Tyler Legacy taking on North Forney in final road game of 2022

Published 3:55 pm Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Tyler Legacy will travel to Forney on Thursday for its final road game of the season to take on North Forney in a battle of teams without a win in District 10-6A.

The game was originally scheduled for Friday, but inclement weather has pushed the game to start at 7 p.m. Thursday at Forney City Bank Stadium.

Tyler Legacy enters with a record of 1-7 overall and 0-4 in district, and North Forney is 3-5 overall and 0-4 in district. Both teams are eliminated from playoff contention.

“I don’t think you have to sell it to our guys,” Legacy head coach Joe Willis said. “You talk about what you’re playing for; you’re playing for your brothers, and that’s really the heart of it. It’s genuine football now. There’s nothing on the line in terms of a playoff or another game, but you know at this point you only have two games that are guaranteed to you, and this is one of them.”

Legacy is on a six-game losing streak, and North Forney — in its first season in Class 6A after making the jump from Class 5A Division II — has lost four straight games.

“Offensively, they’re spreading you out,” Willis said. “They’ve got a good quarterback and some talented receivers. They’ll throw it around. Defensively, they’re in a 4-3 structure, and we haven’t seen that the last couple of weeks. They got some good defensive lineman. They play really hard on the defensive side of the ball and try to create some turnovers.”

Legacy received standout performances in last week’s 47-22 loss to Royse City by juniors Sir Christian Johnson and Matthew Ross.

Johnson made four catches for 90 yards and a touchdown.

“It definitely felt good going back to the sidelines after scoring a touchdown and helping my team out,” Johnson said. “With two games left, we’ve just got to play and help our team. It’s not all about the playoffs. We’ve got to be a team and play together. It’s the last year for some people, and we’ve still got games left, so we’ve still got to play.”

Ross had six tackles and was in on several more defensive plays for the Red Raiders.

“We are trying to get better as a unit,” Ross said. “Even if we don’t have playoffs, we’re just trying to get better as a unit. We want to fight to get better at defense. We’ve accomplished a lot of good things and a lot of bad things, but mostly a lot of good things secondary wise. We’ve just got to keep building off of that into next season.”

Legacy will return home to host Rockwall at 7 p.m. on Nov. 4 for the season finale.