Photos Courtesy of Charla Shults
The Pampa Harvesters (1-7, 0-3) come back home to Zach Thomas Stadium at Harvester Field for the final homestand of the regular season against the Randall Raiders (6-2, 2-1). Pampa is needing to get in the win column for district play to stay in the playoff picture. Randall has opened up district play with two wins (Hereford and Dumas) and a loss to West Plains. As I do each week, I sat down with Head Coach Floyd White to discuss last week’s game as well as preview this week.
Seniors
Pampa honored 32 football players, cheerleaders, trainers, and filmers who are part of this 2026 Senior Class last Friday night.
“Our Senior Class has been a tremendous senior class. They have been exemplary as to what you would want to see from your seniors. You have so many of them that work so hard in everything they do, whether it is out on the field, in the offseason, in the weightroom, in the classroom. Our trainers show up in the mornings and they are ready to tape, provide ice and treatment to kids. Our filmers do such a tremendous job all through two-a-days and they are there late nights after games to make sure the film gets in. It’s such a tremendous deal to be able to be around those kids and associated with them on an everyday basis. It will be a tough class to miss,” White said.
Offense against Canyon
The Harvesters cannot catch a break on the injury front as this was yet another game with some guys out on the offensive side of the ball. Also, during the game, Senior Running Back Max Neff and Senior Quarterback Jarren Hill both went down with injuries. Senior Fullback Parker Webb did end up running for over 100 yards and a touchdown in the game.
“They did a great job. They were definitely short-handed. It has been the same thing since we have been in district play, we are a day late and a dollar short with everybody because we have so many big-time injuries. As a result, the offense cannot stay on the field long enough and conversely the defense is on the field quite a bit. We are not playing complementary football in that regard,” White said. “Part of it is, we just don’t have the bodies. We don’t have the personnel to just put in another one just to throw one in. When we put backups in, you are going to get backup action sometimes. That is what it is. Our kids are never going to go out there and just quit. They go out there and they try. We watched it time and time again on the game field. There were just some mental errors here or there or a half a step slow here. All of the sudden, some of those runs could have gone from a no gain or one or two yard gain to 10-15 yard gains. We just have to continue to work with those guys and keep building them up and keep trying to work our tail off as we try to win these last two games and get into a playoff spot.”
Defense against Canyon
The Eagles racked up over 500 yards of offense in the 41-6 loss Pampa suffered last week. A lot of that could be attributed to the offense not staying on the field as well as the injuries suffered because all of these guys play on both ends of the ball.
“In the last two games, what we want to see is a lot more execution. We’ve gotta be able to tackle and tackle in space. A lot of the issues we saw the other night was not the fact we had people in position to make the tackle, it was that we had to make the tackles in space. Sometimes, with some of our guys, some of the fundamental stuff we practice everyday doesn’t always show up in those situations. We have to continue to put them in those situations where they feel confident and comfortable enough to make those plays. When we get into this, we know we still have an opportunity to get into a playoff spot if we go ahead and play hard and do things right and things fall into our favor,” White said. “We have to capitalize on takeaways. The thing most people don’t realize, they see the final score, but we created four takeaways. We were unable to capitalize on it. The complementary football aspect of it has got to happen. We have to be able to capitalize in the red zone. We have to get stops when the offense does capitalize on it. We were playing that way somewhat early on in the season, but now that we have got into the little tougher part of our schedule it has been a little bit of a struggle to get it taken care of.”
Final thoughts on Canyon
“With our kids, what I do love is they fight and they fight all the way to the end. It is a completely different vibe than we have had with some of the other groups that we had come through here. These guys fight and fight and fight. That is all you can really ask for in the end. We just have to make sure that we execute better.”
