friday, November 19th - at Round Rock ISD Stadium

Going into the second round of the state playoffs, Cedar Park had beaten several very good teams in a row. The local media had finally discovered them after the Pflugerville win, but statewide acclaim was still rather elusive. The Area round game to be staged at Round Rock ISD’s beautiful new stadium, known unofficially as the Parmer Palace, would prove once and for all if the Timberwolves were fact or fiction.

The Bulldogs had knifed through tough district 13-5A unbeaten, and were 10-1 on the year, riding an impressive nine-game winning streak. Their only loss was a close one to fourth-ranked Converse Judson. Cove had hung 53 points on a respected Klein Forest team in the Bi-district round, were ranked ninth in Texas in one poll, eighth in another. The program itself had never lost to Cedar Park, with two large-margin wins in 2001 and 2002, the latter a 42-0 spanking of CP’s previous best-ever team just days after 9/11. No one in Copperas Cove was afraid of anyone in Cedar Park.

That is, until about 7:48 pm Friday night, November 19, 2004.

A long-established football power, Cove traveled well. Although the Timberwolves were to be the “visitors”, the RRISD venue was actually closer to most Cedar Park fans’ homes than their own home field, Bible Stadium. Fans packed the Palace, resulting in its biggest crowd to date, estimated at 11,000. Little did any of these people know they were all about to see the most one-sided nine minutes of football ever laid on one unbeaten 5A district champion by another.

Before the game, if you told folks they were about to see an instant rout, most CP fans would have been worried. Sure, we believed in our team, but…this was Copperas Cove. They had two thousand-yard rushers, stout defense that had been tested against quality competition, and had just scored a load of points on the road against a good team in the first round. Sure, our T’wolves had those exact same factors going for them, too. But this was Copperas Cove, right? Hadn’t Cove easily handled district foe Harker Heights, a team that beat us by 21 points? Sure, that loss seemed like a lifetime ago, but… this was Copperas Cove!

The Bulldog kickoff was deep and their kick coverage outstanding, inauspiciously starting the Timberwolves from their own 19. The always-reliable T’wolf O line plowed a furrow for Edwards on the first snap, as Rupert covered eight yards off left tackle. The next play, Korey Washington kept around right end, and was gone in an instant. 73 yards and scant seconds later, he was decelerating through the end zone and the thunderous roar from the CP side of the field slammed into the stunned pack of Bulldog fans on the west side. Wes Wagener’s kick made it 7-0 Cedar Park less than a minute into the game. It was just 7:32 p.m.

Second play of the game. The O-line establishes a magnificent wall around right end. . Korey Washington sweeps right...

...and he's gone.

71 yards and a very quick Timberwolf touchdown. It would be the first of four in the opening nine and a half minutes of the game.

Wagener kicked off. The Bulldogs fielded it at about the twelve and headed up the left sideline for a nice return. At the 30, Wagener stripped the ball and Thomas Metz recovered at the 32. The T’wolves scored on a short run by Edwards just five plays later. The extra point put Cedar Park up by two big lightning-quick touchdowns. Fans started pinching themselves. Their Timberwolves were up 14-0 – and dominatingly so – on the ninth-ranked team in Texas! Copperas Cove hadn’t even run an offensive play yet and they were already down by fourteen points. It was 7:36 pm.

Kicker Wes Wagener (on the ground at far left) has just slammed into the kick return man, knocking the ball loose. Cedar Park's Doak Crawford (33) and Evan Cretini (44) eye the ball, but Thomas Metz (81) would recover for Cedar Park.

Rupert Edwards goes over for the first of his three touchdowns. This one made it 14-0 just minutes into the game.

Wagener kicked off again. The Timberwolf D hadn’t yet had the opportunity to make its own statement in this game, and with a fourteen-point cushion before they even got a chance to hit someone, they were loose and ready for some carcass crushing. Cove’s vaunted offense ran three plays for three whole yards and the Gang Green forced a punt its first time out. But the kick was a beauty of over fifty yards and the Timberwolves would start from their own 34. Four plays later, they’d sliced through the sixty-six yards like a chain saw through meringue. Washington covered the bulk of the yardage with a long run that ended with a first and goal from the one. Edwards ran it over for his second touchdown of the evening, and Cedar Park was up 21-0 with just five minutes gone from the clock. Timberwolf fans were delirious in the stands, beating on each other, screaming in joy, jumping up and down, hugging their neighbors, scraping their vocal chords off the backs of the heads of the people in front of them, wondering why little 6-4 Leander had been so much trouble. It was 7:42 pm.

Wagener kicked off again. This time, the Bulldogs would start from their own 24, and on their second play a short pass completion – one of only three on the night, as it turned out – resulted in their initial first down. After three plays Cove had moved 18 yards and began to show some semblance of the offense everyone had heard about. Then Albert Johnson came up huge, picking off an errant Bulldog pass at midfield and returning it thirty yards to the Cove twenty. The Timberwolves were back in business yet again. They covered the short distance in three plays, with Edwards carrying it over for his third score of the night. It was 28-0 Cedar Park, just nine minutes and thirteen seconds into the game. It was 7:48 pm.

Ball game.

Yeah, it was still the first quarter. Didn’t matter. You could put this one in the books. The Bulldogs played with a fork sticking out of them the rest of the night.

Timberwolf fans were simply stunned. Powerful and respected Copperas Cove was playing the part of the Iraqi army to Cedar Park’s U.S. First Infantry Division. This was the sort of thing every fan always expected would happen to their team, not for it. What to think? At this point, Cedar Park had 198 yards of offense to just 21 for Cove. That 198 came on just fourteen plays, four of them touchdown runs.

