Valley Strong: Edinburg Vela takes down San Antonio Taft to advance to Round 3

EDINBURG —Edinburg Vela senior PJ Rivera erupted for 380 rushing yards and three touchdowns to lift the SaberCats to a 27-24 win over San Antonio Taft on Saturday at Richard R. Flores Stadium in a Region IV-6A DII area-round playoff matchup.

“We came out here, we balled and executed just like in practice,” Rivera said. “We put our mind to it, and we’re hungrier than ever. We had a whole plan and we executed at the end of the day.”

The SaberCats (12-0, 8-0) advance to the regional semifinals round for the fifth time in program history and fourth time in five years. Edinburg Vela will face Austin Vandegrift (11-1, 6-1) in the regional semifinals at 4 p.m. Friday at Cabaniss Athletic Complex in Corpus Christi.

Edinburg Vela was the only Rio Grande Valley team still alive in the playoffs to host its area-round game, and it protected home turf by taking down a tough San Antonio Taft team. The win over the Raiders is Vela’s first over a San Antonio team in the playoffs, which quiets talks of “Valley week” or the proverbial “San Antonio wall” that has traditionally prevented RGV playoff qualifiers from putting together deep postseason runs.

“To us, the wall is a myth. We’ve been here, we’ve been doing this now for five seasons,” Edinburg Vela head coach John Campbell said. “We’ve had some tough draws — hats off to the Taft Raiders — but this was a game we knew we could win, wanted to win and we won it.”

San Antonio Taft entered the game with a pair of 1,000-yard rushers in quarterback Justice Hurt and T.J. Andrews. Vela shut it down early by forcing two three-and-outs and a turnover on downs during the opening quarter, which set the tone for the rest of the game. The inability to run during the first half made the Raiders turn to their air attack, which resulted in Edinburg Vela safeties Joshua Garcia and Justin Navarro coming away with timely interceptions to end Taft drives.

“We just went over it (their offense) constantly. Went over all their formations, all their runs, what they like to do out of this set and that set, but at the end of the day, it comes down to tackling and going out there and having fun,” Garcia said.

While Taft’s ball-carriers entered with more yardage to their names, Edinburg Vela’s Rivera was the best to touch the ball Saturday as he was in workhorse mode from start to finish. The SaberCats offensive line won the battle at the line of scrimmage early and often

Rivera was primarily used as a chess piece throughout the regular season by moving him all over the field, but Saturday was his day to dominate out of the backfield. He had touchdown runs from distances of 1, 53 and 75 yards and picked up the game-sealing first down on a 4th-and-1 on Vela’s final drive to run the clock out.

“Part of what we did with PJ was we knew when we got to this moment, that he was going to have to be the workhorse,” Campbell said. “He was rested and fresh during the season and we did some things we thought would make him a better player as far as catching the football and coming out of the backfield, but when it gets to this time of the year, we’re going to give it to PJ.”

Edinburg Vela will now shift its focus to Austin Vandegrift, which beat Cibolo-Steele 38-0 in its area playoff game. The SaberCats faced Vandegrift during the third round of the 2015 playoffs, losing the contest 49-39.

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