Texas high school football power DeSoto hitting ‘reset button’ in quest for third straight UIL title

DeSoto won its second consecutive Texas high school football 6A Division II crown, and soon after DeSoto head coach Claude Mathis went into the locker room. 
 
To the players that were coming back for the 2024 season, he gave a straight forward, though powerful message, in the wake of the Eagles approaching off season. 
 
“Coach came in here and said it’s time to go to work,” said Keylan “Keke” Abrams, the Eagles’ senior standout defensive lineman. 

“He said right after we got our rings, ‘Last year, it’s gone,’ so after that day, we didn’t speak of last year: So now, all we have been planning since we got our rings was what we want to do for the 2024-2025 season. ” 
 
It may have been similar to what Mathis told his players the previous offseason, coming off DeSoto’s first of its current running state titles, and the first title the Eagles earned since 2016. Yet the message, and its results, appeared to hit home just a tad more than in prior seasons to the returning players, particularly to Abrams and the other senior-to-be teammates. 
 
Still, Abrams said : “You know, we were looking in there and there weren’t too many people left in there. ” It was then that we came to realized where we were and everyone was like ‘ What do we do now’? 
 
“Then spring football arrived and people began returning and summer returned after which we saw, okay, we have a new team here, we have to get to work again. ” 
 
It is all about starting anew for Abrams and the rest of the Eagles, a No. 5 ranked team in the country at the start of the season. 
 
The year that has passed was good, similar to the year prior to it was good. But it’s a brand-new season, and they can’t keep on regretting what has happened in the previous season. 
 
Particularly for a DeSoto team that starts a plethora of inexperienced players on offense and defense. Not to mention on the coaching staff of the team, their performance gives a sense of the highest professionalism. 
 
“The last three years, every year, we had a different team so it was a reset button each year and this year was another year that was going to be a reset year,” Abrams said. ‘We have a lot of guys that haven’t started before, and so this year is going to be the first time starting for some guys and we got a few vets coming back, but it’s gonna be the same thing we had (in previous) years. ’ 
 
“We have the same coaches, same workout scheme and look where it got us the year before and it’s going to get us there this year. ” 
 
Earlier in 2024, however, the pains that were inevitable consequences of the change of the program did start to sprout. Occasional lapses of organizational coordination were still seen up to the closing moments of the Eagles’ spring football training sessions. 
 
They also had to find out that with the ‘seniority’ comes being more of the leader in the team. 
 
Senior receiver Daylon Singleton expressed the main sentiment when he said: It is really, it really is different because last year we had people to lead us. “But now like this year it has came down to us and it’s just hard being a leader and being that man people look up to because you now have to push for you and the others like the young guys under your. 
 
“And it is just, like, a big change going in to the year, “ 
 
But when the weather got hot the team started to unleash some of the football skills that made them champions. 
 
“You have to fill some holes and that’s what we’re trying to fill right now,” Mathis said. We are still in the process of building our physicality and our mental toughness I think. It is not as good as I would prefer it to be, but it is near the ideal type. We're pretty close. 
 
“Well, maybe we are little ahead than we were here last year; this year I think are ahead I think we are ahead slightly and one good thing is that we get some more kids coming back who know how to play defense, you know how to play offence but they know the expectations, they know how to lead And that is, what we are dealing with right now but of course there are some voids which need to be filled But honestly 
 
It was especially true in June when the Eagles took part in the state Division I 7-on-7 championships held in Athens. 
 
“That was awesome, because we weren’t good; we weren’t good,” Mathis said. ‘To get there we had to work and work and work and work and we were not going to stop,’ Mrs Halpin told her husband. 
 
“Just at the very last, we were able to get into the position we were supposed to be in and we finally got an opportunity to really turn on everything when we did and we gave it a good shot and the kids played well but there are things we wanted to achieve in that 7 on 7 season and we were able to achieve those goals man, and I guess we got hot at the right time man, we got clicking at the 
 
From there, the Eagles seem to have the old cocky self-assuredness. But even as there have been some lean moments since that game, played on the night of 21 December, when DeSoto scored all but four of the points in a 74-14 win against Summer Creek, Humble for a second consecutive 6A DII title, the work rate never waned. 
 
‘It was very similar (to what the Eagles went through entering the 2023 season),’ DeSoto junior tackle/defensive end Jerbralon Stewart said. “That is the funny thing and this is why, after we won state, we just went back to the grind and doing this. ” 
 
And this is in addition to achieving the same deposition and closeness that characterized the Eagles of the past two seasons. 
 
