When journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson died in 2005, he was cremated and, in accordance with his wishes, had his ashes fired out of a cannon at his home in Colorado. East Tennessee State has a detachment from its ROTC unit fire a cannon at William B. Greene Jr. Stadium after every touchdown. On Saturday, as Samford scored the decisive TD on the final play of the game, the cannon went off.
Oops!
It seemed fitting, as a farewell to many of the goals ETSU had this season.
Winning a Southern Conference title? A playoff berth? It all went up in a haze of cannon smoke and a pass to the flat to a wide-open running back with zeroes on the clock as Samford defeated ETSU 37-35.
The Bucs (6-4, 4-2) have dropped two in a row, both in SoCon play, after stringing together five straight wins after a 1-2 start. ETSU would need to win its final two games, hope Mercer defeats Tennessee Tech next week, and root for some chaos in other conferences just for a sniff at an at-large bid to the FCS playoffs. It’s a stunning tumble for a team that went into the home game against Tennessee Tech on Halloween undefeated in the SoCon and in control of its playoff destiny.
“I don’t know the proper adjectives for how you feel watching somebody score on the last play,” ETSU coach Will Healy said. “That hasn’t happened to me a whole lot in this profession.”
The Bulldogs took a 3-0 lead, fell behind 28-16, then erased that entire deficit rapid fire in just 1:40 of game clock. ETSU scored a go-ahead touchdown with 57 seconds remaining, but Samford drove down the field, with Gabarri Johnson finding Dom Thomas for a 7-yard touchdown pass on the final play, which began with three seconds left. Thomas streaked untouched and open into the end zone with zeroes showing on the clock.
Thomas played for Healy, when both were at Georgia State; Healy was assistant head coach and running backs coach for the Panthers in the 2024 season.
“Great kid. Unbelievable story. You’re happy for him. You just wish it happened against somebody else,” Healy said.
The fact it all happened on senior day for the Bucs was just extra salt in the wound.
ETSU outgained Samford 367-323 and held the Bulldogs to less than 100 net rushing yards even with Johnson busting off multiple scrambles on the decisive drive. In fact, the Bucs looked like the better team for much of the day, and seemed to be in control when Mason Mims hit Kingsport native Charlie Browder for an 8-yard touchdown pass with 1:33 remaining in the third quarter. The PAT by fifth-year Ewan Johnson made it a 28-16 game, in ETSU’s favor.
Samford immediately pulled back within one possession, with Kevonte Corbin returning the ensuing kickoff from his goal line 100 yards for a touchdown.
“The game changed when I kicked the ball deep again and they scored,” Healy said, after his team allowed a kickoff return for a TD for the second straight week, also doing so in the 24-17 loss to Tennessee Tech. “I sat here last week and said I’m not going to let my ego get in the way and I made the decision to kick the ball deep again and they creased it and they scored. … So I wear it, I eat it. That is a sick feeling in the locker room.”
The subsequent drive by ETSU ended quickly. After offensive tackle Sam Browder, Charlie’s younger brother, drew a 15-yard penalty for hands to the face, Samford stripped Bucs back TJ Peyton of the ball on the very next play and recovered a bouncing ball at the ETSU 8-yard line near the end of the third period. Two plays later, on the very first snap of the fourth period, Gabarri Johnson scored on a 4-yard keeper, putting Samford back in front, 31-28.
The Bucs came back to retake the lead, converting two fourth downs on a drive that began with just 3:25 remaining: the first on a 17-yard strike from Mims to Brandon Winton and the second on a 13-yard rush by Peyton. Mims found Winton from 10 yards out for the go-ahead score, and less than a minute left on the clock.
“We practice that every week, every Thursday. So I feel like as a whole we did a great job,” said Mims, who finished 16 of 27 passing for 171 yards with the two TDs to Browder and Winton. “Obviously it wasn’t good enough, but I like the way we responded after being super slow in the second half.”
Samford showed its grit on the decisive drive. Gabarri Johnson completed an 18-yard pass on a fourth-and-2, then busted off scrambles of 16 and 26 yards on consecutive plays to set up first and goal from the 7 with seven seconds remaining. He took one shot on a pass in the direction of Bucs DB Jimmy Bowdry, who also got picked on for Samford’s first-half TD from freshman Will Shields to Corbin. On the next snap, Johnson connected with Thomas for the winning play.
Even with the go-ahead TD, watching from the sideline for the ensuing Samford drive was too much for Winton.
“I didn’t want to watch,” he said. “Yeah, I was a little scared just because, you know, had a good quarterback, he did a good job. So just watching that kid, I was a little nervous.”
“I mean, I had faith in the defense,” Mims said. “They’ve done a great job all year long.”
“Facts,” Winton interjected.
“We didn’t do our jobs good enough to where we had to put them in that situation,” Mims added.
ETSU has two games left, both on the road: against Wofford next week and then at Mercer Nov. 21.
“This can either be a lot of fun for the next two weeks of finding ways to win big football games and doing some stuff that still hasn’t been done around here, push through the disappointment and respond the right way and leave this on a really high note, or it can be pulling teeth and we’ll find a way to play young guys that care,” Healy said. “I’ve had it go both directions. I don’t feel like this football team is like that. But I know that the standard can’t change just because of a result. How we practice, how we prepare. Because these seniors deserve to go out on a high note. And I still have every bit of confidence that that will happen.”
Samford, meanwhile, has won two straight on walk offs. The Bulldogs beat Wofford 10-9 last week on a field goal on the final play.
“You can coach and play this game a long time and never play in two like that,” Samford coach John Grass said in a release by the school. “Today’s game was just a classic. We played the best we’ve played all year, I think, in all three phases. We just played really well and made enough plays. We talk about playing the play, we played every play of this game, and we left everything out there and it’s great to watch that.”
Extra Points
Winton led the Bucs with four catches for 58 yards. Peyton had 89 yards rushing on 21 attempts with a TD and the fumble. … Jaiden Daniels ran for 79 yards on six touches, most of it on a career-long 57-yard touchdown run in the first half. … Jason Albritton’s 1-yard TD late in the second quarter was the 10th of the season, tying Jacob Saylors in 2021 and Brandon Walker in 1998 for the eighth-most in a campaign in Bucs history. … Devin Hunter and Dre Delinois had eight tackles each to pass the ETSU defense. … The Samford QB Johnson finished with 209 yards of total offense, 168 passing and 41 rushing.