Tannor Moreno’s late pick-six sealed a 31-20 victory for the Zapata Hawks over Rio Grande City on Friday at Hawks Stadium in Zapata.
“It’s always great to win a football game. It’s always good for the program to win their football games, but today was kind of good,” Zapata head coach Joel Lopez said. “As we move on through the season, we’ve got to feel where we are getting better every week and I think that today we got better than last week.”
Zapata senior quarterback Mario Garcia ran offensive coordinator Jerry Lopez III’s air-raid offense to perfection, completing 29 of 49 passes for 376 yards and finding three different receivers — Josh Alvarez, Joe Chick and Marco Garcia — for touchdowns.
“Jerry is meticulous about throwing the football,” Joel Lopez said. “The air-raid style, he’s a true believer in the Mike Leach air-raid and, just, at this point, Mario has really picked it up and he believes in it now and he’s very confident about it. I spoke to him after the game and he says, ‘I think we did a lot better this week coach,’ so I think we are moving ahead.”
Zapata jumped out to a quick to 10–0 lead during the first quarter with a 40-yard field goal from Gustavo Rodriguez and a 3-yard touchdown pass from Garcia to Chick on a play-action play from the pistol formation.
Rio Grande City, which that lost many pieces of its 2019 district championship team from a year ago, turned to returning senior running back Marc Perez who garnered all-district honors last season and looks to be the main weapon for the Rattlers this season.
Perez single-handedly brought the Rattlers into the game with a 99-yard score, where he went untouched up the middle, and a 70-yard screen pass from junior quarterback Kevin Guerra up the right sideline, giving the Rattlers a 14-10 lead headed into halftime.
Both teams came out of the locker room flat, punting on five straight three-and-outs until Zapata was able to put together a 13-play drive that started from its own 1-yard line and ended on a 10-yard touchdown fade pass on a Garcia to Garcia connection to regain the lead, 17–14.
“A lot of times what I tell the offense, when you are stuck way back in your own territory, you have to think in terms of 10 yards,” Joel Lopez said. “You have to think in three downs to make 10 and that’s what we focus on as we go. We throw the ball a whole lot but we throw very high percentage passes and our kids have done real, real well.”
Rio Grande City attempted to mount a late-game comeback being down 24–20 with 1:33 left to go in the fourth quarter, but Tannor Moreno picked off Rio Grande City quarterback Kevin Guerra and ran it back for a score to put the game out of reach at 31–20.
“We looked like a team that needed this game,” Rio Grande City head coach Leo Mireles said. “I’m glad we had it so we got somewhere to start off but know we know what we need to fix.”
Rio Grande City (0-1, 0-0) will face Edcouch-Elsa (0-0) next Friday at Benny Layton Memorial Stadium. Zapata (1-1, 0-1) faces the Grulla Gators (0-2, 0-2) next Friday in Rio Grande City.