What we learned in Week 6: Teams start heading to the middle of the pack

The overriding theme of the IHSA football season seems to be everyone meet in the middle.

The number of teams that currently sit in the middle of the collective pack of teams in overall records (teams with four, three and two victories) sits at an astonishing 260 teams with three weeks to play in the regular season.

So not only are there less teams at the top of the record pyramid, there’s less teams at the bottom as well.

The most notable consequence of this is that every week is bringing more and more matchups where the margins between the two teams doing battle is smaller and the significance of the win/loss that is assigned is immense.

The first six weeks of the season have produced just 48 undefeated teams heading into the final three weeks of the season. 20 of those teams face at least one fellow undefeated team over the final three weeks. Two squads, Johnston City and Dixon, actually face two of them as they decided to play each other this week rather than accept forfeit victories from opponents that didn’t move forward with the varsity season.

Statement wins

• Perhaps the biggest win for anyone chasing a playoff berth was Brother Rice’s win over Mount Carmel. A field goal at the final horn gave the Crusaders the victory and finally gave them an outcome in a close game that went in their favor. All three of Brother Rice’s losses have been by a solitary touchdown.

A loss would have dropped Brother Rice to 2-4 on the season with the Crusaders closing the regular season with a tricky task of winning back-to-back road games at St. Laurence and St. Ignatius just to get playoff eligible.

• A lot was made about the fast start in the Mid-Suburban West where four different teams started the season 4-0 including a few teams that hadn’t made much noise in awhile.

Fremd was one of those teams.

The Vikings entered a showdown game with Barrington as an underdog against a Bronco team that has dominated the conference in years. That was clearly the incorrect read as the Vikings showed they had plenty of offense to match points with Barrington and rolled to a comfortable win.

• If one stops to think about it, Fenwick was frighteningly close to being one making that list of teams of 49 undefeated teams considering its lone loss this year came in a one-point decision to Joliet Catholic.

The Friars have been flying under the radar but they probably shouldn’t be especially with the ease that they dispatched the CCL/ESCC’s last remaining undefeated team, St. Laurence, in Week 6.

Pleasant surprises

You will find a lot of the usual suspects in the group of teams that are 6-0 such as Cary-Grove, Byron, Bismarck-Henning, Lincoln-Way East, Lena-Winslow, Maroa-Forsyth and Wilmington.

But there are a few surprises among the group.

• Woodstock North is 6-0 for the first time in program history. The Thunder are already well within striking distance of the program record for wins in a season as they have won seven games twice previously.

• New Berlin hasn’t had a winning season since 2015, but a Week 6 surprise over Olympia leaves them at 6-0.

• Olney East Richland continues to prove that what happened last season doesn’t really matter. The Tigers were 0-9 last season, but are clearly past that as it dominated conference stronghold Mt. Carmel in Week 6.

A crazy few minutes

The Western Illinois Valley Conference, a strong Class 1A/Class 2A league that produced last year’s Class 1A state champion Camp Point Central, had a wild stretch of moments in a short period of time on Saturday afternoon.

First, Carrollton cemented a 10-0 victory over Calhoun. Calhoun looked like the powerhouse of the league after besting Camp Point Central to start the season in a 14-13 thriller.

Moments later, Jacksonville Routt lined up for a a potential game-winning field goal against the aforementioned Camp Point Central squad. Routt made the field goal, but a penalty washed away the field goal and forced Routt to try again from 5 yards back, and that attempt missed allowing Camp Point Central to avoid its second loss and escape with a 22-21 win.