High school football 3A preview: Cedar at Park City

Cedar (6-5) at Park City (6-4)

3A state tournament quarterfinal

Friday, 5 p.m.

Parry's Power Guide: Park City by 13.5 points

All-time series: Park City leads 5-1

Cocach vs. Coach: Park City's Brandon Matich leads Cedar's Todd Peacock, 1-0

Last meeting: Regular season, Aug. 19, 2005 — Park City 19, Cedar 15

The monkey's finally off the backs of the Park City Miners, and now they aim to see just how far they go in the Class 3A football tournament.

In each of the previous two seasons, Park City had lost in the opening round of the playoffs in heartbreaking fashion, but the Miners exorcised many of those demons by posting a convincing 41-7 win over Emery in the first round last Friday.

Now Park City turns its attention to gritty Cedar, whom the Miners will host at 5 p.m. Friday in the 3A quarterfinals.

While both teams are obviously completely different than they were five years ago, it's worth mentioning that before last weekend, the last time Park City had won a playoff game was back in 2004, and on that occasion, the Miners were beaten by Cedar in the quarterfinals.

Combine that with the fact that multiple coaches in Class 3A feel Cedar is a very dangerous and underrated team, and it's clear the Miners will have to stay on their toes to get to the semifinals at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

If they stay on their toes this weekend and play well, though, they'll certainly present some difficult challenges to Cedar.

That's the assessment of highly respected Cedar coach Todd Peacock.

"I think we really have our work cut out for us," he said.

Peacock said his guys must take care of the football and play extremely well to be able to compete against Park City.

Leading the way for the Redmen in that regard will be running back Trent Grover and tight end Ryan Decker. Grover is second in Class 3A with 1,395 rushing yards, while Decker has hauled in five touchdown passes.

Cedar statistical breakdown

Scoring offense: 23.6 ppg

Scoring defense: 18.9 ppg