Westran’s line presented a challenge last week for North Callaway, but Macon’s on Friday was a different animal.

The Thunderbirds lost their home opener 33-0 to their first ever meeting with the Tigers after allowing 318 yards rushing – 164 to Maurice Magruder and 102 to quarterback Mykel Linear.

Davis Woods led North Callaway with nine tackles, and Brandon Speight had a fumble recovery.

Head coach Kevin O’Neal said Macon’s lines brought a physicality that North Callaway didn’t come close to matching Friday. The term pushover also didn’t apply to the Tiger runners.

“They had big, physical runners. They were physical up front,” O’Neal said. “They were doing good at misdirection, and we’ve got to get better with our reads defensively.”

The Thunderbirds fell behind 21-0 at halftime, allowing Magruder and then Linear to run in the endzone for scores in the first quarter.

While the offense found success in last week’s 28-0 victory at Westran, the ball wasn’t moving as much this time around as the Thunderbirds rushed for 87 yards and threw for 51 yards. Quarterback Braydn O’Neal had 197 yards through the air last week.

“We struggled to move the ball, and players tend to try to do too much in that situation and don’t really focus on their keys,” O’Neal said. “They were aggressive and physical up front, and we tried to do too much instead of our assignments. The game was too fast for us tonight.”

O’Neal said North Callaway (1-1) wasn’t blocking enough, weren’t making the correct reads at quarterback and receivers were running wrong routes, so it will look to address these things Friday at South Callaway (1-1) – looking for the school’s second straight Callaway Cup victory after defeating the Bulldogs 26-6 last season. The Bulldogs lost 20-0 at Hermann in Week 2.