ST. LOUIS - The Jefferson City Jays have had some rough games the past few years.
It went to a different level Friday night at De Smet.
Jefferson City crossed their own 20-yard line once, turned it over twice and allowed six touchdowns. And that was just the first 10 minutes.
It was the beginning of a 63-0 drubbing.
The Jays tried to run the ball, but couldn't. They attempted to corral the Spartans' stacked backfield of three Division I-level backs, but failed.
"I don't think they're 63 points better, but it doesn't matter what I think," Jefferson City coach Terry Walker said. "The scoreboard says they're 63 points better.
"We'll assess the film for effort. And look to see the kids that are giving effort and we'll keep them on the field, and the ones that aren't giving good effort we'll try and find somebody to replace them."
When Jefferson City did string together positive plays on offense, it wasn't enough to avoid the team's first shutout since Week 1 last season.
Down 40-0 late in the first quarter, the Jays gained more than one-third of their total yards for the game on one play.
Devin White found a hole in the Spartan defense, catching a pass from Cole Gresham downfield for a 64-yard connection on a third-and-13.
It began to turn around a bit for the Jays, who got a 5-yard completion to Nick Williams, a 4-yard gain on a Gresham rollout on a play-action call and a 1-yard quarterback sneak to make it first-and-goal at the 9.
A penalty then dropped them 5 yards back and four straight incompletions followed, ending with Gresham having to scramble just to release the ball before Dakote Doyle-Robinson brought him down to the turf.
"There were times when we did move the football, but more often than not when it gets to crunch time, we're still not executing the specifics of each play that needs to be executed," Walker said. "We have guys that sometimes try and do some things on their own or try and do too much, and you can't do that. You've got to stay true to the play that's being called and you've got to execute and just do your job."
The Jays did get the ball back quickly by stripping Darez Snider of the ball and Tyler Johnston recovering the fumble, but they went three-and-out and Rico Barfield took a toss from quarterback Michael Wheeler for a 40-yard touchdown run.
Luke Bauer added the extra point for a 47-0 lead with 5:34 left in the first half.
"We just looked tentative," Walker said. "We looked really tentative, looked intimidated. Those are two things that don't go well on the football field."
Barfield finished with the fewest yards of the top-ranked Spartans' three star backs, finishing with 91 yards on 11 carries.
However, he did score on runs of 3, 1 and 40 yards.
Snider's first two carries of the game went for 37 yards and 78 yards for touchdowns. He carried it seven times for 161 yards.
Taj Butts also scored twice, a 3-yard touchdown in the first quarter and a 65-yard burst up the middle on the first play of the second half. He went untouched.
"A guy left his gap," Walker said. "Again, an incident or situation where you get a guy trying to do more than what he's supposed to do. Some of that is caused by the speed of the running back, but we had a guy that left his gap.
"We were playing man coverage because we're trying to play more in the box, obviously to stop the run game, and once he broke the second level there was no one there in the secondary to catch him."
Butts gained 110 yards on four carries, two for scores.
The Jays allowed a season-high 401 yards rushing.
"They were incredibly talented," Walker said. "They had two or three running backs that were probably better than any running back we might have seen so far this year."
Jefferson City (2-5) finished with 5 yards on 22 rushing attempts and Gresham was 12-of-34 for 161 yards and four interceptions.
White caught seven passes for 119 yards.
"We thought we had an opportunity to run a couple quick-hitting plays up the middle that might give them some difficulty, but they just controlled the line of scrimmage really from the first play on," Walker said. "Cole had an opportunity to throw the football with some decent amount of time on a couple of situations, but running game-wise there was really nothing that we did that gave them any difficulty."
The Jays take their four-game losing streak into Friday night's game against the Battle Spartans (4-3).
Battle fell 29-0 to Rockhurst (4-3).
Kickoff is at 7 p.m. at Adkins Stadium.
"We've got to learn how to prepare better," Walker said. "And the kids have prepared better this year than we did last year, but we've got to compete better in practice we've got to prepare better.
"This is one game. This game won't define us unless as a staff and as players we let it define us. So we've got to go back to work. That's the way football works, you've just got to keep grinding."