Streak ends against Bowie
As former Westlake High School quarterback Drew Brees broke a 50-year-old NFL record Sunday night with a touchdown pass in his 48th consecutive game, Lake Travis High School saw a similar streak end.
In its 24-14 win over Bowie Friday night, Lake Travis failed to pass for a touchdown for the first time since the 2010 championship game against Denton Ryan. Baker Mayfield had thrown at least one touchdown pass in every game he’d played since the opener of the 2011 season, when he stepped in for the injured Colin Lagasse and connected with Zach Austin for a score against Westlake.
In his 21-game streak, Mayfield threw 60 touchdown passes while giving up only six interceptions. In 2012, he’s thrown for 15 touchdowns and just one interception.
“We’ll just have to start a new one,” head coach Hank Carter said when informed that the streak had ended.
The 21-game stretch is the second-longest such streak in school history. Lake Travis, with Garrett Gilbert, Michael Brewer and Lagasse starting games, threw at least one touchdown pass in 58 consecutive games from 2007-2010.
In the third week of the 2007 season, an 18-10 win over Westwood, Gilbert rushed for a pair of touchdowns but didn’t get one through the air. The next week, he threw three scoring passes against Burnet, and the Cavaliers managed to strike through the air each week until the 2010 state quarterfinal playoff game against Cedar Park, when the Timberwolves kept Brewer from a touchdown pass. The Cavaliers still won the game thanks to a punt return from Cameron Wrinkle and touchdown runs from Michael Pojman and Brewer, whose scoring run provided the winning points in the 21-20 thriller.
Dating back to 2007, Gilbert, now the starting quarterback at SMU, owns the longest streak, throwing a touchdown pass in every one of his final 29 games as a Cavalier. Brewer, the back-up quarterback at Texas Tech, threw a touchdown pass in his first 26 Lake Travis starts before Cedar Park ended the streak. Mayfied’s 21-game streak ranks third on the list.
In the 58-game streak, Lake Travis’ starting quarterbacks put up wildly successful statistics, as might be expected. In his 29 games during the streak, Gilbert threw 101 touchdown passes and only 12 interceptions. When Brewer took over and started 26 of the next 29 games, he managed 64 touchdowns against 17 interceptions. When Lagasse filled in for Brewer, starting three games in 2010, he added seven touchdowns and just one interception.
Over the same stretch, Lake Travis had team winning streaks of 48 and 25 games. The Cavaliers had also won 48 consecutive district games from 2004-2010.
Ironically, Cedar Park has been involved in snapping two significant consecutive-games streaks. The Timberwolves beat Lake Travis 35-21 in the 2010 regular season finale to end the Cavaliers’ district winning streak. Then a month later they ended the touchdown pass streak. They also ended a six year district championship run. Earlier in 2010, Aledo had ended the Cavaliers’ 48-game winning streak. This season, A&M Consolidated ended the 25-game winning streak.
Lake Travis does have three streaks still alive. The Cavaliers have not been blanked in a game since 2002. The Cavaliers have played in 130 games since the beginning of the 2003 season. Lake Travis has also won its last 30 playoff games, a state record. And of course there’s the related streak of five consecutive state championships.
Brees broke Johnny Unitas’ long-standing NFL mark for touchdown passes in consecutive games. Unitas, the Baltimore Colts’ legend, threw a touchdown pass in 47 straight games from 1957-60.