Ashland’s QB history shows Bernhard, Arrows should’ve expected greatness

ASHLAND – This is beginning to get a bit absurd.

No, not the part about the Ashland football team aiming for its first outright Ohio Cardinal Conference title since 2011 when Lexington comes to town Friday.

Nor the part about the Arrows nearing the Top 10 in the Associated Press state poll (they’re ranked No. 14 in Division II).

Not even the part about them chasing just the second 10-0 regular season in the 118-year history of AHS football.

What might be the most ridiculous reality of all is that this Arrows season – and the explosive uprising of quarterback Nathan Bernhard – was predictable.

At least, that’s what the numbers under head coach Scott Valentine show.

Now in his 19^th season leading his alma mater, Valentine has started four sophomore quarterbacks at AHS.

All of them led teams that finished at or within a game of the .500 mark as sophomores. All of them returned as junior starters to lead the Arrows to some of the best seasons in program history.

The names, by now, are chiseled in stone as the best quarterbacks Ashland has ever featured.

Taylor Housewright (2008 graduate), Marcus Fuller (2011) and Grant Denbow (2017).

After taking their lumps as sophomores (a combined 15-16 record among them), that trio returned the next season to post a combined record as juniors of 32-5 (20-1 in the OCC).

Bernhard has followed suit, spearheading Ashland’s perfect 9-0 start this season with one of the most impressive combinations of passing (125-of-212, 2,013 yards, 20 TDs) and rushing (139 carries, 900 yards, 17 TDs) in team history.

“What do they say? Two’s a trend, and now we have (four) straight examples of this,” said Fuller, who still owns AHS career records for passing completions (528), attempts (902), yards (7,848) and touchdowns (76).

“The experience you gain in that sophomore year is invaluable,” Valentine said. “Then it’s about what work you do in the offseason with your receivers and, individually, getting things down and the progression with reads that you have.

“The growth comes because the game starts to slow down for them and they see things a little more,” he said. “We give them the freedom to do things and protect themselves, so that growth is also important, and hopefully you see that from sophomore to junior year.”

Looking at the numbers for all four of them, it has been crystal clear.

Housewright was the launching pad

No one will dispute that Housewright was the quarterback catalyst to putting Ashland’s program on the statewide football radar.

He’s still the only QB to win 12 games in a season at AHS – doing so in both 2006 (12-1) and 2007 (12-2). Before his breakout junior year, Ashland had not won more than eight games in a season since the legendary duo of Jim Minnich and Roosevelt Robinson steered the team to a perfect 9-0 mark in 1963.

In terms of Valentine’s evolution from an I-formation, run-first coach to a spread-offense, air-attack guru, it was Housewright who was the first one through the door.

The Arrows were 5-5 his sophomore season, as Housewright took snaps under center and attempted just 111 passes. He threw only five touchdowns that year and finished with the sixth-most passing yards (841) among quarterbacks in the nine Ashland-area schools.

Some may forget that Housewright was even used as a receiver that season, totaling three touchdowns and 205 yards on eight receptions.

But Valentine knew after the Arrows lost 14-3 to eventual state champion Avon Lake in the first round of the 2003 playoffs that leaning more about the passing game had to be a priority moving forward if the Arrows were going to compete beyond the regular season.

When Housewright’s junior season arrived in 2006, it was time to push the passing buttons. Ashland kept some of its I-formation principles, but began to spread out its skill-position players.

The plan could not have worked more perfectly.

The Arrows won the Associated Press Division II state poll and put together the only 10-0 season in program history. Housewright threw for 2,213 yards and 26 touchdowns and was selected a first-team All-Ohioan.

Asked last week if he remembers being worried about the offensive overhaul from his sophomore to junior seasons, Housewright said he and his teammates took it in stride.

“I think we’re all so young and so cocky at that age that we just think we can do anything,” he said with a laugh.

“Typically, (the sophomore year) is the first time in your life as a young quarterback you’ve failed,” Housewright said. “Coach (Valentine) doesn’t play a lot of freshmen, so sophomore year you come in, you’re playing varsity and you’re the young guy, so you learn to fail and you learn to work on all your weaknesses.”

“Coach V allows you to grow, he’s a great teacher, he’s very observant and knows what you can do and the things you need to work on and building around that. He gives you confidence as a quarterback, he doesn’t beat you down.”

