TYRONE - At the beginning of the season, Carrollton coach Rayvan Teague said nobody would cruise through Region 6-AAA unscathed.

The Trojans guaranteed that’ll be the case with a 28-14 loss at Sandy Creek Friday night. Instead of sitting atop the region with a perfect record, Carrollton dropped into a three-way tie for first place with Sandy Creek and Cedartown with three weeks left in the regular season.

Offensively, Carrollton had its worst performance in a regular-season game in more than three years. Defensively, the Trojans (6-1, 3-1 Region 6-AAA) couldn’t stop the Fighting Patriots’ passing game as quarterback Rio Johnson threw for 261 yards and three touchdowns. Most of the time, Johnson’s target was wide receiver Braxton Lane, who picked up 233 yards and a pair of touchdowns on eight receptions.

“They just came out basically and physically whipped us,” Teague said. “They do have an exciting player in the Lane kid. He beat us time and time again. We’d have him covered and he’d make the catch anyway.”

Sandy Creek (5-3, 3-1 Region 6-AAA) took control of the game in the second half. The Fighting Patriots, who had a 14-7 lead at halftime, added another touchdown midway through the third quarter when Lane scored on a 61-yard touchdown pass from Johnson.

Lane caught the ball along the right sidelines near the Sandy Creek 30-yard line, turned around and dashed the rest of the way into the end zone for his second touchdown of the game.

The Fighting Patriots scored again with 6:55 left in the fourth quarter with Alex Green’s 1-yard touchdown run to go ahead 28-7.

Carrollton scored on its next possession after Eric Jay Phillips’ 43-yard pass to Rashad Daniels - the Trojans’ first pass completion of the night - set up an 8-yard touchdown run from LaBrian Hudson with 4:10 left in the game.

That came much too late for the Trojans, however. Carrollton’s usually dependable run-oriented offense was neither successful in scoring nor taking time off the clock, with the Trojans going three-and-out on three of their five series in the first half.

That meant the defense was on the field more often than normal, which was especially troublesome with senior defensive lineman and four-year starter Nick Craig out of the line-up for most of the game. He was injured earlier in the week at practice.

“We had been taking 34 snaps a game on defense, (Friday night) we took 34 snaps in the first half,” Teague said. “We still had good pressure, we still stopped the running attack for most of the game, but we just did not stop the pass.”

Each team scored a touchdown in the first quarter, with Sandy Creek striking first on Lane’s 31-yard touchdown pass from Johnson as the Fighting Patriots became the first team to score a touchdown before the Trojans in a game this year.

The Trojans answered just over a minute later when Luke Walker ran the ball one yard on the quarterback keeper for a touchdown. Carrollton had a couple big plays before that to set up the touchdown with Courtney Mabry picking up 31 yards on a carry and Phillips running the ball 21 yards.

Sandy Creek scored the only points of the second quarter on a 14-play drive that ended with a 3-yard touchdown pass from Johnson to Matthew Solomon on 3rd-and-goal with 3:51 left.

“Any time they wanted to throw the ball, they threw it and they completed it,” Teague said. “They beat our best people out there, so hats off to them.”

Carrollton finished the game with 169 yards rushing and were led on the ground by Mabry, who picked up 76 yards and 13 carries.

The Trojans, ranked No. 3 in the latest Associated Press poll, weren’t the only highly-ranked Class AAA team to fall Friday night as No. 1 LaGrange lost 25-16 to Shaw.