The gist
- Gilmer 64, Kilgore 50. The Buckeyes are 2-1, the home opener is in the bank, and last September's 66-6 is answered with interest.
- 411 rushing yards on 38 carries. Tayveon Horne went for 156 and three scores, Zade Taylor 140 and two more on seven carries. Best ground game of the year by 32 yards.
- Taylor's best night as a passer: 8 of 10 for 173 and Gilmer's first two passing touchdowns of 2026, both to freshman Kaden Canady, who finished with 149 receiving yards.
- And then there's 50. Kilgore arrived 0-2 having scored seven points all season. They hung fifty in Jeff Traylor Stadium. Gilmer has now allowed 133 points in three games.
What happened
Gilmer won its 2026 home opener 64-50 over Kilgore on Friday night, and the offense was everything we said it would be and then some. 411 yards rushing. 173 through the air. 584 total, 681 all-purpose, nine touchdowns. KETK had the Buckeyes moving to 2-1, with Kilgore falling to 0-2.
By the account of fans following it live, this thing was a coin flip deep into the second half. It was tied 29-29 in the third quarter. Gilmer went up 36-29; Kilgore answered with a long touchdown run to tie it at 36. Taylor hit a throw to make it 43-36, a Kilgore turnover turned into 49-36, Kilgore came right back to 49-43 — and then Johnson took the ensuing kickoff 95 yards and the roof finally came off. 56-43. Then 64-43. Kilgore scored again on the first play of its next drive to make it 64-50, and Gilmer ran out the clock.
So: a seven-point game in the third quarter of the home opener, against a team that had been beaten 42-7 in its only prior outing.
We wrote a whole preview called Defend the House and put one key to the game in a box: force a punt. Kilgore scored fifty. We also predicted 41-24. We got the winner right and both defenses catastrophically wrong, so let's start by eating that.
The guys who did it
Names first, because they earned it and because this was a genuinely outstanding offensive performance.
- Tayveon Horne: 20 carries, 156 yards, three touchdowns. Second straight week over 150. He is the engine.
- Zade Taylor: 140 yards and two scores on seven carries — 20.0 a pop — plus 8 of 10 for 173 and two more through the air. 313 total yards, no interceptions, a 160.4 rating. That is the best game a Gilmer quarterback has played this season, and it isn't particularly close.
- Kaden Canady: five catches, 149 yards, two touchdowns, 174 all-purpose. A freshman. Gilmer had not thrown a touchdown pass all year before Friday and he caught both of them.
- Kipton Neighbors: five carries for 74 and a score, plus two catches.
- Johnson: 97 kickoff-return yards, and the 95 that mattered.
- The offensive line: 10.8 yards per carry as a team. Kilgore's own people said both fronts dominated and that their defense had "absolutely nothing" for the Gilmer run game. Five guys who will never show up in that box score did that.
One more thing worth saying out loud, since the loudest argument in Upshur County for three weeks has been about where the best player in Texas lines up: whatever the staff did Friday, that front moved a two-time state finalist's defense off the ball for 411 yards. No box score tells you who lined up where. The scoreboard on that side of the ball says the offensive plan is working.
About defending the house
Now the part we're not going to dress up.
Last Wednesday we wrote that four visiting teams won inside Jeff Traylor Stadium in 2025, that the building had stopped being feared, and that the fix was simple and unglamorous: make a visiting team regret the trip, and then do it again the next week.
Kilgore did not regret the trip. Kilgore had a great time. Kilgore scored fifty points in our building — a team that returned four offensive and four defensive starters from last year's state finalist, that lost 25 lettermen and three Division I signees, and that had managed seven points in its only game of the season. Fifty.
A win is a win, and we'll take it. But "defend the house" never meant "win the house." It meant nobody who comes here gets comfortable. Kilgore got comfortable in the second quarter and stayed comfortable until a kickoff return in the fourth.
We didn't defend the house Friday. We out-scored a guest in it. Those are different games, and only one of them survives October.
Here is the number that should be taped to a wall: 133. That's what Gilmer has allowed in three games — 52 at Pine Tree, 31 at Chapel Hill, 50 at home. 44.3 a night. The offense is averaging 52.7, which is why the record reads 2-1 and everybody's happy on Saturday morning. Carthage, Pleasant Grove and Pittsburg do not care what the offense averages.
