Zane Rowe did not hedge when the Denton Record-Chronicle asked him about Guyer's defensive front in August.
"We're claiming the title of being the best defensive line in the country."
Tonight he gets to argue it against the top-ranked team in Texas. Waxahachie at Denton Guyer, 7:00 at C.H. Collins Athletic Complex, first meeting between the two programs in 16 years.
The Associated Press and Dave Campbell's put out their Class 6A rankings Monday with Waxahachie first and Guyer fifth. We have them 42nd and 85th nationally, lower than Texas does, and we are comfortable there until somebody beats a team we rank.
Guyer's front is the best-recruited group on the field
Rowe is a four-star, ranked 129th nationally and 12th among defensive linemen, 6-4 and 265 pounds, with 40 offers. He committed to Oregon in March after flipping off an Oklahoma pledge. Last season he had 72 tackles, 26 tackles for loss and eight sacks, and caught eight passes for two touchdowns at tight end for good measure.
Khyren Haywood is 6-1, 260, committed to Texas Tech in June out of 35 offers. His 2025: 61 tackles, 24.5 for loss, 11.5 sacks. He also scores from the goal line, twice already this year.
Darrien Neal is 6-1, 285 and committed to TCU in May. Logan Lokey, a junior, is rated 88 and ranked 39th among defensive linemen with 29 offers, and he already has five sacks in two games.
Four linemen, four Power Four bodies, one of them a junior. Add Paxton Williams, a senior safety committed to North Texas who returned three touchdowns last season, and Landon De La Garza, who leads the team at 8.5 tackles a game.
What that group did last week: held Melissa to 88 total yards in a 27-9 win that the Record-Chronicle noted was the 200th victory in program history across 21 varsity seasons.
Lokey gave the paper the motto, and it explains the group.
"This year's motto is 'Standards over feelings.' We're trying to go win a state championship, and if you're not with the standard that's being upheld, then we don't care about your feelings and we're going to call you out on it."
Carter Morgan found one receiver and never looked away
Guyer's junior quarterback is rated 87 with 15 offers and no commitment yet. Last season he threw for 926 yards and seven touchdowns without an interception and ran for 517 more. This year he has 551 total yards through two games and went 21 of 29 for 237 at Melissa.
More than half his passing has gone to one person. DJ Reese, a senior, has 294 receiving yards on 21 catches, which leads every receiver in the Denton area. Against Melissa he caught 13 for 156 and a touchdown. Thirteen targets in a 27-9 game is a coach making a decision and staying with it.
Jayden Thomas averages 66.5 receiving yards and returned a kickoff for a score in the opener. Kash Villegas leads the backfield at 50.5 a game. Tristan Shelton, a junior receiver with 16 offers, caught 37 passes for 734 yards last season.
Morgan on his second year running it: "This year, I feel like I've got a lot more control, really building my teammates up and encouraging the team."
Waxahachie has the best player in the building
JayQuan Snell is a 6-3, 198-pound senior safety rated 94, ranked 46th in the country and second at his position, with a composite that puts him 35th nationally. He holds 42 offers and committed to Texas A&M back in November. One 247Sports piece calls him the best safety in America outright; their own board says second. Either way he is the highest-rated player on either roster tonight.
The quarterback is Jerry Meyer III, a junior with 23 offers who is committed to South Carolina, having decommitted from TCU in April. Last season he threw for 2,754 yards and 33 touchdowns.
Taylen Strange is the junior back who ran for 1,148 yards and nine touchdowns in 2025 and is averaging 128.5 a game this year with five scores. Against Coppell he carried 24 times for 139 and three touchdowns, including the go-ahead run inside the last two minutes of a 27-24 win, on a drive Waxahachie closed out with eleven straight runs.
Jordan Smith, a senior committed to UTSA, and Jordan Thompson-Woods, a junior ranked 91st among receivers who caught 55 passes last season, work the perimeter. Aaron Snell, a junior lineman, holds offers from Texas, Oklahoma and Pittsburgh. And Jashawn Crayton, a sophomore, already has 187 receiving yards and three touchdowns this season and twelve offers including Texas A&M and Ole Miss.
Dave Campbell's picked the Indians in August to win the program's first state championship since 1992. Lawrence Williams is in his first season after four years as the defensive coordinator, and before that he spent five seasons as head coach and athletic director at Blooming Grove.
The gap in the public record
MaxPreps still has no individual statistics entered for Waxahachie this season. Its page reports the record as 0-0 while the team page says 2-0. Every Waxahachie number above came out of a game story or a recruiting profile.
The top-ranked team in Texas has almost no public statistical record three weeks in, which is its own kind of interesting.
Two teams that ended the same afternoon
On December 6, 2025, Guyer lost a Region I final to Southlake Carroll 51-19 and finished 11-3. The same day, an hour south, Waxahachie lost a Region II final to Duncanville 35-27 and finished 11-2.
Same round, same afternoon, both a game short. Neither has lost since.
The 2010 meeting, the only one anybody can document between these programs, was played at a neutral site in Carrollton and Guyer won it 45-7. Sixteen years is how long it took to arrange the second one.
Reporting drawn from the Denton Record-Chronicle, Dave Campbell's Texas Football, the Dallas Morning News, 247Sports, MaxPreps, USA TODAY Sports and Kee On Sports.
