Gilmer 54, Chapel Hill 31: Buckeyes Get Right, But the Scoreboard Is Doing Some Work

What happened

Gilmer went to Tyler on Friday night and won 54-31. We picked the Buckeyes comfortably and said the defense wouldn't get its answer in this game. Both of those held up.

Following the live thread, the shape of it was clear early: Gilmer stopped trying to throw it and started running it, went up 22-7, and from there it turned into what one poster called "a basketball game being played on a football field." 22-14. 29-21. 36-21. 42-24. 48-31. Every time Gilmer pulled away, Chapel Hill answered.

Here's the part that matters more than the final. By the count of fans watching it live, Gilmer finished plus three in the turnover battle — a pick six, a scoop and score, and a fumble recovery on a Chapel Hill drive deep in Gilmer territory. Add a kickoff return for a touchdown after Chapel Hill cut it to 48-31, and a meaningful chunk of that 54 never involved the offense at all.

That is a real skill and it is worth celebrating. Takeaways win games. But "we scored three non-offensive touchdowns" is not a plan you can run back every Friday, and the thing it papered over is the same thing that showed up in Week 1.

The guys who did it

Before anything else, the names. Because they earned it and because this is a run-game story.

Gilmer put up 379 rushing yards on Friday, per MaxPreps — the Buckeyes' best day on the ground in over a year.

• Tayveon Horne led everybody with 138 yards and a touchdown. Quietly the most productive night by anyone on the field.
• Zade Taylor went for 110 yards on 12 carries with two touchdowns, and added 56 through the air on 4 of 10. That's now three straight games with at least two rushing scores. When the passing game wasn't there, he just kept the ball and went.
• And the line. Two backs over 100, 379 as a team, and the group up front took over the fourth quarter. Nobody rushes for that without five guys doing dirty work that never shows up in a stat line.

Worth noting what this snapped, too. Per the Gilmer Mirror, these two have been playing since 1951, and Chapel Hill had taken the last three meetings. That streak is over.

Davion King talked in the preseason about "pride" and the "standard." Four-year starter, and you could see what he meant in the second half — when this got tight at 48-31, Gilmer answered by running it down their throats instead of flinching. That's the part to build on.

The Camara question

We're going to walk into this carefully, because it involves a high-school kid and because we are supporters of this program, not critics of it.

Ismael Camara is an offensive tackle. Not "projects as." Is. He is 6-6, 340, committed to Texas since July, and 247Sports has him as the No. 1 player in the state of Texas and No. 13 in the country in the 2027 class, with a 98 rating. The composite has him first in Texas and 21st nationally. There is no ranking service in America that lists him anywhere but the offensive line.

He has been taking snaps at receiver and running back.

Not exclusively, and not for entire games — which is part of what makes it hard to read from the stands. Gilmer fans have been asking about it out loud for a couple of weeks now. One put it on smoaky as plainly as it can be put: when is the staff going to "put the 5* back in his appropriate position?" Another said he heard about the position change over coffee on a Saturday morning and simply wanted to know what was going on.

So let's do the honest version, starting with the explanations that don't require anybody to be hiding anything.

The most likely one is the simplest: 2025 was Camara's first season of varsity football. He is from Le Mans, France, and he is very new to this sport. A staff with a freakishly athletic, enormous, still-developing player has real reasons to move him around — build his feel for space, expand what he can do at the next level, get your best athlete near the football, or simply manage a body that size across four quarters in September heat. Coaches see practice. We don't.

Here's why the question keeps getting asked anyway. Gilmer has given up 83 points in two games and the offensive front has been uneven. If the line were locked in and the run game needed a spark, moving a tackle out into space is a fun luxury. That is not where this team is. And a five-star tackle asked to block from a receiver alignment is being asked to do something genuinely different from what he does best.

We're not going to speculate about a kid's health. We're not going to accuse a coaching staff of hiding anything. We don't know, and pretending otherwise would be unfair to a high schooler who did not ask to be a story.

The question isn't whether Camara is good enough. It's whether Gilmer is currently using the best player in Texas in the way that helps Gilmer the most.

