CHATTANOOGA — Brentwood Academy senior linebacker Kenneth Simon II took the result a little harder than some of his teammates.
The Eagles’ 38-20 season-opening loss at Baylor on Aug. 20 was a TSSAA football state championship rematch of last year’s Division II-AAA final. But it was also a nationally televised bragging-rights affair played between some of the nation’s top recruits, with seven Power 4 commits on the field.
That made it more difficult for Simon as a defender to watch fellow Tennessee football commit and Baylor five-star running back David Gabriel Georges wrap up his postgame interview on ESPN2 and skip to the locker room.
Gabriel Georges rushed for 172 rushing yards — most in the second half — and added three touchdowns all after
halftime to go with 78 yards receiving.
“Obviously, in this game you get to go and compete against the best,” Simon said. “Our mentality going into the game was ‘kill, physicality, aggressiveness.’ So that’s what we play with and that’s what we try to do. We’ll see him again.”
Brentwood Academy (0-1) and Baylor (1-0) look like the favorites to play in the December state final for Tennessee's largest private-school classification. If that’s the case, their season opener can be a guide for BA about how to limit Georges as it did in the 2025 championship.
But it's not easy.
Georges had a game-changing flurry in the fourth quarter, punching in his first TD to give Baylor a 24-13 lead. The Eagles answered with Ole Miss commit Crews Jenkins’ 80-yard touchdown pass to Tennessee commit Kesean Bowman with 11:21 left in the game, but Georges took over on the two next drives, scoring twice to ice the game.
As each defender took their best shot, Georges’ helmet came off several times, at least once at the hands of Simon who was flagged on the play.
“I’ve never had so many people trying to snatch my helmet,” Georges said.
Simon said it wasn’t intentional and wondered if Georges’ helmet was loose. He and Georges don’t know each other well but patted each other on the helmet after a hard collision in the second half.
“I texted him a couple times trying to get him to come to Tennessee, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a face-to-face conversation with him,” Simon said. “We missed a good bit of tackles on him. When we had contact with him, he wasn’t going down. Just being able to get his feet stopped and wrapped, getting his body stopped and getting hands on him. We definitely can do better than that.”
The highlight reels of Gabriel Georges — known by many as just “DGG” — are becoming must-see videos on social media. To its credit, BA didn’t let him have one of those moments.
“You see a lot of tape (before) and there are a lot of plays where it looks like he’s wrapped up. A lot of running backs would go down. But he’s just a freak athlete. You can tell, every play he thinks, ‘I’m going to go score the football.’ He’s not thinking about getting 10-15 yards. Just speaking for me and Kenny, we just have to rally to the ball more. That’s a matchup I want back, for sure.”
Tyler Palmateer covers high school sports for The Tennessean. Have a story idea for Tyler? Reach him at tpalmateer@tennessean.com and on the X platform, @tpalmateer83.
He also contributes to The Tennessean's high school sports newsletter, The Bootleg. Subscribe to The Bootleg here.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Tennessee football commit David Gabriel Georges gave Brentwood Academy fits
