Can a player from a 1-5 team be listed among the top contenders for IndyStar Mr. Football?
If his name is Mark Zackery IV, then yes. Even after Lawrence North’s decisive 58-28 win at Ben Davis on Saturday afternoon, LN coach Pat Mallory breathed a sigh of relief and then took the conversation in a different direction when he was asked about the win.
“I want to talk about Zackery first,” Mallory said. “Holy cow. I mean, everybody knows he is a good kid. I kept telling our offense, ‘Why do we keep challenging the kid?’ He’s good and we keep going to his side. ‘Why are we doing that?’ He scored all their points except the PATs, right? That’s crazy.”
USA TODAY Indiana Week 7 rankings: A new No. 1 in 6A, two teams share top spot in 5A
Super 25 poll Week 7: Indiana high school football’s top teams
It is crazy. This has not been the season Zackery and his Ben Davis teammates were hoping for. The defending Class 6A state champions are 1-5 (for the first time since 1974) going into Friday’s game at Carmel. But there is still time for a turnaround … and Zackery’s overall credentials (more below) might be as strong, or stronger, than any contender for the award.
I wanted to take a look six weeks into the season, with some pretty substantial data already in the books, at how the Mr. Football race stands. I wrote before the season about some of the historical data and facts that can help us narrow down the list. I don’t want to rehash all of that again but to condense it down:
∎ Four of the past six winners — Pioneer’s Jack Kiser (2018), New Palestine’s Charlie Spegal (2019), Andrean’s Drayk Bowen (2022) and East Central’s Josh Ringer (2023) — won state championships as juniors. All but one (Bowen’s team was a state runner-up) also won titles as seniors.
∎ Four of the past five winners…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/2024-indiana-mr-football-race-084549359.html
Author : Indianapolis Star
Publish date : 2024-10-03 08:45:49
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