The October math. Pleasant Grove — the team that beat Kilgore 42-7 and Sulphur Springs 34-27 — opens district inside Jeff Traylor Stadium on Friday, Oct. 9. They won here last year. Allow them 44 and it will not matter what Horne and Taylor do.
Around the barbecue
The Buckeye Facebook crowd got there before we did, and they were not in a celebrating mood. The first reaction in the group after a 14-point win was a fan asking whether this team can stop anybody. Somebody fired back "can anyone stop us?" and got told, flatly, that we aren't undefeated. Another put it in one line: allowing this many points is not going to cut it against the majority of the teams left on the schedule.
The most useful take in there was also the fairest one to the coaching staff. More than one person made the same observation — Gilmer defenders are getting to the right spot and then not finishing the tackle. Nobody's out of position, nobody's getting schemed into oblivion. The hats are arriving. The ball carrier keeps going. That's a technique-and-habit problem, not a chalkboard problem, and it's the most fixable version of what's wrong.
Over on smoaky, Kilgore's side was honest about it too. Their read afterward: both offensive lines dominated, a turnover on a kickoff killed them, and both teams have work to do on defense. When somebody floated a "two of the better defenses in all of 4A" line, a Bulldogs fan answered it directly — not this year on our end.
The sharpest Gilmer-side analysis of the night came from a smoaky regular who laid it out in three parts: this offense will be hard to stop if it plays like that; the pass defense at least quit giving up 15-yard cushions; but the run defense couldn't get consistent stops, and the first time Gilmer meets a team that plays real defense, the turnover margin stops bailing them out. He also named what changed since Pine Tree — Gilmer has committed to running the football and only throws once the defense crowds the box. Friday that produced 411 on the ground and a 173-yard night on ten attempts. It works.
"Allowing this many points isn't going to cut it against the majority of the teams we have left." — a Buckeye fan, roughly eleven seconds after a 14-point win
When the fan base is that clear-eyed the morning after a scoreboard that flattering, the fan base is not the problem.
Our take
First, the celebration, because it's real. A year ago Kilgore beat Gilmer 66-6 — 38-0 at halftime, the fifth-largest defeat in the 112-year history of this program and the worst since 1977. Friday those same Bulldogs came to Gilmer and got run over for 411 yards. That's a 118-point swing in twelve months, and Alan Metzel is 66-20 here now. Whatever else is broken, the thing that was most broken last September got fixed in front of a home crowd.
Second, the hot take: this defense, not the offense, decides Gilmer's season, and 2-1 is currently hiding that. Since 2000, Gilmer is 250-16 when it scores 30 or more — the shootout is practically the house style and it usually works. But those 16 losses all look the same, and Gilmer already owns one of them this year at Pine Tree, in a game where the offense put up 40. You cannot out-score everybody forever. Somewhere between here and December there's a Friday where the ball doesn't bounce, the kick return doesn't happen, and 44 points allowed is a loss.
Third, and this is the one we'll be held to: if Gilmer allows 40 to Pleasant Grove on Oct. 9, Gilmer loses that game. Not "might." Will. Write it down and come back to it.
What we want isn't complicated and it isn't a scheme overhaul in Week 4. It's finishing tackles. The fan base identified it, and it's the kind of thing that gets fixed with a hard week of practice rather than a new plan. These are high schoolers three games into a season being asked to replace a lot of football. They get better at this if they decide to, and this program has never lacked for kids who decide to.
Because the standard in this building was never "score more than the visitors." Traylor went 50-3 at home across eleven seasons and never lost a district game here, and it wasn't because his teams won track meets. It was because coming to Gilmer was miserable. Friday was fun for Kilgore. Fix that and this is a dangerous football team. Don't, and 64-50 is the best version of a season that ends in November.
Next up: at Sulphur Springs
Gilmer goes back on the road Friday, Sept. 18, at Sulphur Springs — the last tune-up before district. For a measuring stick: Pleasant Grove beat Sulphur Springs 34-27 two weeks after beating Kilgore 42-7. Then it's Sunnyvale at home on Sept. 25, and then Pleasant Grove on Oct. 9 to open District 8-4A Division II.
Two more Fridays to figure out how to get a ball carrier on the ground. That's the whole assignment.
Buckeyes 2-1, and the house is 1-0 — on the scoreboard, anyway. Make your picks and meet us on the sideline.