Business as Usual: Catonsville's Offensive Line Continues to Pave the Way

Some months ago during offseason lifting, Catonsville assistant coach Warren Como looked around his prospective offensive line—one which lost four of its five starters to graduation in the spring—and hinted to his maulers upfront, all somewhat undersized and perhaps not as strong as in years past, that the Comets may be forced into throwing the ball a little more in 2011.

The squad’s one returning lineman, senior right tackle Antoine Wright, wasn’t about to see Catonsville’s over a decade long philosophy of relying on the power run game go out the window on his unit’s behalf.  

He looked at the guys joining him in the trenches this season and knew they could run the football.

“I was like Como, just listen to me real quick,” Wright recalls. “We have a lot of heart. Even though we don’t have the strength and the size that we had last year, we have a lot of heart. All these kids want to come play football and make it to the next level. Como was like, ‘alright I’m going to take what you said into consideration.’ We came out of the scrimmage running the ball.”  

Two games into the regular season, and the Comets ground game is picking up right where it left off a year ago. After rushing for over 3,300 yards as a team last year, Catonsville has combined for 437 yards on the ground in wins over Boys Latin and Perry Hall.

Along with Wright, fellow tackle Travis Davis, guards Jon Reymann and Brandon Dixon, center Nathan Reeves and backup tackle Mason Klompus—with help from tight end Julian Jones and fullback Julian Singletary—are meshing well as a unit, despite the fact that before this season the group as whole was without much varsity game experience.

However, looking at some of the running backs yards per carry averages so far this season, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Tailbacks DeAndre Lane (7.2) and Jerome Williams (5.4) and halfback Josh Hylton (6.5) are picking up large chunks at a time and the offensive line’s continuity is what’s allowed them to break into the second level of the defense.  

Yes, they may be undersized on most nights, as will be the case Friday evening when the Comets look to remain unbeaten at Woodlawn, but any lineman will tell you, there are plenty of ways to make up for it.

Just ask the interior players, Dixon and Reymann at guard, as well as Reeves—who Wright nicknamed ‘the big little man’—at center. All three will be smaller than their defensive counterparts this season. So far, it hasn’t been an issue.  

“They are always in the right place,” head coach Rich Hambor said. “Them just being where they are supposed to be all the time alleviates half of the problem right there. It’s using smarts and a lot of leverage instead of just force.”

Meanwhile, Davis, a four-year Comet and the team’s biggest lineman, has shown solid instincts and the ability to explode off the ball while Klompus has proven to have a firm handle on the offense and the readiness to fill in when need be.

As for Wright, he’s been so reliable (and in shape) that two games in, he’s barely missed a snap—on offense or defense. And, after being the newcomer to the line a year ago, he’s emerged as the vocal leader of this year’s group.  

“He’s not a very loud guy in the first place, but he’s more vocal as far as giving instructions, he’s not yelling and screaming pointless things,” Hambor said of Wright. “When he says something it has a purpose. It has a goal.”

Last Friday against Perry Hall, the senior certainly had a purpose for his words. The Comets struggled on the ground for parts of the first half so Wright gathered his unit together and calmly figured out where the breakdowns were occurring.

“When we were playing Perry Hall everybody was fussing at each other. I told the lineman to circle around me. We got away from the team for a minute,” Wright said. “We talked about what was going wrong, how they were lining up, how we were getting beat and we went out in the second half with a new head on our shoulders and won the game.”

As far as Como’s suggestion months ago that the Comets may be in need of a change of game plan? Well, if he did it as a ploy to light a fire under his players, it certainly worked.

Either way, the Catonsville coaching staff is pleased with what they’re seeing out of an offensive line that’s only going to improve as it gains experience.

“They know that we are almost always a running team,” Hambor said. “To say that we don’t know if we can do that anymore, I think they took that a little personally and wanted to prove that we can do what we do all the time. They’ve shown that we can.”