Drake Wells received the shotgun snap. He handed off to running back Parker Johnson who flipped the football to Braylon Newcomb. Wells ran a pass route into the right side of the end zone and Newcomb threw him the ball for two points.
Last year against Gahanna Lincoln and Miamisburg the play didn’t work. But this time it did on a night when Wells, the quarterback, and Newcomb, the H-back with quarterback experience, combined to create a dual threat behind center.
Wells completed 17 of 29 passes for 154 yards, including five to Newcomb for 59 yards. Newcomb ran out of the Wildcat formation for 47 yards on nine carries and touchdown runs of one, two and one yards in the Elks’ 27-14 victory.
“You never know, we could throw out of it, we could run out of it,” Newcomb said. “We can do anything out of Wildcat because I played quarterback my whole life, too. So it’s just something new to throw off the defense.”
Newcomb, a junior, also played quarterback last year after Wells was injured in the seventh game and led the Elks to two playoff wins. He is first and foremost a runner who catches short passes and darts around tacklers, turns on dimes and disrupts everything a would-be tackler is trying to do. And he does the same out of the Wildcat.
“I just want points – I love it,” said Wells, who is a senior. “He’s going to get yards.”
Newcomb shows up behind center on the goal line, in the middle of drives and backed up against the goal line. Head coach Brent Ullery said there are markers he wants to hit for the number of touches for several players. Newcomb’s magic number is high.
“This offseason we talked about why would we get rid of something that was so good to us?” Ullery said of Newcomb’s quarterback production last year. “Braylon is a phenomenal dynamic athlete. He needs touches and the easiest way to get him to touch the ball is to snap it to him.”
This arrangement, that occasionally sends Wells to the sideline, wouldn’t be as effective if Wells didn’t buy in.
“Drake is a team captain for reason – he’s a team player,” Ullery said. “He wants what everybody else wants. He wants to go out and win games. And the rest of the stuff comes after that.”
Wells says Newcomb is “a violent runner” and they have built trust with each other. They also trust and depend on the offensive line, which has only one returning starter in right guard Matthew Wheatley. The four new starters are junior left tackle Koul Koul, junior left guard Zane Hough, senior center A.J. Abboud and senior right tackle Tayler Berner.
“They do an awesome job,” Ullery said. “They go in and out of that stuff really quick in the middle of drives. So hats off to them.”
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