The Broncos were the only program in Class 6A, and just one of eight in the state, to finish the regular season with an unblemished record. They host Henry Clay (0-10) Thursday night with a chance to extend another unbeaten streak: Douglass is 42-0 all-time against other schools in Lexington since it opened in the 2017-18 school year. I spoke about that and more with McPeek, who’s been in the big chair since 2020 and was the program’s offensive coordinator and o-line coach during its first three seasons.

Questions and answers lightly edited for clarity and flow.

KHSD: We in the media — certainly I am — can be cynical about week one of the playoffs due to the often lopsided nature of the matchups. As a team often as the top of the pecking order, how do you treat this week?

Nate McPeek: We're playing on Thursday, we did it last year as well. Obviously we're heavy favorites. We’re really looking at if our guys come out and do what they need to do early to where, y’know, everybody else can get reps. For me it's all about trying to take that stress off the starters if we can, cause we just played a four-quarter, all-the-way-to-the-end game with Boyle.

I took pads off us this week, we didn’t go pads Monday and Tuesday. We won’t go pads tomorrow (Wednesday). We got our work in but we’re just trying to get our guys recovered and hopefully we take care of business early so everybody can play. And the KHSAA lets us play Thursday, if both parties agree, to help alleviate referee shortages with so many first-round games. And with the 4-1 match-up — again it’s football so anything can happen — if we take care of business, that gives us an extra day of rest.

KHSD: That Boyle County game was a textbook slobberknocker, especially in the second half. Care to reflect on it? Had you ever had a game, scoring-wise, decided the way that game was? (Note: Frederick Douglass, trailing 14-6, scored 9 points in the final 13 seconds of the first half to win a 15-14 game. A Boyle defender intercepted a pass, then dropped it through the end zone for a safety. Then Douglass had a sizable kickoff return moved further ahead by a Boyle penalty, and Jayden Guzman delivered the tying TD to Dakari Talbert before Hunter Buschmann’s difference-making PAT).

McPeek: I've been coaching 23 years. That's the first time anything like that's ever happened and it'll probably never happen again. It’s just one of those things. I know (Boyle County head coach Justin Haddix) is on the on the bad side of it on his end. We talked this weekend and he's like, “hindsight's 20/20 and it's hard for a high school player, but the kid should’ve probably just knocked the ball down, but he’s just reacting to the ball on fourth down.”

We have to be better offensively in the second half, but give both defenses a lot of credit. D-line, linebackers and secondary, they’re good at all three levels and so are we. It was just a battle, an old-school football game. That’s kind of how we play, we’re a defensive-minded, run-the-football type program. We’ve been that way for 10 years. The three core components of Douglass football are play great defense, be good in the kicking game and special teams, and be able to run the ball. That’s won us a lot of football games.

Today you’re seeing a lot of points and excitement, and that’s great stuff that we want to do too, but at the end of the day, if you want to win postseason games, you have to stop people. Boyle’s got a great team. Seneca (Driver) reminds me a lot of Michael Mayer from CovCath back when we played them in 2019. He’s that type of generational talent, Mayer’s with the Raiders now. Seneca’s probably a little bigger and probably just as fast if not faster than him.

For me, my number one of all time (player at Douglass) is Damarco Fishback. As far as overall on-the-field football supremacy, he's probably the best overall athlete and game-changer. I think ’Kari (Talbert, who scored both Broncos TDs against Boyle) is right there with him as far as God-given ability to cut the ball in space and having moves to where you can't get a huge tackle on him. He reminds me a lot of him as far as that aspect goes, athletic ability while running the ball.

And the thing that is underrated about ’Kari is — obviously he had that great catch, the game-winning catch in the second quarter at the end of the half — but him being able to catch the ball is underrated. He has a basketball background and he's used to catching the ball and coming off screens, shooting and stuff like that. He's really good with his hands and I think that's an underrated part of his game that we've kind of highlighted the last two years, we've been more conscious to get him involved in the passing game.

KHSD: This is Frederick Douglass’ 10th season of existence. What has this season meant to you? And what does it say about the state of football in Lexington that your program has still yet to lose to any other team in the city?

Nate McPeek: I view the regular season totally different from the postseason, so for me there was kind of a finality to last week. I played it as kind of a legacy thing with our 10-year anniversary. I think it’s really cool, especially for our seniors, to be in the 10th year and they finish 10-0.

We play Henry Clay this weekand we're going to either play Lafayette or Brian Station in week two if we take care of business, so we could still have a couple opportunities to continue that streak in the postseason. I do think it's forced other teams to take football more seriously and administrations and schools have had to hire maybe a little bit better coaches and take more of an an ownership. I think some have in Fayette County. There’s no reason that all six public high schools in Lexington shouldn’t be good at football. That’s just my opinion. The talent is there for some of those schools to be where they need to be, and that’s no offense to anybody. I do think it has upped the game a little bit.

But it’s like anything else. In football you have to have playmakers. Coaching is super important in football because every position is so different on way they have to do, offensively, defensively and special teams. And just your overall culture. We have a really good freshmen staff that brings all these different people from these programs in Fayette County who have to mesh into a melting pot together to have a Bronco standard. I think our freshmen staff is more important than I am, probably the most important along with our strength-and-conditioning guys, because of what they do to bring everybody together and having that pride.

A quick note on every first-round playoff game in Class 5A and Class 6A. My game pick in bold.

Class A/Class 2A prospectus
Class 3A/Class 4A prospectus