GARDEN CITY - After the game -- and after the celebration involving a boombox blaring DJ Khaled's 'All I Do Is Win,' a small contingent of students that made the road trip and a fair amount of fence-hopping into the grandstands -- the Dexter High School football coach Tom Barbieri had his team take a knee.

Sure, the Dreadnaughts beat Garden City, 37-16, in a game that wasn't really that close. Sure, they racked up almost 400 yards of offense. And sure, they were just four minutes from pitching a shutout on defense.

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But that wasn't exactly good enough. In order to be ready for next Thursday's Southeastern Conference game against Pioneer, they'll have to play a lot better.

When asked if Dexter would beat Pioneer with a similar effort, Barbieri's answer was straight to the point: "No."

"We have to be more consistent on offense, and we have to play the whole field on defense," Barbieri. "We've got to tackle well and block well, that's what we need to do to beat Pioneer."

On Friday night, the Dreadnaughts (1-0) showed signs of their potential.

When running on all cylinders, the Dexter offense can keep up with anyone, but, with junior quarterback Mike Mioduszewski still hindered by nagging injuries sustained in summer camp, the offense sputtered on several potentially key drives.

Early in the first quarter, the Dreadnaughts drove inside the Garden City red zone, only to give up an interception. The offense tripped up again in the second quarter -- this time inside the 10 -- when Dexter lined up in five-wide and spread sets instead of trying to power it in, settling for a chip-shot field goal.

"I like to do things like that," Mioduszewski said. "But sometimes, that close to the goal line, with everyone jammed in there, it's harder to read the defense. But we did it at a time when the run game wasn't really working for us. (Garden City) was running a few fronts and shifts that were confusing, so we tried something new."

But at other times, the offense exploded. The Dreadnaughts were particularly explosive when the ball was in the hands of bruising running back Sequoyah Burke-Combs in space. The Cougars had no answer for Burke-Combs on swing and screen passes. He finished with three catches for 50 yards, and he tacked on 68 more yards on 12 carries.

"When we come together, and everything is clicking, you can just see it," Mioduszewski said. "The linemen are getting off their blocks and picking up guys downfield, and receivers are blocking great. ... We can be really potent. If we play our best all game, I think we can score 40 points a game every time."

Mioduszewski finished 15-of-29 for 163 yards, two touchdowns and an interception.

After a 91-yard scamper by Dexter backup quarterback Noah Hiser, Garden City registered one of its few highlights of the day. Senior Sean Eichelberger dropped the ensuing kickoff, picked it up, raced up the sideline, broke a tackle, reversed fields and raced to the endzone to wake up a home crowd that had little to cheer about until then. Randy Holloway scored on a five yard run for the Cougars (0-1) with 38 seconds remaining.