Argyle head coach Todd Rodgers will never think long term.

    “I choose not to, and for this football team, all we think about is one week at a time,” Rodgers said of his team’s current playoff run. “This particular team is very unique and they’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time.”

    Argyle (10-0 overall, 5-0 in district) opened the Class 3A Division II playoffs on Thursday against District 10-3A runner up Paris (7-3 overall). Unfortunately, no scores were available as of press time, but the Eagles were obvious favorites as they came in as the state’s fifth-ranked team and the No. 1 ranked team in the Dallas Morning News’ Class 3A area poll.

    Thursday’s game was a rematch of last year’s bi-district match up, a game in which Argyle won 41-21. The final score was no indication of how closely contested the game turned out to be. The Eagles jumped out to a 27-0 halftime lead before Paris came roaring back with 21-unanswered points.

    Argyle is in the playoffs for the fourth-straight year since joining Class 3A and has advanced at least past the first round the last two seasons. Of course this year holds much higher expectations.

    One major reason Rodgers said he thinks this team is unique is that they have been able to pull out victories over teams like Prosper and Celina – programs they’ve been unsuccessful against in years past. This year also marked the program’s first unbeaten regular season and first outright district championship.

    “It’s a sort of tempered excitement because we’ve been able to have successes here and we have that sort of tradition established,” Rodgers said. “It’s been special, but we’ve been able to keep our emotions in check because we all know our ultimate goal has yet to be attained. So I think we have not quite experienced our emotional peak yet.”

   But beating a program like Celina in the season finale certainly is a step in the right direction.    The Eagles started slow – holding just a 10-6 lead entering halftime – before scoring 13 points in the third quarter to eventually run away with a 29-14 win over Celina last week. It was their first-ever win against Celina – a program rich in playoff tradition.

    The Eagles managed 156 yards on 28 carries to overcome just 56 yards through the air. In fact, it was Dran Crenshaw and Kevin Ryan’s touchdown runs in the third quarter that helped break the game open for good. Ryan scored on a 30-yard jaunt.

   Defensively, the Eagles haven’t allowed more than 14 points in nine games this season. While they weren’t able to post a shutout all season long, they held three opponents to seven points or less.