This was the ninth-ranked team in the state of Texas, was it not? And yet our boys were running over them like a freight train through a mountain of styrofoam packing peanuts.

“We were in shock,” said Coach Weaver later of the opening 28-0 barrage, which would have been criticized for unrealistic script writing if it had been a movie. “I won’t say we didn’t believe it, because we all knew this team was capable of something like that. But to actually see it happen that way was definitely very enjoyable, very fulfilling.”

The Gang Green bottled up Cove's two thousand-yard backs all night long. This run is destined to gain all of one yard, as Nick Davis (25) and Kyle Williams (34) close in.

As it turned out, this game was over even earlier than 7:48. The actual end came after just the seventh offensive play of the night, at 7:36. Since the Bulldogs would only score seven points the entire game, they were already hopelessly behind 14-0 before they ever even took their first offensive snap. Cove fans had trundled down 183 only to see their team’s season flushed down the sewer just six real-time minutes from the opening kick.

And the outstanding job done by the Cedar Park offensive line this night might have been their best overall performance. They pushed the Bulldogs back and forth at will, while facing a defensive line whose three seniors would all sign college football scholarships just two months later!

The Bulldogs did mount one nice scoring drive in the second quarter, covering 83 yards in ten plays for what would turn out to be their only points of the night, a one-yard run by Jonathan Woods. Cedar Park moved the ball well in the second period, covering over eighty yards in two possessions, but did not add to the score, as a long (49-yard) field goal attempt fell just short at the horn.

The Oklahoma State-Texas game had been played just six days before, and fresh memories of that record Longhorn comeback from being down 35-7 at the half were doubtless evoked by coaches in both locker rooms at the half. It served to give the Bulldogs hope of pulling off a tremendous come-from-behind victory of their own, and it made the Timberwolves understand that their work this night was far from complete.

After a great kickoff return to open the second half, Cove covered 27 yards on three plays, taking the ball down to the Cedar Park 27. But this promising drive was snuffed out when Kyle Williams tipped a Brent Garner pass and Zac Landry dove to pick it off at the seven. The T’wolves quickly smothered any comeback pretensions the Bulldogs may have been nursing by jamming the ball right down their throats with a lightning-strike three-play 93-yard drive capped off by a spectacular 66-yard Korey Washington TD run to stretch the score to 35-7.

Another fine kickoff return started the Bulldogs at their own 41 for the next possession. And again, they seemed to find a successful formula for moving the ball against the strong Cedar Park D, this time moving 52 yards in nine plays all the way down to the seven. But they hadn’t yet figured out how to keep the ball away from the CP defenders, who were undeniably hungry like the wolf. Johnson slammed into Cove quarterback Garner, forcing the ball loose. Johnson pounced on the fumble and dowsed that mid-third-quarter drive. Cove would never move deeper than the Cedar Park 46 again.

Cedar Park only punted twice in the game, one of those after a steady eight-play, 38-yard drive bogged down. One six-play, 46-yard drive ended in a missed field goal. Another drive of nine plays and 66 yards ended on an unsuccessful fourth down conversion attempt. Cove never figured out how to handle the yardage-gobbling monster that was the Cedar Park offense with any consistency. The T’wolves had only one possession that went for less than 35 yards on the night- a seven-yard three-and-out near the end of the third quarter. Check that: there were two other possessions that went for less than 35 yards (31 and 20). But they both ended in early touchdowns, and thus don’t factor into this analysis.

In order, here’s how each of CP’s ten possessions ended: TD, TD, TD, TD, punt, missed FG, TD, punt, downs, end-of-game. For Cove, the line on their eight possessions would read: punt, interception, punt, TD, interception, fumble, punt, downs. Total ball movement, factoring in penalties, was 483 yards for the T’wolves, 234 for Cove. The 495 yards of offense was a new Cedar Park school record, the second game in a row that mark had been set, both against strong defensive playoff-caliber teams! It was the third time the total offense record had been set in the last five games.

In just the two playoff games, the team had nearly a thousand rushing yards, at 921. Washington alone had run for 561, logging two of the top three individual rushing performances in school history. Edwards’ playoff numbers at this point were incredible as well, scoring five touchdowns on 309 yards. The offensive line looked like it could line up and blow a hole in Hoover Dam. Cove’s own high-powered offense didn’t play badly from the second quarter on, but a comeback would have been nearly impossible, since the hits just kept on coming for the Gang Green defense, as the Timberwolves held two thousand-yard backs to under a hundred yards each, the vast majority of it coming in the second half, long after most Cove fans had already hit the exits. Cedar Park players noticed from their carriage and demeanor that the Bulldogs had been visibly shaken by the 28-0 start.

In a stadium restroom after the game, a Cove dad shook his head and put it this way, “You all beat us every way possible. I think we didn’t understand how good you were coming into this game. Our boys were already talking about playing in Texas Stadium next week after beating up on Klein Forrest. We weren’t ready for you. But the way you played tonight, you would have beaten us even if we’d known you were coming.”

Head Coach Mark Weaver lifts the Area Trophy high as the Timberwolves celebrate their conquest of Copperas Cove.

For those who were there to witness it, that 35-7 score was nowhere near an adequate representation of the utter domination the Timberwolves laid on Copperas Cove that night. It was a mind-numbing pillaging of a perennially great football powerhouse, a monumental win for the ages. This is the showcase game that will forever define the ultimate quality of the 2004 Cedar Park Timberwolves.

The team would continue their fantastic voyage into the unknown with a road trip to another, even bigger, more storied showcase venue for the Region II semifinals.

Game Stats | Drive Chart

NEXT - Week Thirteen: Mesquite (Region II Semifinals)
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