For many quarterbacks, 271 yards and two touchdown passes would be considered an above-average night.

For Argyle’s JJ Harp, it was an abomination. In fact, the Eagles put forth their second-lowest scoring output of the season in last Friday’s 17-0 bi-district playoff win over Clyde. The lowest was in the Eagles’ 24-10 loss to Bridgeport earlier in the year.

Argyle (9-2) averaged 43.6 points per game in the regular season, and head coach Todd Rodgers said the typical Argyle offense will have to return to beat Graham (10-1) at 7 p.m. today in the area round at Tarleton State University’s Memorial Stadium.

In fact, Rodgers sees the game possibly resembling the Eagles’ closest game this year, a 47-35 win over Decatur on Nov. 2.

“I think it’ll be one of those deals where they [Graham] have the ability to score at any time with their ability to throw,” Rodgers said. “It just depends on our defense. We’ll be able to move the ball.

“Then again, every time I predict a high-scoring game, it turns out to be low-scoring, so that proves how much I know about it.”

The Argyle defense arguably had its best effort of the season on Friday, when it pitched its first shutout of the season against a run-oriented Clyde offense. But Graham runs a spread system, and a fairly balanced one.

As for the Eagles’ offense, it was never able to get into any type of rhythm against

Clyde. The Eagles had just four possessions in the first half and six in the second.

“The offense just needs their touches,” Rodgers said. “That’s been my philosophy ever since I’ve been the head coach here. What we do, defensively, is give them as many touches as we can. If we prevent them from scoring, great.

“I feel like we need about six [possessions] per half to be where we need to be so the defense has to play good enough to accommodate that, because we won’t be right all the time offensively.”

The Eagles are loaded offensively with Harp, who’s thrown for 3,048 yards, 31 touchdowns and seven interceptions this year. He has two deadly threats at receiver in Brady Brown (81 catches, 947 yards, 10 touchdowns) and Matt Handler (49-900-12), who both have major size advantages over most of the Eagles’ competition at 6-5 and 6-3, respectively.

Kyle Frizzell has been a very serviceable running threat this year for Argyle with 17 touchdowns and 993 yards.

ADAM BOEDEKER can be reached at 940-566-6872. His e-mail address is aboedeker@dentonrc.com.