Having moved on from autumn Sundays, Jason Witten has found more gridiron glory under Texas’ Friday night lights.
Witten, an all-time Dallas Cowboys great, coached the Liberty Christian (Argyle, Texas) Warriors to a TAPPS (Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools) Division II state championship win over the Regents Knights (Austin), 52-10, on Friday night in Waco.
Witten’s Warriors culminated a 14-0 season in which they outscored their opposition, 716-96, with their closest victory coming by 28 points.
Witten’s squad was led over the season by quarterback Cole Welliver, running back Chase Garnett, receiver Brady Janusek, and his sons CJ Witten, a junior, and Cooper Witten, a freshman, who were among the team’s top tacklers.
Liberty Christian is a kindergarten-through-12th-grade private Christian school with an enrollment of just fewer than 1,300 students.
The 41-year-old Witten, who played 17 NFL seasons, took over the school’s football program in 2021 and has gone 26-10 in three seasons. Witten’s squad was 2-8 in his first year, the Warriors’ third consecutive losing season, before turning it into a small school power that won it’s first state crown in 16 years on Friday night.
Our Warrior Football team is bringing home their first TAPPS State Championship in 16 years!!!! We are so proud of the hard work and grit they have shown this season! Congratulations to this amazing team and their coaches!
LETS GO WARRIORS! pic.twitter.com/igMZoYQ2Fo
— Liberty Christian (@LibertyArgyle) December 2, 2023
Witten was a 11-time Pro Bowler during a 16-year tenure with the Cowboys from 2003-2019, which included a brief retirement in which he spent the 2018 season in the broadcast booth. The likely future Hall of Famer ended his career after a 2020 campaign with the Las Vegas Raiders.
A Tennessee native who’s become a Texas football hero, Witten had never won a championship in high school, in college at Tennessee or in the NFL. He won one with his sons and the rest of his Warriors on Friday night.
