BIRMINGHAM – Piedmont football coach Steve Smith said his Bulldog players have a deep belief they’re never out of any game, even on the state championship stage.

They rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit in the 2019 Class 3A state title game to defeat Mobile Christian. Earlier this season, they rallied from four different 17-point deficits to defeat Class 4A Jacksonville.

But on Thursday at Birmingham’s Protective Stadium against Montgomery Academy, the Bulldogs had a comeback for the ages.

Piedmont rallied from a 23-point halftime deficit to take an improbable 35-33 victory to win its fifth football championship and fourth title in seven years.

“It’s really been ingrained in all our players over the course of many, many years. That’s the magical recipe,” Smith said. “It’s not really anything about me. I’m just a football coach, but we feel like we can do a pretty good job of motivating and inspiring and keeping their confidence even when things are not going good. That was what we tried to sell today and they bought it. They went out there and executed.”

Trailing 29-6 at the end of the first half, junior quarterback Jack Hayes said nothing really changed with the Bulldogs’ game plan.

Hayes, the game’s Most Valuable Player, accounted for 266 total yards and five touchdowns. He ran for 143 yards on 36 carries with two scores and completed 8-of-17 pass attempts for 123 yards and three touchdowns.

“We just had to come out and come together as a team,” he said. “(Coach Smith) just told told us in the locker room we had 24 minutes left in the season, to give it all we’ve got and make it the greatest comeback anybody’s ever seen.”

The comeback began with Hayes’ 1-yard touchdown run on the Bulldogs’ first drive of third quarter. Sloan Smith’s extra point made it 29-13 with 8:44 remaining.
After the Bulldog defense forced an Eagle punt, Hayes hooked up with Omarion Foster on a 31-yard score. Hayes then found Austin Estes for the ensuing 2-point conversion to trim Montgomery Academy’s lead to 29-21 with 5:09 remaining in the third quarter.

“We were sitting on the bench and I told everybody that if we got within one score before the fourth quarter we were going to win the game,” Hayes said.

True to his word, the Bulldogs (13-2) capped the comeback.

After another Eagle punt, Hayes found Estes on a 28-yard touchdown pass early in the fourth quarter. Hayes’ 2-point run was stopped short of the goal line, but the Bulldogs were within two at 29-27.

Piedmont’s defense came up with a turnover when senior linebacker Landon Smart recovered a Jamal Cooper fumble, giving the Bulldogs the ball at the Eagle 21-yard line. Three plays later, Hayes threw his third touchdown pass of the second half and the second to Estes with a 25-yard connection. Estes ran in for the 2-point conversion, giving Piedmont’s its first lead of the game at 35-29 with 8:40 left in the game.

Smith felt comfortable turning the game over to his defense, and with good reason. The Bulldog ‘D’ held the Eagles to just 44 yards in the second half and just one completed pass after halftime. The most substantial drive Montgomery Academy had was in the fourth quarter, when the  Eagles drove down inside the Bulldog 20, but Trent Young ended the drive with a fumble recovery.

The only points Montgomery Academy (11-4) scored in the second half were late in the fourth quarter on two intentional safeties by Bulldogs, both on punts. The second safety came with 1:02 remaining.

“In the fourth quarter, we were kicking into the wind, and they’d already blocked one punt,” Smith said. “The second safety probably wasn’t by the book, not a smart play because they’ve got an outstanding field goal kicker. They could’ve got that thing in field-goal range and come back to bite us. Kicking in the wind the way we were and the pressure they got on us early in the first half, we just felt like we were going to put it in the hands of our defense.

“I had a hard time thinking anybody was going to take it 60 yards on that group of kids we had out there. I was very confident we could hold them out.”

Smith’s strategy and belief in his defense worked.

The Piedmont defense played inspired on the Eagles’ final drive. Noah Reedy sacked Cooper for a 9-yard loss on first down. Following Cooper’s 8-yard run on second down, Chance Murphy batted his pass away on third down. Reedy essentially ended the game with a second sack of Cooper on fourth-and-11, giving the ball back to Piedmont with 24 seconds remaining.

A kneel down by Hayes ran out the clock.

Cooper led the Eagles to a 14-0 first-quarter lead on a 62-yard touchdown run and a 28-yard touchdown toss to Will Hardin. Chance Wilson returned a Hayes’ interception 67 yards for a score, giving the Eagles a 21-0 advantage with 5:23 left in the second quarter.

Hayes scored on a 6-yard run to make it a 21-6 game with 1:33 to go in the first half, but the Eagles soared to another touchdown with just 16 seconds left in the half on Jashawn Cooper’s 2-yard run. Judson Lindsey ran in for the 2-point conversion.

“A lot of credit needs to go to Montgomery Academy and the wonderful game plan they had coming out,” Smith said. “We got behind big at halftime, but we didn’t peel the paint off the walls or anything. We just told our guys if something didn’t change we weren’t going to be happy.”

Things did change, and the Bulldogs left Protective Stadium happy.