Next Up for The Hardy Boys Series: The Essex High School Football Mystery

My high school lost the state championship game for the second straight year. While reaching the game is amazing in and of itself, the teams I played on never sniffed a winning season much less the playoffs, the two seaon sare oddly alike.

1. Crush everybody with a high-flying offense during the regular season.
2. Crush everybody with a high-flying offense during the playoffs, even if they're playing the best teams in the state.
3. Completely flop in the championship game.

Here's the scoring over the two years:

2013
Regular season: 426  42.6ppg
Playoffs: 167 41.75ppg
State championship game: 0

2012
Regular season: 549  54.9ppg
Playoffs: 145 36.25ppg
State championship: 14

And here's the defensive numbers from the same years:

2013
Regular season: 120 12ppg
Playoffs: (4 games) 49 12.25ppg
State championship: 21

2012
Regular season: 85 8.5ppg
Playoffs: (4 games) 73 18.74ppg
State championship: 41

After punishing opponents into submission during the regular season, they gave up around twice as many points in the title game as they'd averaged throughout the rest of the playoffs. I mean, what the fuck? Maybe we can only win these kind of things when Chris Brown is in the house?

Hey, maybe the teams I played on were awful on a historic level, but we had some laughs and totally rocked the sexiest shorts ever.