Part of Joaquin head coach Jared Jones’s playoff routine is opening up the Dave Campbell’s Texas Football ‘Football Friday’ app on the pregame bus ride to check on the fan vote for his team’s matchup.

“I always vote for us, every single time,” Jones insists. “But it’s funny because it seems like I might be the only one.”

The voting is so lopsided he side-eyes his coaches, asking who they chose. This week, he told his players that their parents must be voting for Joaquin to lose.

It’s TXHSFB’s version of Groundhog Day: every week is the week the Joaquin Rams’ storybook season has to end, and every final buzzer leaves the pundits scratching their heads as to how a program that slid into the four-seed of the Class 2A Playoffs with a 6-4 record is still here. 

This very publication hasn’t learned its lesson, either. Joaquin was picked to finish last in District 11-2A DI in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football 2024 magazine after a subpar 2-8 record last season. Then, DCTF projected the Rams to lose each of their last six games, including a first-round playoff win against district champion Centerville and, most recently, in the regional final against Honey Grove. 

Jones took the offensive coordinator job at Joaquin eight years ago and was offered the head coach job this offseason when head coach Wade Lawson took the Waskom job. As he was mulling over whether to accept, he had a conversation with his brother, Jonathan, that shielded his mind from outside noise ever since. 

Jonathan, a longtime defensive coordinator who now serves as Joaquin’s principal, looked Jared in the eye and said not to take the job unless he knew he could win. Jared responded he thought he could.

Don’t think you can, Jonathan said. Know you can.

“I knew there was an opportunity for something happening that nobody saw coming,” Jones said.

But even he jokes that he must’ve fallen down and smacked his head on the first day of two-a-days, and soon he’ll wake up to find Joaquin’s first-ever run to the state semifinals was just an awesome dream. 

The first scene is Jones’ team meeting with the senior class shortly after his hiring. His message that day: No matter the record, 8-2 or 2-8, everyone would look at the senior class and head coach to answer for it. 

“We have to be the group that’s inseparable,” Jones told them. “We have to have a bond that’s unbreakable.”

According to running back and Mike linebacker Dallon Jordan, the senior class had already solidified that bond since middle school.

“When we had our eighth-grade team, we beat the crap out of everybody we could find,” Jordan said. “It’s really carried on from there - we just didn’t get a chance to shine until now. We’re pretty dangerous when we’re all together.”

But the players forged that bond with their new head coach in the offseason weight room. Jones had always run the strength and conditioning program, but his normally intense nature had ratcheted up to an 11 with his neck on the line. If the players were one minute late, they went to the office for a tardy slip. 

Instead of recoiling, the senior class matched his energy. 

“We had to push everybody to be better,” running back and safety Tate Bass said. "We couldn’t let anybody be lazy.”

That bond was tested after a 64-19 blowout loss to Grand Saline in Week 4 that dropped Joaquin’s record to 2-2. Jones calls it the inflection point of their season, and how they responded in their lowest moment set them up to reach the heights they’ve achieved. 

“Who you are when the chips are down is who you really are,” Jones said.

He found out his players were selfless, willing to rotate through any position instead of pointing fingers. Jordan has moved from Mike linebacker to Will linebacker and even defensive end. Jones says the team only won one of its playoff games because Bass moved from free safety to Mike linebacker. That’s how a program that endured a 2-8 season, largely because of injuries, is now 10-4 despite the entire team having badly sprained an ankle at some point.

So maybe Jones is right, and one morning he’ll wake up to find he imagined all those surreal playoff wins. Or maybe it only takes a few simple ingredients for a magical result.