“You know, some people have never started, some people are young trying to play up to our level, but it’s just chemistry in my opinion that we need to work on getting better at grinding, able to like play off each other quickly,” senior defensive back Canden Mathis said. Perhaps that is why we were excellent for the past three years since we had time to make FRIENDS with each other. 
 
“Chemistry between the players will take the team up to a whole another level that is yet to be witnessed. ” That is it, that is all. 
 
The Eagles also return seven starters on offense but one open area the Eagles had was at the quarterback position due to the loss of Bailey to Sam Houston State.

Two men have come to DeSoto with the intention of earning the starting position in senior Kelden Ryan, a Virginia Tech commit from Fort Worth’s All Saints Episcopal; and junior Legend Howell from Dallas Bishop Lynch. 
 
“Kelden and Legend are really struggling; they’re both good quarterbacks,” Claude Mathis said. All I can say is; we will not be lacking in anything as far as the quarterback position is concerned. We'll be fine. I like the prospects of the Quarterback. 
 
“I know that we’re going to be fine. Both kids are doing well, they’re going to play. So the quarterback situation, I think it kind of proved a lot of people wrong once they saw 7-on-7 because I thought after our spring game, we really didn’t throw the ball a lot like we wanted to and they’re still learning the plays and everything. … We knew what we have and we proved it, so 
 
The running back corps will be strengthened by the return of senior Deondrae ‘Tiger ‘Riden Jr a Texas A&M commit who missed several weeks after undergoing surgery on a severe left elbow and earned his nickname from his father who was a tiger mascot for TAMU He returned to assist the Eagles in their postseason push; he had career-best performances in terms of carries (34) and rushing yards (254) in their 45-38 victory over Southlake Carroll in the 6A DII semis. 
 
“He’s doing great, he’s doing great, we’re going to keep him healthy too, he’s doing great and he got some other guys that surround him right now that’s going to be good,” Mathis said. “That backfield was a great one, they learnt to work together and I believe it will be another great one this year…. So it all starts with Tiger and that’s the bottom line but it is going to be good this year. ” 

Singleton is one of the state’s best wide outs and is committed to the SMU; he scored three first-quarter touchdowns in the title game in December that turned out to be vital. Leading the charge on offense is BYRON WASHINGTON, the mammoth tackle for the team who’s headed to Syracuse University; he has a stature seeming to be 6-foot-8 and measuring 380 pounds, the photo of him overwhelming a Summer Creek player in the course of the title match last year can aptly attest to that. 
 
In addition, the Eagles have two young talents who are second and third-year students, and both players are on the 247Sports list of the Top 100 of the Class of 2027. Receiver Ethan Feaster (No. 8 on the list) made nine TD passes as a freshman, and after that DeSoto got transfer, Myson Johnson-Cook (No. 12 on the list), who spent the first year at Decatur (Ill. ) MacArthur and can play as a running back and a safety. 
 
Abrams, who has committed to TCU, is the ‘heart and soul’ of the Eagles’ defense and is one of only five returning starters in that area. Mathis said his line will set the tone of defending this season. 
 
“I really do think the d-line really takes everyone on the defense to a whole another level,” he said. “It goes real deep, and it is free to assist that back end So our defence line has to remain solid It has been solid all the years and it has to be solid all over again. ” 
 
But Mathis has to replace his entire group of linebacker. He’s not stressed by it, however. 
 
“They're coming,” Mathis said. ‘We are working on it, we do have some pieces of the puzzle coming out here soon I believe it will help us. ’ 

“But we’re excited right now, we’re really excited about the linebacker play. ” 
 
DeSoto also improved its schedule, more so on the non-district side of things. The Eagles start the 2024 season at home on Saturday August 31 as they host a school from Georgia, Creekside. 
 
The next week, the Eagles are at home against North Crowley, who advanced to the 6A Division I semifinals last year. DeSoto plays Corpus Christi Miller on September 13 in the Alamodome in San Antonio having been the only team in the district to be defeated last season with only one loss and one tie. 
 
“Yeah, I love it; I love competing, we have a hard schedule,” Mathis responded. I think we have still got Creekside coming out of Georgia. We have got North Crowley, that school is fairly new and has emerged to be ranked among the five best schools in the state I believe. 
 
“You then have a Corpus Christi Miller team that is really really good, that made it to the semi final last year The are going to play hard they scored over fifty something points per game last year and they will bring all their fans to the Alamodome So a very hard preseason which I love Being very competitive every year and preparing the team for district games and all that I am very happy with it. 
 
