The Greeneville football team will make a familiar trip on Friday night as it travels to Morristown to take on the Trojans of Morristown West for the 48th time in program history.
The Greene Devils are excited to be taking on their long-time rivals, and for the chance to get back on track after losing their first regular season game since 2020.
“This is a big-time rivalry game that means a lot to both communities,” Greeneville coach Eddie Spradlen said. “A lot of these younger kids don’t know a lot about this rivalry, but to some of our coaches and community members this game is as big as any of them. We expect a big-time environment against a good team down in Morristown.”
Greeneville is coming off a 31-13 loss to Alcoa a week ago which broke a 32-game regular season win streak dating back to October 16, 2020. The Greene Devils will now look to start a new streak against a Morristown West team that has been playing good football in recent weeks.
The Trojans opened the season with a 26-14 loss to Morristown East, but since then have taken down Tennessee High 20-14 and Daniel Boone 38-0.
“Morristown West is a good football team,” Spradlen said. “They kind of stumbled out of the gate and had some turnovers cost them against Morristown East. But they have won two big games and they are playing really good right now. We can’t let what happened last week carry over to this week.”
In the Trojans’ win over Daniel Boone running back Cam Richards had touchdown runs of 39, 43 and 56 yards. Spradlen expects West to rely heavily on the run game on Friday in an effort to keep the ball out of the hands of the Devils’ offense.
“They have a really good running back that runs really hard and they have a big offensive line,” Spradlen said. “They are going to want to establish that run game and try to keep our offense off the field. This is going to be a big challenge for our football team.”
In last week’s loss to Alcoa the Greene Devils only managed 20 passing yards, and that is something Spradlen wants to improve on this knowing that the Trojans will be loading the box on defense.
“Everybody is going to try to stop the run against us,” Spradlen said. “Last week we saw eight or nine guys in the box and we didn’t throw the ball well. We have to be able to throw it better to get some of those guys out of the box. We have a really good playmakers in Zaydyn Anderson and Taren Claridy that we didn’t get the ball to enough last week.”
Where the Devils have excelled on offense is in the run game where both running back Carson Quillen and quarterback Caden Baugh are averaging over 100 yards per game on the ground.
Friday will be the 48th meeting between Greeneville and Morristown West. The Trojans lead the all-time series 27-20, but Greeneville has won six straight. Last year Greeneville jumped in front 24-0, but then had to hold on for a 24-21 win. The 2022 meeting was another close one, with Greeneville winning 28-21 in Morristown. If Greeneville wins its seventh in a row on Friday it would match West’s longest streak in series that went from 2000 to 2003 and included three playoff games.
