Rhea and McMinn Winner Will Stay in Chase For Home Playoff Game
10/24/25 - Athens, TN -- Rhea County Travels to McMinn County for key game on Friday, 10/24/25, as regular season is winding down. Both teams have two games remaining. Eagles know that a win at McMinn and at Walker Valley on Halloween Night, will be a nice Treat. Walker Valley sits atop 5A Region 3 with a 5-0 record, with Rhea County the lone remaining region game on the schedule. Walker owns wins over McMinn and East Hamilton, the other two teams with 3-1 records in region play. A win at McMinn would hurt McMinn's seeding.. A win by McMinn over Rhea and East Hamilton give them a 5-1 record. A win and McMinn and a loss by Eagles at Walker would put Eagles at 3-2 and then tiebreakers kick in. Now East Hamilton win vs McMinn and Soddy would put 3 teams at 5-1 and then tiebreakers kick in for first place. 4 big games remaining in region play, beginning tonight in McMinn County, as Soddy could be a spoiler with their game on 10/24/25 vs East Hamilton. Eagles only scenario they are looking at is win at McMinn, then worry about Walker. Obviously, there is a lot on the line in this game for both teams.
McMinn has a 5-3 overall record, but the only record that counts is the 3-1 region record. Only four teams qualify for post season and Walker, Rhea, McMinn and East Hamilton are all in drivers seat at this time. Soddy gets to 3-3 with wins over East Hamilton and Lenoir City. Either McMinn or Rhea will win, putting the loser with chance for 3 losses. Both own wins over Soddy. If East Hamilton loses to Soddy Daisy and McMinn, they would go to 3-3 in region and Soddy would have the tiebreaker. Good to see there is still plenty on the line as we head toward the end of the regular season.
McMinn has a good offense with passing and running stats to prove it. # 8 Jakaryn "Peanut" Dyer has stats to match up with Rhea's Mason Ford. On the season, Dyer has 1127 yards rushing on 121 carries for 9.3 average. He also has scored 16 touchdowns. Mason Ford has 1103 yards on 116 carries for 9.5 average and Ford has scored 12 touchdowns. We get a chance to see two very good running backs go head-to-head. Both backs are explosive and normally go 100 yards plus and both have 200 yards plus games this year. At quarterback, McMinn does like to put the ball in the air more than Eagles with quarterback # 4 Luke Lawson completing 109 of 179 passes for 1673 yards and 19 touchdowns. Jax Schmitt has about half that many passes with 53 of 85 passes completed with 737 yards and 9 touchdowns. Two receivers, # 2 Frazier and # 13 Kessler are th top 2 targets for Lawson with 376 and 453 yards respectively. Aiden Wilkerson and Austun Fugate account for 288 and 278 yards for the Eagles. On the ground Wilkerson and Schmitt also account for 623 yards rushing, while Lawson and # 29 Watson account for 311 yards.
On defense, Jake Ramey leads the team with 8.3 tackles per game and Spartan Lyle and Maddox Fraxier accounted for 6.4 and 6.0 tackles per game. Cam Green has 7 sacks to lead the team, and Jessie Jones leads team with 8 quarterback hurries and Maddox Frazier leads team with 3 interceptions. For Rhea County, Wyatt Mangefrida leads the team with 79.5 tackles for 10 per game. Zeke Romero(60), Tristyan Odum(54.5) and L.T. Donegan(51) tackles are high on tackle stats.
Senior Mike Kraskouskas is the McMinn kicker and Junior Austun Fugate toes the leather for the Eagles.
Looking at a couple of common opponents, McMinn lost to Red Bank 21-11 last week, and Rhea beat Red Bank 10-7 in week 1 of season. Both teams beat Soddy with Eagles winning 35-13 and McMinn winning 48-7.