And when discussing District 11-6A, oh there’s a very good reason why it is what Mathis calls “The District of Doom,” in that said district is nothing more than a murderer’s row of championship caliber teams. That is true of the current season, also, where Duncanville again emerged as the 6A Division I champion, although it lost to DeSoto in its regular season match. 
 
The much-anticipated rematch of the Eagle and the Panther is scheduled for Oct 11 and for the second time the venue will be the Eagle Stadium DeSoto. Two of those are actually in the SBLive Texas preseason Top 25 with DeSoto ranked 1st and Duncanville ranked 2nd. 
 
‘It is the ‘District of Doom,’ and it really is; it’s a hard district,’ Mathis said. And you had a couple of more schools in our district this year , you lose some , but you add some more, to me, it’s gotten harder. Honestly, it’s gotten harder. But the same time, well continue to get better. 
 
Mathis is also getting accustomed to several new faces in his staff. 
 
Defensive coordinator for the previous season, Aaron Babino, took the head coach position at Cameron Yoe. Seasonal staff members returning to the show are camera operators Rodney Chadwick II and Paul Beattie who will be splitting the head camera operator position. 
 
The Eagles also hired three new assistants – Inside Linebackers Coach Steven Lemley who was an assistant at Cedar Hill and helped the Longhorns win the state, Tight Ends Coach Kahn Rollerson and Special Teams Coordinator Robert Bowen. 
 
Returning players, on to the 2023 season, also had to learn that they were now the “opposition” – every club would love nothing more than to knock out the state champs. None did, DeSoto finished the season unbeaten with a record of 16-0 and the team was ranked second in the final SBLive national rankings. 
 
And as far as the Headington bulls are concerned, well – just bring it.

‘One thing that Coach Mathis always tells us is that we are the hunted, we have a bull’s eye on our backs , but he also tells us this we are doing the hunting as well,’ Canden Mathis said. Last year’s team, for example, they won. The team had talent on their back from the first time we beat them, now this team has a bull’s eye on its back because we have beaten them twice already. 
 
“Everybody wants a piece of DeSoto. Everybody wants a piece of us. But, we’re gonna hunt, too. And that’s the scary thing about it. We put in more work than anybody and we are going to hunt, and that’s the bottom line. ” 
 
Seniors also have the desire to ‘win’ the third ring before getting to the next stage in life whatever the future holds for them. 
 
“That’s the senior mentality for you: knowing that this is it and that we want to try to leave and finish it off and go out with a bang or whatever, go out with another state championship,” Singleton said. ‘So we are really not going to allow our under-classmen to slack off, we are not going to allow them to under-work because we know what it takes and us seniors cannot do it alone. ’ 
 
“We’ve got to get them ready in order to win another one, and I don’t want to lose, I don’t want to lose like my senior year, I don’t want to leave without another ring. I want three going into college, so that’s what it’s going to take. ” 
 
Don’t expect Singleton to go there, though – should DeSoto win three in a row, he has one word for that: “three-peat. ” 
 
Or make that two words: Why? 
 
‘To just do it again like, it’s gonna be like, it’s gonna be legendary, but not just legendary, but epic,’ Singleton said. ‘We took him to his first state championship, we are going to take him to his second and it would be historic to take him to the third’. 
 
“But he’s been just like saying that ‘oh no, it’s gonna take a team, there is no I in a team, so we all have to come together, we have a bond and we need to get connections. ’ We have to be like last year’s team, or even better that last year’s team because I do believe that we have the potential to beat records we set up last year. ” 
 
Texas high school football in the season Looking at the year 2024 
 
Do not miss SBLive’s preseason content in the run-up to the 2024 Texas high school football season. 
 
We sat down over the past few weeks to count down the top players returning in the Lone Star State this fall and will start with 50 quarterbacks, 70 running backs, 40 wide receivers, 25 tight ends, 25 offensive linemen, 30 cornerbacks and 30 defensive linemen. 
 
Which teams are perceived as favourites in the district? Top sleepers? They are selecting them district by district: 6A Districts 1-16, 6A Districts 17-32, and 5A Division I. 
 
Offseaon player movement was also discussed, as well as the twelve transfers that will matter most in the fall. 
 
Which teams are perhaps the most overlooked in the Lone Star State as the season starts? Third let’s take a look at the programs geographically at which ones are most likely to turn in a better than expected performance for the year; North Texas, Southeast Texas and Central Texas. 
 
A great many of those are in the Lone Star State. We looked at the top 20 committed recruits in the state and their respective destinations. So, we’ve ranked the 25 best uncommitted players in the state — and where they are in their recruitments.