That's a fair thing for a fan base to wonder, and it is being wondered pretty loudly in Upshur County right now.

A gentle word for the booth

We love that our games get called. We do. But we have to talk about the scoop and score.

Here's the play: the snap was low, the quarterback bobbled it trying to get the handoff to his back, the ball hit the ground, and a Gilmer defender scooped it up and took it in for six. A gift, cheerfully accepted.

Here's the call: "talk about wreaking havoc — number 1 pushed about four guys into the backfield."

Number 1 was one-on-one with the center at the time. Going backward.

Look, we'll grant that a defensive lineman in your lap can rush a snap and hurry an exchange, and you can make the case he had something to do with it. That case does not get you to four guys in the backfield. That gets you to "the center is winning this rep."

There was a similar moment later with Camara lined up at receiver, where the block didn't get made and the play worked anyway because the receiver caught it and made a very good man miss. Great outcome. Different reason.

We're not trying to run anybody out of the booth, and calling a game live is genuinely hard. But when every good thing that happens gets routed to the five-star, the kid who actually made the play loses the one thing he can't get anywhere else. Camara has a Texas offer. The rest of these guys are still building a highlight reel.

Give credit where it's due, to whoever earned it, when they earn it. Not before.

And frankly the No. 1 player in Texas doesn't need the help.

While we're here: the booth also spent some time reminding everyone that Chapel Hill plays in the division above us. Which is true! It is also the sort of thing that, said often enough before kickoff, starts to sound less like context and more like a receipt somebody's planning to cash later. A poster on smoaky put it about as dryly as it can be put — it's fine if they lose, Chapel Hill is a division up, the announcer said so, must be true.

Then Gilmer won by 23 and nobody needed the excuse. Wipe the glass, fellas. We're rooting for you too.

Around the barbecue

The mood after the win was measured, which tells you something. "Chapel Hill is bad. Gilmer did play better. Gilmer has a long way to go" was about the median take. Another regular, watching the secondary get worked all night, wrote that if Gilmer could cover with any consistency the game wouldn't have been close — and he was right.

Our favorite came before kickoff, when someone predicted "60-70 points scored wouldn't surprise me." The two teams combined for 85. He wasn't wrong, he was just low.

Next up: Kilgore, and the home opener

Kilgore comes to Gilmer on Friday, Sept. 11 — the Buckeyes' first home game of the year after opening with two straight on the road.

On paper this looks like a break. Kilgore is 0-1 and got taken apart 42-7 at Pleasant Grove in Week 1. Read that and relax at your own risk.

Two things. First, Kilgore didn't play in Week 2 — open date. So they've had two full weeks to watch that Pleasant Grove film, get healthy, and think about nothing except walking into Gilmer. An angry, rested team with an extra week of prep is not the same animal as an 0-1 team on a short week.

Second, and every Buckeye fan reading this already knows it: Kilgore has had our number more often than we'd like lately. That program is a legitimate power and it does not care what our record is or what happened in Tyler on Friday. Whatever this is, it isn't a cakewalk.

Which is exactly why this one matters so much more than the schedule makes it look.

Protect the house

Here's what we actually want to see on Sept. 11, beyond a win.

There was a version of Gilmer football — and it wasn't that long ago — where nobody came into our place and left with it. Not a slogan on a shirt. An understood fact. You did not lose at home in Gilmer. Guys would have crawled off that field before they let it happen, and everybody in Upshur County knew it, including whoever was unlucky enough to be on the visiting sideline.

That was the culture. That's what we want back.

And it goes with the other thing. We never used to talk about who's in what division. Nobody in Gilmer needed to look up an opponent's classification before deciding how to feel about a Friday night. You lined up, you played whoever was in front of you, and you expected to win. The excuse-shopping is new, and honestly it's beneath the name on the front of the jersey.

We don't want a moral victory against a good team. We want the house protected, the way it used to be, against anybody who shows up.

So: 0-1 Kilgore, rested and angry, in our building, in front of our people, with a defense that has given up 83 points and something to prove about itself.

Good. That's the exact game you want. Win that one and the Pine Tree film goes in the trash and this is a real football team again.

Lose it at home, and we'll all know precisely what we're still missing.