Randall offense
“When you talk about Randall the one thing that always comes to my mind is they have speed. They have speed in excess. You graduate some guys and they come back with another group of guys that are there and ready to go. When you watch them play on film you see them against Hereford it was 24-0 but the thing was the Hereford quarterback got hurt fairly early in that game or who knows that game may be completely different. Then you watch how they played against West Plains, we played West Plains just as tough as we did,” White said. “It is just a matter of getting and making those things happen. On offense, it will be fairly similar to what we have seen the last two weeks, probably not as run heavy as Canyon or Hereford but what they do is they bring two backs back there who can really tout the mill. #11 (Danny Nunez) he is a heckuva player and then #10 (Kaison Benton) is their quarterback. Those guys get out there and can run with anybody. They have a big tight end/h-back #18 (Colton Seaton) he’s a great player. Then they have three receivers who can just flat out go and make you miss in a phone booth. They do a good job up front. They get on blocks and stay on blocks. We have to make sure we give ourselves the opportunity to handle things by making sure we have the right overhangs in place and making sure we have caps on top of things. They are really explosive but can also be slowed down if you get out there and put bodies on bodies. They are not overly big or overly physical. That is what I look forward to seeing from what they are going to bring to our defense.”
Randall defense
“Defensively, what they run, once again they are a lot like us. They will be an odd front with four backers and four secondary guys. What they do, is they are pretty good up front but have a linebacker #33 (Drayven Patton) who is a heckuva player. He reminds me of one that I coached that plays at (Texas) Tech now. He gets out there and runs around. He does a lot of things really well. He is a very good overall player. In the secondary, they have an excess of speed. They have guys who you are not going to run away from them very often,” White said. “What they do is they keep a lot of stuff in front of them and just run like heck and get to the ball and get it tackled and on the ground. We have to force them to be able to come downhill and be able to make tackles and do some of those things. Once we get them doing that, then we might be able to take a shot over the top but until we do that, we have to make sure we have people accounting for all those safeties and extra bodies that will be in the box.”
Keys to the game
Create and Capitalize on takeaways: “We are going to create takeaways. In the last two games, if I am not mistaken, we have created six takeaways. That’s an average of three a game. When you do that, that should give you a great opportunity. We have to continue to make sure we create takeaways and then we have to execute on the takeaways we get and keep the ball away from them,” White said.
Ball control: “For us, ball control is a huge, huge deal. We have to make sure we control the ball and be able to make sure we squeeze every second out of every clock that we can to give ourselves a chance to continue to push the ball down the field and score points. We are pretty banged up offensively. Because of that, it affects us defensively because a lot of kids play defense too because we play a lot of kids both ways. When we lose one player, we lose two players. We have to make sure we are playing complementary football and doing the things we can to hold the ball as much as we can,” White said.
Get stops: “On defense, we have to make sure we get those stops that we need,” White said.
Final thoughts on Randall
“I am just excited to get out there and play the great game of football. There’s a lot of people who would love to be able to do what we do and we have to make sure we take advantage of every time we are out there,” White said.
Jack Dyer
I am also highlighting one player each week to end the interview. This week is Jack Dyer #48 and a Senior Linebacker for the Harvester Football team. He had nine tackles and a sack before having to undergo season ending shoulder surgery. Unfortunately, for him, it was the same shoulder surgery that caused him to miss last year’s baseball season just on the other shoulder. This young man has faced a lot of adversity over the course of the last year.
Here is what Head Coach/Linebacker Coach Floyd White had to say about Jack:
“Jack is a great young man. You couldn’t ask for a nicer kid. The tough thing about him is he was injured about this time last year he injured his shoulder and it kept him out of part of baseball season. Then, it turned around and it happened again this year and he opted to go ahead and have surgery. That’s the thing that happened that I really feel bad for him,” White said. “He comes out there everyday and has a good attitude about everything. He helps wherever he can when he can. I just know that I look forward to seeing what he can do in the future. As he graduates and moves on, he is a great young man and he has a great family. Man, I think the world is the limit for him!”
You can find HSN on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@HarvesterSportsNetwork/. You can also follow them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/HarvesterSportsNetwork. Lastly, there is a Twitter/X page: www.x.com/PampaHSN. Kevin Hunt and Steve Barton will be calling the game. The game will also be broadcast locally on 101.3 Legends Classic Country. That station will be piped through the YouTube feed. Live stats can be found here: https://www.turbostatslive.com/football/webcast/08002511465744. Season stats can be found on the team page: https://www.turbostats.team/site/2/team/football/pampahighschool/pampa%20good%20file%202025. The pre-game show will begin on YouTube and 101.3 at 6:45 p.m. and kickoff is set for 7 p.m. A weekly radio show with Coach White called “Whiteboard Wisdom” with Zac Green interviewing him will play early this week around 6:20 p.m.
