EVERETT — The Bearcats had seen this movie before.

Once up 27-7 over last year’s Jackson High School football team at halftime of a non-league game, head coach Scott Darrow’s Monroe watched as the Timberwolves chipped away at the lead to win that game 28-27, handing the Bearcats their final loss in a 1-9 campaign.

So when Jackson (0-1) started to claw at an eerily similar halftime advantage of 26-6 this time around, Darrow was justifiably on edge. The Timberwolves were driving deep into Monroe (1-0) territory fresh off blocking a punt as junior QB Kolston Jones lobbed a pass to the endzone. A touchdown here would cut the deficit to two scores for a Jackson team that knew it could come back on Monroe — after all, last year’s thriller was literally the last game either team had played.

But the ball would take a bounce off a receiver’s hands a yard away from the endzone and take a short hop into Carson Cox’s path. The receiver/cornerback, who had already put together a two-TD day including a 52-yard beauty earlier in the day, put his hands to use again and snagged the ball out of the air. Cox, who was only on the field for a one-off play in that moment, ran it back 36 yards to give senior QB Chris Britt some breathing room to continue his three-TD day to that point.

“I came in for one play and I knew the ball’s coming my way the second the QB snapped it, and I saw the slant, I just bit on it,” Cox said of the play.

“That pick was the play of the game,” Darrow said postgame. “So proud of that kid, man, he’s worked his butt off… he really was a star.”

Indeed, Britt would lead a nine-play scoring, finding the endzone on a keeper set up by a gritty catch-and-run by none other than Cox. The response brought the game to its final score of 40-14 as Darrow’s squad matched its win total from an injury-plagued 2025.

By the end of the night, Britt, who missed much of last season injured, finished the game with nearly 280 total yards (250 by air) and four scores while Cox led all receivers with four catches for 100 yards with two scores. Receivers Matthew Lachappelle Jr. (six catches, 54 yards) and Jeremy Abshier (three catches, 43 yards) each hauled in a score by the night’s end.

“Really close,” Darrow said of how close the team was in resembling his goals for it on Friday. “There’s just a few mistakes here and there, but really close.”

Monroe’s defense came alive to pull away, as the Bearcats won the sack battle 4-0 and the turnover battle 2-0 while getting a safety off a high snap early. For Jackson and first-year coach James Langham, Thursday was the start of installing what he believes will be a simpler offensive system than years past. Still, any change will have its hiccups.

“We’re asking a lot of them, making changes schematically in really all three phases of the game,” Langham said. “The effort was there, mentality was there.”

Despite playing from behind most of the night, Jackson started the game on the front foot.

The Timberwolves received to start the game and engineered a 12-play, 64-yard TD drive by converting four third-downs — two of which were of distances 15 yards and longer. Jones (52 rush yards) scrambled for 20 yards on one third-and-15 by juking out two defenders before he found senior Depesh Shunmugapriyan for 19 yards on a third-and-18. Facing a third-and-5 at the outskirts of the redzone, he flung a 19-yard go ball to Shunmugapriyan and watched as the senior switched shoulders to track the ball and haul it in for the opening score.

Jones was getting valuable time to work in the pocket, and space to escape it when needed. Those were signs of an offensive line holding up against a capable Monroe front, for the time being.

“We can score quick, we can move the ball,” Langham said of his simplified spread look. “When we’re clicking, when we’re in rhythm, we’re running our tempo, we’re hard to stop.”

The Bearcats put together a 10-play scoring drive to answer, taking a 7-6 lead on a scrambling throw to Lachappelle Jr. But what came next set the Bearcats apart. The pass rush started to get to Jones consistently, rushing the QB into quicker throws and closing up the lanes he’d been using to engineer his escapes. On third-and-10, Monroe linebacker Jayden Flores sacked Jones for a loss of nine, leading to a Jackson punt five yards in its own endzone.

A high snap out of bounds meant two points going the other way as Langham’s team would continue to be bombarded by pressure for the rest of the game.

Britt and Cox connected for the first in the second quarter at the end of a nine-play drive, as Britt found his fellow senior wide-open on a corner route on the left side. The score came on a third-and-17, just a play after Jackson thought it had recovered a strip-sack on batted Britt throw, which was ruled an incompletion.

Monroe’s defense continued to win the line of scrimmage on the other end, pressuring Jones again on a third-and-8 despite the Wolves having success on a screen moments earlier. A high pass was intercepted by Monroe’s Tristan Steensma, setting up another short scoring Monroe drive.

Short in time, not in distance.

That’s because Cox turned a 15-yard grab off a deep curl route on a third-and-2 into a 52-yard score as the 6-foot-3 195-pound receiver broke multiple arm tackles to reverse field and find the right side of the endzone.

“Carson Cox is a grown man… he is the real deal,” Darrow said of the play.

After a Monroe forced a punt thanks to sacks from Michael Turcios and Zak Chinneth and put a field goal on the board, it found itself up 20 over Jackson again. There was no bulletin board, per se, but Darrow made it clear he wasn’t interested in reliving the last loss to the Wolves.

“There was no let up. We were in the locker room, we were like, ‘There’s no way this happens again again, you guys,’” Darrow said. “All gas, no breaks, man.”

That approach seemed to be working just fine for Monroe, as the offense engineered a seven-play TD drive in just under two minutes thanks in part to Langham opting to onside kick for the remainder of the game, leading to the Bearcats constantly getting the ball at midfield.

Britt hit Zak Chinneth for 11 yards early in the drive before a horse-collar tackle call on Jackson moved the Bearcats even further into opposing territory. On 1st and goal, Britt found Abshier for a nine-yard slant TD to make it 33-7.

Still, Langham wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

“I always think of it as it’s a four-quarter game… we’re gonna keep playing until that whistle sounds, I’m not going to lay down to anybody,” Langham said. “We teach our guys that… but I was not lost on the fact that it was the same deficit (last season vs. Monroe).”

Jackson, aided by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on a third-down incompletion, started rolling the other way. Another facemask call on a short Wolves run put Jackson in the redzone, and Jaheim Smith did the rest.

Smith took a draw left, only to find a whole batch of Bearcats waiting in the trenches. He was able to change course quickly, cutting back across the formation to find 17 yards of green grass on a sprint to the right pylon. After a successful two-point conversion, the Wolves were down 33-14 with plenty of game yet to be played.

Monroe originally converted a 4th and 10 on the ensuing drive before a holding call wiped it out, and the punt on 4th and 20 was blocked a pack of Timberwolves to set Jones up with a chance to strike two in a matter of moments. Jones scrambled for 17 yards to open the drive and send the roaring home student section to a new high in noise produced. But Cox would end up having his say on the interception, ending the rally quicker than it started.

“We just got to come down with that catch, that’s a game-defining catch,” Langham said of the interception. “It just went the other way, that’s OK. We learned from it.”

You might call it luck that Cox happened upon that ball after getting subbed onto the defensive unit in a random package. Darrow calls it expectation.

“It’s hard to get a team to expect to win when they walk out… we slowly built this thing up (since 2006), and it was like we were there,” Darrow said of his team’s mentality. “These guys, I think, have kind of come back to that.”

For Britt, that expectation shows up in his self-critique despite the big day. The senior rued some misplaced balls — including a near deep strike to Cox on the opening drive.

“I’m happy we won… we got a lot to clean up and a lot to work on.”

The stats used in this article are unofficial.