Nine touches were all it took to render the rest of the afternoon a formality.

Six for Denver Harper, three for Kaden Williams. Five touchdowns and 334 all-purpose yards later, with the controlled demolition of Morehead State complete, both gentlemen got a well-earned respite during the second half to rest up for a long season.

The opponent doesn't matter. The stakes don't matter. Turning 55.6 percent of your opportunities into scores is some revolutionary work for the ol' touch-to-touchdown ratio. Doing that in seven-on-sevens during the summer is a good ratio. Doing that against local middle schoolers would be perfectly acceptable, if somewhat unfair to the tweens.

Doing so in a Division I football game borders on the absurd. Hey, here's the answer to a trivia question no one even thought to ask until now: Seth Davis, Chris Edwards, Tazion McQueen, and Sidney Webb.

Who are the Morehead State defenders who managed to tackle either Harper or Williams last weekend, Ken? 

Each score could be boiled down to that most essential of football maneuvers: giving the ball to the fastest guy and letting him outrun everyone else. As far as I can tell, nobody so much as laid a finger on Harper during any of his three scores; for his 31-yard receiving touchdown near the end of the second quarter, he was as wide open as you're ever likely to see a receiver be. Frankly, by the time the ball found him, he looked lonely.

It is possible – possible! – that on one of Williams' scoring jaunts, someone managed to put a hand on him. Not enough to deter him from authoring one of the most absurd stat lines you're likely to find in this or many other seasons: two carries, 120 yards, two touchdowns.

It should not be lost on anyone that two of the smallest in stature for the Govs had two of the biggest days against Morehead State. Harper, all 5-8 of him, has repeatedly come up big through the first three games of the season, while the 5-7 Williams has shown flashes of home run ability since the first day he stepped on campus. It wasn't the first time either Gov showcased the potential to break a game wide-open, and it probably won't be the last either.

To paraphrase our good friend and broadcaster Van Stokes: bottom line, Williams and Harper aren't going to be 15-20 touch guys who pound the ball and wear down a defense. But they only need a crease, a seam, or a patch of open grass to ruin an opponent's entire Saturday afternoon.

There's a particular satisfaction that comes from watching a football team turn the second half into a glorified administrative exercise. Nick Saban made an art form out of it at Alabama, and Saturday's game was eerily reminiscent of the sort of awe-inspiring destruction peak-era Saban's Alabama teams would render upon whatever unfortunate souls the local denizens would put forth to oppose the Crimson Tide each week. Those teams would routinely leave nothing but scorch marks in the earth for the survivors to gawk at in terror. They worked fast to put the game out of reach, often reducing entire second halves to a series of brief and hurried scout-team drills so the All-Americans could get off their feet and Nick could get back on the recruiting trail.

It's not a perfect analogy, but saying "Austin Peay football evoked something that reminded me of Nick Saban" and meaning it as a deeply felt compliment should make everyone feel like we're on the right track here. Austin Peay is not Alabama, Morehead State is not LSU, and I suspect Nick Saban would have several questions about my offensive terminology.

But there is something unmistakably Saban-esque about scoring early, scoring often, putting the game away, and spending the rest of the afternoon making sure nobody gets hurt.

Perhaps most importantly, though, what happened after the destruction matters.

Everybody got reps.

That's what made those Alabama teams so good, after all. The blowouts weren't merely opportunities for the starters to take their helmets off early. They were chances for the rest of the roster to play football, too — to get snaps, make mistakes, learn from them, and become better players before they were actually needed in the biggest moments.

Kaden Williams knifing through the Morehead State defense for 120 yards and two touchdowns might have happened anyway. But the bedrock for that performance was laid when he got five carries in a blowout win against Lindenwood in 2023.

Reps make players better. Reps make mature teams.

And mature teams are the ones that can turn a nine-touch afternoon into something much bigger than nine touches.

Reps, ultimately, are how you build champions.