It essentially was settled from there.

Valentine, Housewright and the Arrows went with an empty-backfield approach the next fall in 2007 and the Arrows advanced to the only Final Four in their history.

Housewright should know what the progression looks like after a sophomore year at quarterback. He followed his time at AHS with a career at Ashland University that saw him finish fifth in the voting for NCAA Division II Player of the Year honors as a senior.

Since then, he has been a football coach at eight different colleges and currently is on the staff at Georgia Southern University.

He’s been following Ashland from afar this fall and said what Bernhard has done after an up-and-down sophomore season shouldn’t be a surprise.

“Coach V is really good at doing what you’re good at as a quarterback and fitting it to those skillsets,” Housewright said. “I think seeing Nathan progress – physically, obviously – but mentally is key, and his confidence. Playing quarterback is about making mistakes and growing from them, and the more mistakes you make early, the better, as long as you’re willing to fix them and just keep working.”

“Bernhard’s a different athlete than all of us – big, strong, fast,” he added about quarterbacks who have started as sophomores at Ashland. “You’re seeing some of that.”

Fuller brings standout consistency

By the time Fuller stepped into Housewright’s shadow as a sophomore in 2008, Ashland’s offensive blueprint was set.

While the Arrows kicked off that season leaning more toward the run (Shane Kipp’s 327 rushing yards in the opener against Willard are still a program record), Valentine slowly transitioned Fuller into more of the spread attack by season’s end.

Ashland started out in more one-back sets, going 1-4 in the first half of that 2008 season. But Fuller and the Arrows progressed into a five-wide offense, winning three of their last five and nearly upsetting state-ranked Lexington in Week 10.

Fuller said last week that he wasn’t trying to chase Housewright’s legacy as a sophomore, focusing more on simply winning the job in camp and winning over the upperclassmen in the huddle.

“In the moment, you might not realize just how beneficial those tough lessons that you’re learning (as a sophomore) are going to become – particularly when the team’s not having a ton of success,” he said. “I took a ton of hits my sophomore year as a 15-year-old.

“In hindsight, there’s no doubt that it was a critical developmental year that set a foundation for the success that I had after that.”

Ashland went 11-2 his junior season. The seven-win improvement from his 4-6 sophomore year is tied with Housewright’s seven-win jump from his sophomore to junior year (from 5-5 to 12-1) as the biggest one-year improvement in wins in the history of AHS football.

Like Housewright, Fuller became a two-time first-team All-Ohioan, then moved on to start at quarterback in college (two-year starter at NCAA Division I Brown University).

“Playing the position at a high level requires an understanding of what all 22 players on the field are doing and what all of their responsibilities are,” Fuller said. “As a young player in a new system, you’re really just still getting comfortable with making sure your 11 are lined up, you’re going through your footwork. So you’re sometimes playing with a post-snap, reactionary kind of style.

“As you develop a real second-hand nature of understanding what you’re trying to execute, the focus can then become a little bit more on, ‘OK, how are defenses trying to counteract this?’ You can start the play with more pre-snap anticipation of where opportunities might come.

“That’s where you see big jumps in generating explosive plays, reducing turnovers and just being a more efficient operator of the offense.”

That growth was easy to see in the numbers for Fuller, who collected a modest 909 yards and seven touchdowns through the air as a sophomore before his breakout year in 2009.

Based solely on statistics, Fuller had the best junior season of any Ashland quarterback in history. His 3,316 total yards of offense (3,122 yards passing) and 39 total touchdowns (30 passing) are more than any other Arrows junior QB.

Bernhard, however, is closing in on that production after leading Ashland’s 9-0 start this season.

The dual-threat junior has 2,913 total yards of offense (2,013 passing and 900 rushing) and 37 total touchdowns (20 passing, 17 rushing) with a minimum of two games left to play.

The Arrows already are locked in for a first-round home game in the playoffs and likely would have the opportunity at a second home playoff game if they beat Lexington on Friday.

“(I knew Valentine) was going to hand over a lot more responsibility to me with the offense,” Bernhard said. “Last year with me being a sophomore and us being a lot younger team, we were going to rely on our experience at running back (with senior Cayden Spotts). We weren’t as good as a team … so we were going to try to chew the clock a little bit, limit possessions to keep games close.

