QB stars in varsity debut as Downey routs Lincoln in football season opener
The Downey High football team had a whole new product to build this off-season.
More than half of the 22 starters from last year’s Central California Athletic League championship team graduated. And those departing players had tons of experience. During the preseason, Knights coach Jeremy Plaa estimated around 12 of the 22 were three-year varsity starters.
That team accomplished a perfect regular season, earned a first-round playoff bye and hosted a Division II quarterfinal game.
But a new year brings new challenges, and Plaa and his staff were tasked with following up a historic season with a team riddled with players getting their first taste of the big time. This year’s squad bonded over the off-season during 24 summer workouts, a college-level weight program from coach Scott Sacuskie and weekly 7-on-7’s.
They worked months for Aug. 18, the first Friday night of the high school football season in the Sac-Joaquin Section, and their opponent was a familiar one: Lincoln-Stockton. Entering Friday’s game, the Knights had played the Trojans six times since 2008, winning twice. Those wins came in their two most recent matchups.
The list of great quarterbacks out of Downey is long, and in his varsity debut, Carson Lamb began making his case to be the Knights’ newest household name. The junior completed 28 of 36 passes for 293 yards with five touchdowns through the air and he ran for one more score. The Knights routed the visiting Trojans 50-33.
“He had a great game,” Plaa said. “Can’t wait to get on film and clean up some of the little things that he made mistakes on, but he was spot on with some of those deep balls and obviously he’s got some wheels and he showed those off today. … We think he’s the next quarterback we have that should have a great career while he’s here.”
Lamb knows it is tough to have a perfect game. A first-quarter interception on a pass thrown over the middle and a hit he took late in the game after a slide are a couple of things the veteran coach in his 17th season and his rookie quarterback will agree shouldn’t happen.
“I wish I could take it back,” Lamb said of the interception, “but it happens and my coaches were just telling me to turn the page. We turned the page, went down and scored again.”
“I wish he wouldn’t have shown off (his speed) on that last play and not taken that hit,” Plaa said of Lamb’s fourth-quarter scramble and slide play that ended with a hit from a Lincoln defender. “Hopefully he’ll be OK moving forward.”
A summer’s worth of workouts paid off for Lamb and his bunch of new receivers. Joseph Ramirez, Ethan Woodmansee, Nathan Dip, Jayceon Sloan, Melo Thurman and company caught deep passes, screens and everything in between in Friday’s opener.
In the Knights’ first three possessions, Lamb went 6-for-6 with three touchdowns, two of which were 55 yards or more.
Ramirez had a breakout performance of his own. The 6-foot-2, 160-pound route runner caught five passes for 120 yards and three touchdowns. He was on the receiving end of Lamb’s first varsity touchdown pass: a 55-yard catch and run down the right sideline on the opening possession.
“I was feeling great,” Ramirez said. “I was confident. Coach was calling great plays and we knew that all night they were giving us certain things and we took it.”
The only hiccup in a near-perfect season opener was Lincoln running back Jordin Thomas. The 5-foot-9 junior back who’s fielding offers from Arizona, Fresno State, San Jose State, Utah, Washington and Washington State combined power and speed to slip through the Knights’ defensive line, rushing for three touchdowns of 50-plus yards in the first quarter, keeping the Trojans in the game. Thomas was quiet in the second and third quarters. On Lincoln’s final possession of the game, he reversed field for his fourth rushing touchdown.
“He’s obviously special,” Plaa said. “We made some mistakes on his long plays — there was one play where he had four broken tackles — but most of that’s on him. He’s that good and he’s that quick and fast. There’s no wonder why he has that many offers to play college football. It was a good challenge.”
The Knights go from one potent rushing attack to another in next week’s matchup with Lodi.
While it’s always nice to start the season with a win, Plaa’s takeaway from Week 1 surely will help against next week’s experienced opponent that made the postseason last year.
“My concern is we put up 43 in the first half and seven in the second half so we need to figure out what happened in the second half and why we didn’t score,” he said. “It’s not that we’re trying to run up (the score), but we’re trying to execute. We decided that the score was enough, so we let our foot off the gas pedal. That’s what young teams do, so we’ve got to mature and try to get better.”
This story was originally published August 19, 2023 at 9:12 AM.
