Jeanerette’s Ra’shon Wiley and Toddrick Paul stop Seth Ducote (11) during a game Friday at Rosepine.

ROSEPINE — Rosepine High School head football coach Johnny Cryer breathed a sigh of relief Friday evening as his No. 7 seed Eagles survived a tough Jeanerette High School squad 31-20 in the first round of the Class 2A playoffs.

“We know coming in that they were going to be a tough opponent,” Cryer said. “They played a tough schedule and I knew defensively they were going to be tough and they were every bit of what we thought they’d be.

“We had to do a couple of things that we don’t normally do to catch them off guard and we hurt them twice on plays like that.”

Those two plays, a pass out of the backfield to the running back going down the sideline and a reverse, led to two touchdowns that proved to be key to the Eagles’ win and advancement to the second round, where they will play host to No. 10 seed Red River.

Those plays, and too many mistakes, proved to be Jeanerette’s undoing.

“We just made way too many mistakes,” JHS coach Ananias Johnson said. The No. 26 seeded Tigers finished the season 4-7. “We had a chance to host a playoff game for the first time since 1990 (with a win).

“We stayed with them, but made too many mistakes and you can’t do that against a team like that.”

Johnson said his team had the right defense called but his players were out of position to make the play on the big TDs. The Tigers also were victims of penalties at bad times.

A roughing the passer penalty on third down kept Rosepine’s offense on the field in one touchdown drive.A defensive offside penalty gave the Eagles a first down on one drive that led to a score. A couple of offensive motion penalties pushed Jeanerette back just far enough that the Tigers couldn’t get enough a first down on the ensuing play. And a couple of missed blocking assignments led to Jeanerette’s quarterback being sacked to end a drive that could have tied the score in the second half.

“Overall we made too many mistakes and it was hard for us to bounce back,” Johnson said. “We made mistakes both on offense and defense.

“You can’t fumble the ball on offense — we did. You can’t miss coverages on defense — we did. You can’t have silly penalties on drives — we did.”

Even with the mistakes on both sides of the ball, Jeanerette came very close to pulling off the first-round upset.

The Tigers fell behind 14-0 to the Eagles in the second quarter and stormed back with two touchdowns that were set up or scored by the defense.

On the first score, Jeanerette’s defense recovered a fumble when Rosepine quarterback Seth Ducote mishandled a snap and JHS took over at the RHS 7-yard line.

On the second score, Jeanerette’s defense forced a Rosepine punt and the punt snap went over the punter’s head. Toddrick Paul recovered the loose ball and returned it for a TD and as quickly as that, Jeanerette went from being down 14-0 to tied 14-14 with seven minutes left in the second quarter.

But the Eagles recovered quickly and scored 10 points in the final seven minutes to take a 23-14 lead into halftime.

“We had four fumbles tonight and that’s not like us,” Cryer said. “And in those two minutes we gave up 14 points but we were able to hang on.”

Jeanerette got the deficit to within 3 points at 23-20 with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter on a Shonathon Sparrow 39-yard touchdown run, but Rosepine put the game away with a touchdown with just under seven minutes left for the final margin.

Seth Shirley led the Eagle with 103 yards and three touchdown rushing and caught two long passes for 93 yards.

Sparrow led Jeanerette with 121 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. Three Jeanerette quarterbacks combined for 102 yards passing, but an interception late in the game kept the Tigers from mounting a fourth-quarter rally.

Even with the playoff loss, Johnson told the team that they played well this year but had too many mistakes during the season that prevented the record from being better.

“We lost five games this year by a touchdown or less and one game by 12 points,” Johnson said. “In every game we were close enough to win but we had too many mistakes.

“Hopefully we can cut down on those mistakes, get some more kids out during the spring and come back strong next year.”