Three onside kicks. One last answer.
With the 32nd anniversary approaching on November 26, we revisit John Tyler, Plano East and the night a 24-point lead became a Texas football legend.
November 26, 2026, marks 32 years since John Tyler and Plano East turned a regional playoff at Texas Stadium into Texas football folklore. As that anniversary approaches, this is a good time to revisit a finish that still makes a 24-point lead feel unsafe.
If you ever need an argument for staying until the clock hits zero, pull up John Tyler against Plano East. Then put your keys back in your pocket.
On November 26, 1994, two unbeaten teams walked into Texas Stadium for a Class 5A Division II regional playoff. Both were 12–0. By the time they left, John Tyler owned a 48–44 victory and Texas football had a finish that still sounds made up when somebody explains it at the coffee shop.
With 3:03 remaining, the Lions led 41–17. Twenty-four points. That ought to buy a team some breathing room. Instead, Plano East scored four touchdowns, recovered three consecutive onside kicks and grabbed a 44–41 lead with 24 seconds left.
Read that again slowly. Four touchdowns. Three onside recoveries. Against an undefeated playoff opponent.
The Panthers deserve to be remembered for the work that made the ending possible. Quarterback Jeff Whitley was playing with a broken hand, according to his recollection in D Magazine’s 2014 oral history. Terence Green, a receiver handling the kicking, recalled using his toe to send those onside attempts tumbling into trouble. These were players solving the next problem while the scoreboard insisted they were wasting their time.
Then came the kick that changed who got to keep playing.
John Tyler’s Roderick Dunn had already mishandled two of the onside kicks. When Plano East kicked deep, he had another chance. Dunn’s 97-yard touchdown return gave the Lions their final answer and a place in the state quarterfinals. The player whose afternoon had helped unravel the lead supplied the play that rescued it.
There is a reason that part sticks. Football hands out blame in a hurry. Sometimes it leaves a young man just enough daylight to rewrite the verdict.
Years later, former John Tyler running back Jessie Taylor told KLTV that Dunn had predicted the return. Taylor remembered his own skeptical response: “yea it’s gonna rain horses today too.” That is a teammate’s memory, shared three decades afterward, and it captures the sheer improbability of what happened next.
The television call helped carry the game beyond the people inside Texas Stadium. Plano TeleCable’s Denny Garver and Eddy Clinton, joined by guest Mike Zoffuto, gave the comeback its wonderfully unvarnished soundtrack. The teams received the 1995 ESPY for Showstopper of the Year.
John Tyler’s season kept going, all the way to the Class 5A Division II championship. Allen Wilson’s Lions beat Austin Westlake 35–24 for the title.
That trophy belongs in the telling. So does Plano East’s refusal to surrender a season that appeared finished. Reduce this game to a punch line about a lost lead and you miss what both teams contributed.
The Beard’s take: the next time somebody says a football game is over with three minutes left, make them watch this one. Preferably before they start walking to the truck.