Third-ranked Westlake beat Colquitt County for the first time in its history and handed the Packers their first home loss since 2017 in the most significant victory among Class 6A teams in Week 2.
Westlake quarterback R.J. Johnson broke a 24-24 tie with a 9-yard touchdown run with 4:11 remaining, and the Lions recovered a fumble at the 3-yard line with 1:20 left to preserve a 31-24 victory. Colquitt County came in as the No. 3-ranked team in Class 7A.
Johnson finished the game 21-of-29 passing for 236 yards. Joshua Taylor and Jai’Den Thomas had rushing touchdowns, and Christian Peterson recovered a fumble and returned it for a score. Colquitt County had four turnovers in the game.
Westlake (2-0) faced Colquitt County three consecutive years from 2009 to 2011 and lost all three by double-digit margins. Their first meeting was a first-round playoff game, which Colquitt County won 10-0 on its way to an appearance in the semifinals.
The loss was the first for the Packers at Mack Tharpe Stadium since a 38-35 loss to Tift County on Oct. 20, 2017.
Another significant win was Osborne’s 12-0 victory over Woodland-Cartersville in the head coaching debut of Luqman Salam.
Edward Burr threw touchdown passes of 25 and 17 yards to Khalif Walters in a game that was delayed about an hour and a half because of lightning in the area.
Salam, a longtime Hillgrove assistant, is the Cardinals’ sixth head coach in nine years but the first of those six to record a victory in his first game. The Cobb County school went 2-46 over the past five years and hasn’t won more than three games in a season since 1994, when it finished 9-2.
“People say a lot of things about Osborne, but they misunderstand this community,” Salam told Marietta Daily Journal correspondent Roselyn Eberhardt. “This is a good community, a great community, and these kids want to be good, and they want to do the right thing, and that shows.”
The Osborne game wasn’t the only one in Cobb that encountered weather-related issues. In fact, most of them did. The most significant were Hughes at Allatoona, which was stopped with Hughes leading 6-0 in the second quarter and won’t be continued, and South Cobb at Pebblebrook, which was halted in the first quarter and is tentatively scheduled to resume at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.
For the second consecutive week, Beaufort of South Carolina defeated a team from Region 2-6A. Last week it was Richmond Hill 28-8. This time it was Effingham County 24-3. Valdosta also faced an out-of-state opponent, beating Madison County of Florida 52-0. Class 6A schools are 1-3 against teams from outside of Georgia this season. Georgia as a whole went 1-6 in those games in Week 1.
Sixth-ranked Dacula was the only top-10 Class 6A team to lose in Week 2, falling 44-7 to 7A Brookwood. Dacula had moved up four spots from No. 10 after dominating Tucker 32-7 last week in the Corky Kell Classic.
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