Lehman quarterback Turner Lachey launches a touchdown pass during Friday’s surprise playoff win over Minster. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Lee Woolery)
Lehman again used its offense, and prayed for just enough defense, to pull the surprise knockout with a 50-48 win over Minster in Week 1 playoff football.
By Marcus Hartman for Press Pros Magazine
Sidney, OH —If you have never seen Lehman Catholic quarterback Turner Lachey play football, it can be a little disorienting.
The nation’s leading passer, according to MaxPreps, is the living embodiment of the run-pass option play. Every snap, he could take off and run or throw it down field.
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Often he looks like he is going to do both on the same snap.
Fortunately, fellow senior Evan O’Leary is very familiar with that.
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He’s been playing with Lachey since second grade.
“He probably has one of the smartest football IQs I’ve ever seen. He’s a great player, great player,” said O’Leary, who surpassed Justin Sawmiller of Kenton’s state record for receiving yards in a season (2,342) set in 2013 but did not want to talk about it after the eighth-seeded Cavaliers beat No. 9 seed Minster 50-48 in a Division VII, Region 28 first round playoff game at Sidney Memorial Stadium.
“I mean, my main focus was winning the game,” O’Leary said. “The record may be an individual stat in the record books, but this doesn’t happen without my coaches and my teammates.”
Of course Lachey was more than happy to praise O’Leary, who broke the state single-game receiving record with 393 receiving yards against Bethel in Week 8 and does his damage all over the field.
“I mean, he did it all himself,” said Lachey, who threw for 4,351 yards and 49 touchdowns in the regular season. “He just gets little dink and dunks and he breaks five, six tackles, and he’s gone.”
Lehman receiver Evan OLeary catches a touchdown pass against Minster.
That was not simple modesty. O’Leary made several catches down the field, but much of his damage was done on bubble screens and swing passes. Lachey was adept at flinging the ball out ahead of him just enough he could get a head of steam in the flat. That allowed O’Leary to run through arm tackles and pick up chunks of yardage from sideline to sideline.
His biggest play of the night was an 80-yard touchdown run in the second quarter that followed — what else — some improvisation by Lachey. The senior signal caller ran to his left then flipped the ball to O’Leary behind the line of scrimmage and watched him cut back against the grain, find some daylight and outrun the defense to the goal line to give Lehman a 22-13 lead in the second quarter.
“It was a backward,” Lachey said when told there was some debate in the press box if the play should go down as a reception or a rush. “It wasn’t designed in our playbook. I just played it. He was open. I just threw it to him, and he took off.”
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O’Leary lined up in the backfield at times, but usually the Cavaliers were in five wide with Lachey in the shotgun surveying the defense. He made a living in the scramble drill, frequently reversing field and resetting his eyes downfield to find an open man. He also often took a step toward the line of scrimmage only to stop and pop a pass over a defender’s head.
“He’s an athlete,” Lehman coach Dwane Rowley said. “He’s one of the best athletes that I’ve coached. He’s instinctual, and that’s where he just relies on his instincts, and sometimes it bites us in the ass, and sometimes it comes through. We just know what he’s capable of. It’s kind of a double-edged sword. We take what he does, and you kind of live and die by it.”
Lehman quarterback Turner Lachey ran and passed his way to a win over Minster.
Friday night they used it to build a 16-0 lead then held on as Minster nearly matched the high-scoring Cavaliers score for score.
Sophomore quarterback Carson Kaylor threw three touchdown passes and ran for two more, but it wasn’t enough against a team that averaged 46.7 points per game in the regular season.
“Their quarterback did a nice job keeping plays and their kids found space,” Minster coach Seth Whiting said. “You know, it’s my first head coaching job. We were in all empty (formations) and we threw 45 times a game, and I understand the backyard football side of it, and they did a good job of that. You know, it wasn’t an intricate passing game. It was running around in circles and throwing the ball, and they did a nice job of it. So tip the cap to them. They beat us.”
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Kaylor kept the Wildcats (6-5) in it until the end, leading a last-ditch 89-yard touchdown drive in the final two minutes that saw Minster overcome a fourth-and-13 early after a sack by Jace Olding that looked like it might end the game.
“Karson did a really good job, and our receivers did a good job getting to their spots,” Whiting said. “Our line protected really well for the most part. (Olding) for them is a really good football player, and we were able to one-on-one block him most of the night, but there was a couple times he got free and made plays. He was a dude.”
And so the Lachey-O’Leary Show will go on for another week.
Next up is their greatest challenge, but there will be time to worry about that on Saturday morning — at least for the players.
Lachey, who also had two interceptions from his free safety position on defense, said he planned to catch up on some sleep before worrying about four-time defending state champion No. 1 seed Marion Local and its 74-game winning streak.
Rowley wasn’t going to wait to dig into the Flyers, who were off this weekend as part of the new playoff format that gives the top four teams in each region a bye.
“As soon as we go in and unpack we’ll start breaking down film and get ready for Marion,” Rowley said. “They’re well-coached, a well-oiled machine. Going into the season, we always said to get where we want to go, it’s going to go through Marion with them being in our region. So we’re just happy for the chance to play against them and see how good we are, and then really see how good they are as well.”
Lehman head coach Dwayne Rowley shouts encouragement to his defense during the fourth quarter of Friday’s win over Minster.
Coming from the Three Rivers Conference, Lachey and O’Leary both confirmed they felt the need to prove themselves against a MAC team like Minster.
Marion Local, a 42-0 winner over the Wildcats two weeks ago, is another thing altogether, but the Cavaliers (10-1) don’t plan to back down.
“We hear it all the time that our league is is not so good, and we can’t hang in the MAC, but we’re trying to prove our point and trying to beat a MAC team,” Lachey said.
What will his message be for the locker room this week?
“I’m saying, if you don’t believe, just get out. I mean, you’ve got to believe. You’ve got to. Even if you don’t believe, you’ve got to trick your mind into believing that you can beat them. They’ve got all the stress and worries in the world because we have no worries. We’re the eight seed. They’re the one seed. They have 70-whatever straight wins. We have no pressure.”
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