You’re in Four Down Territory. Each week we’ll spotlight four notes, nuggets, stats or trends from the weekend that was in Mississippi high school football, college football, and the NFL.

1
There’s not a lot of drama left in the Region 2-6A playoff race heading into the final Friday night of the Mississippi high school football regular season.

Northwest Rankin (9-1, 6-0 Region 2-6A) clinched the region title — its first since 2006 — by beating Madison Central (7-3, 4-2) last week. Starkville (9-1, 5-1) will be the No. 2 seed and Madison Central the 3.
The only playoff spot left up for grabs is the fourth and final one, which will come down to Clinton (7-3, 3-3) and Warren Central (4-5, 3-3).

If Warren Central wins at home against Provine (3-8, 1-6) then it clinches the No. 4 seed and a long road trip to face undefeated Horn Lake in the first round of the Class 6A playoffs next week. It can also get in with a Clinton loss to Starkville.

Warren Central owns the head-to-head tiebreaker with Clinton, so if the Vikings win the Clinton-Starkville result does not matter. However, if WC slips up and loses it opens the door for Clinton to sneak back into the playoffs with an upset of Starkville.

Murrah, Provine and Greenville have all been eliminated.

2
Region 2-5A’s playoff race is also largely settled, even though Callaway is the only one of the eight teams that has actually been eliminated and three of the four league games this week will have a bearing on seeding.

Holmes County Central (9-1, 6-0 Region 2-5A) — which is led by former Vicksburg High head coach Marcus Rogers — has clinched the first region championship in the school’s brief history.

Germantown (6-4, 5-1) is locked in to second place, and Neshoba Central (9-2, 4-2) is third.

Four teams — Vicksburg (3-6, 2-4), Ridgeland (5-5, 2-4), Cleveland Central (2-8, 2-4) and Canton (6-5, 2-4) — are all alive for the fourth and final seed that comes with a trip to two-time defending Class 5A champion West Point in the first round of the playoffs. All of them need wins in Friday’s regular-season finale and some help to get into the postseason:

• Vicksburg needs to beat Holmes County Central to clinch the spot, and have both Canton and Ridgeland lose. It holds the tiebreaker on Cleveland Central.

• Cleveland Central needs to beat Canton and have Vicksburg lose. It owns the tiebreaker on Ridgeland.

• Ridgeland must beat Germantown and have Cleveland Central lose. It owns the tiebreaker against Vicksburg and Canton.

• Canton has to beat Cleveland Central and have Ridgeland lose. It owns the tiebreaker on Vicksburg.

3
One of the most remarkable stories in college football this season has a Mississippi connection.

Washington State quarterback Gardner Minshew leads the Football Bowl Subdivision in passing with 3,183 yards, is tied for sixth with 23 touchdowns, and has led the Cougars (7-1, 4-1 Pac-12) to a No. 10 ranking in this week’s Associated Press poll.

Minshew completed 40 of 50 passes for 438 yards and three touchdowns Saturday in Wazzu’s 41-38 win over Stanford. Washington State has won back-to-back games over ranked opponents for the first time since 2002.

Minshew’s path to the Pacific Northwest started at Brandon High School, where he threw for 11,222 yards and 105 touchdowns in four seasons as a starter. He led the Bulldogs to a pair of victories in the 2011 and 2012 Red Carpet Bowls, and got Brandon to the 2012 Class 6A championship game.

After that his career took a winding course, to say the least. He’s technically at his fifth college program.
Minshew started as a walk-on at Troy but never played there; spent one season at Northwest Mississippi Community College, where he won the NJCAA national championship; then transferred to East Carolina and spent two seasons and was the starting quarterback in 2017.

He graduated from East Carolina last December and committed to Alabama as a graduate transfer, with the idea of using it as an elite internship for a coaching career. Alabama promised Minshew a job as a graduate assistant coach next season while he served as the backup this season to either Tua Tagvailoa and/or Jalen Hurts.

“It would be like going to the Harvard school of coaching,” Minshew told the Seattle Times before the season.

Instead, former Jackson State offensive coordinator Hal Mumme tipped off his friend Mike Leach, Washington State’s head coach, about Minshew. One phone call later and Minshew was heading west for a remarkable final college season that might end up at the Heisman Trophy ceremony in New York and perhaps the College Football Playoffs.

4
Mississippi State on Monday unveiled the special uniforms it will wear for its final home game of the season Nov. 17 against Arkansas.

The Adidas “Statesman” uniforms are inspired by the Mississippi Air National Guard’s C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane named “The Spirit of G.V. ‘Sonny’ Montgomery,” which is based in Jackson.

The uniforms feature gray jersey and pants the color of the C-17, with lettering similar to that used on the side of the plane. A special helmet design also resembles the riveted fuselage of the plane and has a unique “Mississippi” printed to match the tail of the plane.

The back of the helmet contains images of the various medals earned throughout Montgomery’s military career.
Montgomery, a 1943 Mississippi State graduate, served in the United States Army as a second lieutenant during World War II and later retired from the Mississippi National Guard with the rank of Major General. Montgomery was awarded several medals for his service and later served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967-97.