JACKSONVILLE — Despite having missed a post-season appearance last season, Jacksonville High School athletic director/head football coach, Chris Taber, said he believes Texas Football Magazine was spot on in predicting the Tribe as one of District 16-4A's playoff representatives this year.  

The latest edition of the publication, for decades considered as one of the foremost authorities on high school football in the state, hit the shelves and racks at stores throughout the Lone Star state late last week, with Jacksonville forecast as finishing fourth (behind John Tyler, Corsicana and Whitehouse) in the newly minted league rankings.

“I think that it is a pretty fair ranking for us,” Taber said. “I think that things can go either way with the bottom-three teams (Jacksonville, Lindale and Nacogdoches). Whoever gets hot or gets on a roll can take that fourth spot.”

With Taber, and most of staff of assistants, being in their first year in Jacksonville, the pressure of producing a playoff team right out of the gate doesn't seem to be a concern at this point.

“We want to be a playoff team, that's what we are here for,” Taber said. “Making the playoffs is not a goal of ours, it is an expectation — we expect to be in the playoffs.”

Some critics feel the fact that the Indians' question mark at quarterback, following Andrew Black's transfer to Chapel Hill earlier this year, could comprise their chances at finishing in the top four in conference, but Taber says that things are not as bleak in that regard as some may see them.

“Somebody will rise to the top and take that position,” he said. “The fortunate thing is that we have enough playmakers around them that that will make the transition easier for whoever that guy is.”

As for the rest of the loop rankings, Taber said that he agrees completely with Texas Football's assessment.

“I think that they (Texas Football) picked it the way I picked it and the way that everyone else should have picked it, because the three teams at the top have earned those positions,” Taber said. “For the past five or six years John Tyler has had some outstanding football players and we thought that they may be the pre-season No. 1, and they ended up in the top five. Everything kind of panned out the way we thought that it would.”