Ask Vidor coach Jeff Mathews when is the last time a Pirates team won a football game at Nederland, and he can’t find it anywhere in his records.

“I’ve gone back to 1985,” said the 18th-year head coach, who started working on the Vidor staff in 1993. “I can’t find the last time a Vidor team has won at Nederland.”

Larry Neumann has been Nederland’s head coach since 1993, and it never dawned on him he’s never lost at Bulldog Stadium to Vidor.

“I didn’t even know it,” he said. “We don’t even talk about it.”

Vidor won three of four games against Nederland from 1982-85, but The News records did not indicate where each one was played. Other than that, a series that’s been contested 66 times has been clearly one-sided in the Bulldogs’ direction.

Mathews is bringing maybe one of his best teams ever to Nederland tonight. The Pirates (3-1) and Bulldogs (2-2) are both 2-0 in District 22-5A, but Mathews surmises it’ll take a perfect game to take down the five-time defending champions.

“They play unbelievable at home,” said Mathews, whose teams beat Nederland in Vidor in 2001, 2006 and 2010. “They realize it’s a big game. To be honest, they’ve had our number. We haven’t beaten them since 2010.”

The last time the Pirates had a winning record was 2012, when they went 9-2. They haven’t won more than four games since and they got off to a bad start this season with a 40-6 home loss to another resurging team in Barbers Hill.

“After Week 1 vs. Barbers Hill, we did not play well on either side of the ball,” Mathews said. “After that game, we had a meeting. We moved some people around. We re-established what we needed to do.
“To my guys’ credit, they bought into it.”

The Pirates will visit tonight with the leading offense and second-best defense in the district. In their vaunted Slot-T offense are four of the leading rushers in 22-5A, seniors Haylon Leckelt, Maverick Quirante and Kolby Humble and junior Hogan Stogner.

It’s going to take a greater amount of physicality from an improving Nederland defense, which has held Livingston and Baytown Lee to single-digit scoring the past two weeks, to bring down either of those guys, Neumann believes.

“We’re discovering ourselves on both sides of the ball,” he said. “Brady Spell, for example, wasn’t a starter at linebacker until a week ago and is playing really good. So, we’ve had several position changes like that, in an optimistic way, has been really surprising and made us better.”

The Bulldogs, who have won their past two games with different quarterbacks, have their weapons, too. They’ll miss running back Devon Simmons for the second straight game with a high ankle sprain, but they’re still deep in their own backfield with Ryan LeLeux and Sean Nguyen carrying the load.

Blaysin Fernandez will make his second straight start at quarterback, and the junior have plenty of targets, too, if he needs to spread the offense around. But the Bulldogs will stare down a defense sparked by a junior linebacker who made 22 tackles against Central coming off an injury.

“He’s a scrappy kid, natural leader,” Mathews said of Joey Ciccio. “He has the ability to make leaders better. You’ll see him on the sideline drawing something on the board and telling players if this play happens, you’ve got to go there.”

Should Vidor come up short in Nederland tonight, Neumann won’t credit it to the magic of Bulldog Stadium.

“It’s not a drum we beat,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to us. We love Bulldog Stadium; don’t get me wrong, but it’s not something we rely on to give us expectations of success. We rely on hard work, practice, great offseasons, unselfishness, commitment.”
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I.C. Murrell: 721-2435. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews