The Fighting Farmers [overall 3-6, district 1-3] still have a shot at the playoffs, but they’ve got their work cut out for them. There is one spot left for the playoffs, and the teams competing for it are Flower Mound [2-7, 1-3], Marcus [2-8, 1-4], and the Farmers.

To claim the last spot, the team has to beat the first-place Coppell Cowboys [Season 7-1; District 4-0] tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Max Goldsmith Stadium. The Farmers also needed Marcus to lose to Hebron which is what happened Thursday night, 35-14.

“It’s a three way tie right now with us, Marcus and Flower Mound,” Miller said. “We’re all looking up hill and we have the tallest hill to look up. If we win against Coppell, we’re in if the other two lose. If we win and Flower Mound win, we go.”

If all teams lose, Marcus makes the playoffs. If the Farmers lose and the Jaguars win, Flower Mound takes the spot in the playoffs. The tiebreaker is determined by the results of the teams’ games against each other.

“They go by how many points scored in the games of the three combined,” Miller said. “We beat Flower Mound, Flower Mound beat Marcus, Marcus beat us. Marcus beat us by 7, we beat Flower Mound by 2, and Flower Mound beat Marcus by 3. So Marcus has the most points in the scores, by four points.”

Miller said that to win this last district game, the team must execute.

“We have to slow them down and we have to score points,” Miller said. “They run an offense similar to ours, and it’s going to be a lot like the power game Hebron ran at us.”

Senior fullback Montrel Marshall said offensively there is some work to be done, while defensively just needs to stay on the ball.

“Offensively all we need to do is execute, stay on our blocks and just do what we have to do,” Marshall said. “Defensively, I think we’re good defensively. I think we’re pretty strong. We just have to keep playing hard on defense.”

To have a chance to win, Miller said the team must play its very best. Last year’s matchup against Coppell was similar to this year, but with a major difference.

“We had a lot of injuries last year,” Miller said. “We went and we limped into Coppell without a good attitude. They played hard, but we just had way too many injuries. This year we have a bunch of injured too, but the kids we have on reserved roles have stepped up and have done really, really good. They don’t play like reserves, so anything can happen. We plan on playing our best.”

Last week’s loss against the Hebron Hawks [37-24] was started by many of the backups on the team, resulting from the injuries of some of the starting players against Denton Ryan. Miller said the starting backups were a shock to Hebron.

“We scored a lot of points,” Miller said. “We did some things a little different, like had a different quarterback [junior Adrian Villarreal], and Hebron didn’t know we were doing that. We changed our offense and some formations, because he’s more of a running threat than Matt [McDougal] is.”

Miller said that the backups played a god game, including Marshall, who had his first varsity touchdown.

“They did good,” Miller said. “We had a lot of guys played that didn’t play a lot. Montrel does such a great job scouting for us, running against our defense every day. To see him get in the game and they called the play that he liked to run the most and he broke a tackle and ran to the end zone, that’s a pretty neat deal.”

Marshall said he did not expect the touchdown, but since he didn’t play a lot, he knew he had to do something good.

• “It felt pretty good,” Marshall said. “I honestly didn’t even expect it. It just happened. I got the ball and it was just open so I ran for it. When I did it, and when I was running, I was like ‘Wow, this is really happening, it’s open,’ and when I finally scored it was like ‘Wow, I got my first varsity touchdown,’ and it felt amazing.”