The Jefferson County High School Tigers will have a monumental task on their hands Friday night when they travel to Tylertown to take on the highly-ranked Tylertown High School Chiefs in the first round of the MHSAA Class 3A South State Playoffs.

Jefferson County (3-7) finished in fourth place in Region 7-3A after back-to-back losses to Hazlehurst and Franklin County. Tylertown (10-0) is the Region 8-3A champion. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.

As to what concerns him the most about Tylertown, Tigers head coach James Herrington said, “Their size up front offensively along with the huge fullback they have. With them being 10-0, it caused other people problems as well. We have to do an outstanding job of getting to the ball and gang tackling.”

Herrington said that the defense is going to have to keep the Chiefs out of the end zone as much as possible. He then said that the offense and special teams cannot put the defense in bad field position. In other words, don’t give Tylertown’s offense a short field to work with.

One thing Jefferson County must do to have any chance of pulling off the upset is turn scoring opportunities into touchdowns. Herrington said that was what hurt the Tigers a lot the last two weeks of the regular season.

Herrington said for his team to knock the Chiefs out of the playoffs, his team must play “solid, fundamentally sound football.”

“Block, tackle, not turn the football over. I’m sure they’ve played in close games and games in which they pulled away. We can’t give them any help in this game. We cannot beat ourselves,” he said. “We have to run the football. The running game plays such a big part in your success. In the games we’ve won, the running game has been key.”