JEROMESVILLE − With most things in life, things change. Some might even say they evolve. In the case of football, this conversation settles around how offensive philosophies and styles have shifted over the last 20 years on every level of the game.
Once upon a time, we lived in a world where running backs ruled the sport. In the present day, it’s a quarterbacks league. In many ways, while having a high class signal-caller on the gridiron is essential, it’s the skill positions that teams are becoming more and more reliant on these days. On the high school level, finding or developing serious level players at the skill positions could be a hard task for some programs.
More: High School Football in Ashland, Ohio: Complete Coverage of 2024 season
Hillsdale doesn’t have to worry too much about that, as the undefeated 8-0 Falcons have three skill players at the wide receiver position that have been causing plenty of headaches for opposing secondaries this season in senior Holland Young, and juniors Hayden McFadden and Brock Bower. Together, the trio just might have an argument for being the best wide receiver group in the Ashland/Wayne County area.
“We got a lot of depth at receiver,” said Bower, after the Falcons 36-6 home victory over Northwestern last Friday. “We got hard workers. We got skill. We got a lot of athletes. We’re lucky. Not a lot of teams have what we have.”
Last season, Hillsdale ran the triple-option offense that resulted in one of the leading offensive teams in the area. Get a look at them this season (averaging 36.7 points per game), and they’re spreading defenses out on the perimeter frequently and employing a ton of RPO (run-pass option) looks. That offensive shift plays right into their hands and best utilizes their three go-getting wideouts.
So, is the 2024 wide receiver group even deeper and better than 2023?
“Oh yeah. 100 percent. I agree,” said McFadden, who was the Falcons leading receiver last season. “We lost Gavin Casdorph last year. We worked this summer and we replaced him with Holland Young, and he’s doing extremely well for us.”
“We had big shoes to fill. We had Braylen Jarvis and Gavin Casdorph last season,” Bower said.
As a sophomore, McFadden (10 receiving TDs in 2023) established himself as Hillsdale’s go-to receiver, and he hasn’t skipped a beat as a junior. Playing limited snaps at wide receiver last season, Bower has stepped into a larger role this time around. Then there’s Young, who hardly got on the field as a varsity member last season and cut most of his time on JV.
“I always felt like I could do it,” said Young. “I just needed to get my opportunity. When I got that, I just seized the opportunity.”
Covering all three has proven to be a difficult task for their opponents, defensive backs in particular. One similar trait each hold is that they all are go-getters when it comes to going after the football when it’s in the air, and once they secure it, things happen. It can be McFadden (27 catches, 524 receiving yards, 6 TD catches, 1 rushing TD) using his speed to pick up a big gain on a short slant, or beating his man down the field for six. Throw the ball in the vicinity of Bower (17 catches, 242 receiving yards, 3 TD catches, 2 rushing TDs) and he’s athletic enough to haul it in.
Thing is, they know they’re a handful for secondaries and that only benefits first-year starter and sophomore quarterback Kael Lewis.
“It’s been great. I feel like it’s great for Kael to have all these options,” Young said. “You’re not going to be able to guard all three of us.”
So much of football now at the skill positions is the quarterback throwing the ball in the radius of his outside guys and trusting they will come down with it. That’s Young (33 catches, 543 receiving yards, 6 TD catches) in a nutshell, who has thrived on snagging those 50-50 jump balls.
“I go do it with the mentality that its my ball,” said Young. “It’s my job to go get it. If I didn’t get it, I didn’t do my job.”
Leave it to head coach Trevor Cline to make great use of his three weapons with savvy playcalling, where he’ll use McFadden on jet sweeps and WR reverses, and even throw in a hook-and-ladder and flea-flicker − like he did against Dalton in Week 5 − to get those guys the ball.
“Coach Cline does a great job calling plays and we do a great job exploiting the defense,” Young elaborated. “If teams back out and try to cover us deep, we have [Owen] Sloan right up the middle.”
“We’re working in a whole new offense this year compared to last year,” McFadden said. “We’re working in so many new plays because we have so many new athletes at our skill positions that we are using more and more.”
For these three go-getting receivers (all three start on defense too), Young, McFadden and Bower want to continue to feed off the other.
“We can count on each other every single time,” said McFadden. “We know what each other can do. We’ve been working with each other since winter.”
“Whether someone has a good play or a bad play, we always have each others back,” said Bower. “We’re trying to compete with each other. We let each other know when we’re doing something good. We learn from each other. If someone runs a good route, we’ll say, ‘I wanna run a route like that too.’ We have a brotherhood going.”
jsimpson@gannnett.com
Twitter/X:@JamesSimpsonII
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Hillsdale’s go-getting wide receiver trio making it hard on defenses