“But coming into this year we had a lot of talent returning, so the philosophy was going to be a little bit different; we were going to try to score some points. We’re not going to try to hold the other team back, we were going to try to get out quick on the other team and put up a lot of points.”

That approach has panned out. Ashland’s 36.8 points per game this season put the team within striking distance of the school record set in Fuller’s senior season in 2010 (40.1).

Valentine said it comes down to his quarterbacks showing the desire to work with their teammates in the offseason, to study the playbook, to know what to expect from defenses.

To start as a sophomore in his offense, they need to show that potential early.

“We’ve told our guys, ‘If you don’t want to get out and throw, we’ll get in the power-I (formation) and we’ll run the ball and run the clock and shorten the game,’” Valentine said. “There are lots of different ways to win football games.

“But if they want to throw the ball – and I love throwing the ball – then they’re going to get out and do stuff on their own. And that’s what all of them have done.”

Denbow was the best to do it as a sophomore for Valentine and the Arrows. His 2,752 yards and 25 touchdowns passing in 2014 were the best totals ever for an AHS 10th-grader.

Ashland then went 9-2 and finished at No. 9 in the Division III state poll his junior year. But he had to be replaced in Week 3 of his senior season by another first-team All-Ohioan – Keagan Armitage – due to a thumb injury.

Since Fuller’s junior year, no Ashland quarterback who has started a full season has thrown for less than 1,750 yards.

This Friday, however, Bernhard and the Arrows could do something the program hasn’t done since 2010 – win 10 games.

Another finish for the ages?

Bernhard certainly has been writing a career story all his own as Ashland’s current QB.

Under former coach Sean Seder, who led AHS from 2019 through 2022 before Valentine returned to the program, Bernhard split starts behind center as a freshman with junior Luke Bryant.

They benefited from a veteran offensive line, Spotts at running back and a record-setting receiver in Jon Metzger (AHS career records with 160 receptions and 2,539 receiving yards).

When the majority of those pieces were gone in his first season as the full-time starter last year, Bernhard said he had a good bit of growing up to do.

With Spotts a large focus of the offensive game plan (he ran for nearly 1,000 yards), Bernhard and the Arrows finished 5-6 – just the second losing season Valentine has had in his 19 years leading AHS.

Echoing those who came before him, Bernhard said that sophomore season was his biggest learning moment.

He threw for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns in 11 games last year, numbers he’s already surpassed through nine games in 2024. He’s also cut his eight interceptions from last year in half and has more than doubled his rushing touchdown total from eight to 17.

“I think it’s a different mentality when you’re a younger guy trying to lead than when you’re a little older,” Bernhard said. “You’re kind of timid because you don’t know how (your teammates) will respond.

“But as a quarterback, you have to be a leader in some way. And now this year I’m one of the older guys on the team, so that leadership role really does fall on my shoulders.”

The pressure arguably has been leaning more heavily on Bernhard than any quarterback in the history of Ashland football.

Now 6-foot-6, 235 pounds, he had offers from three NCAA Division I programs before his sophomore season even started in 2023.

When this season began, he had 10 offers, in addition to the flurry of social media attention that come along with that.

The list includes Penn State, Iowa State, Louisville, Indiana, Michigan State, Akron, Duke, Toledo, West Virginia and Bowling Green.

Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated called him the best quarterback prospect in Ohio’s Class of 2026.

Few athletes in any sport in Ashland-area history have experienced the weight of all that attention.

“I wasn’t dealing with all the recruiting stuff,” Housewright said. “In today’s world, with all the social media, the scrutiny and the offers, he’s having to deal with all that along with playing in high school. I just had to worry about playing.

“Nathan’s doing such a great job with all of it.”

Without the graduated Spotts – and after losing top rushing threat Michael Franz to injury in Week 5 against Maple Heights – Bernhard has truly taken the reins of the Ashland offense.

In the four games without Franz, Bernhard has thrown for 897 yards and nine TDs (only one interception) and rushed for 618 yards and 10 TDs.

That equates to an average of 378.8 yards and 4.8 touchdowns per game.

With only Armitage’s senior year (3,037 yards, 32 TDs passing; 998 yards, 18 TDs rushing) as even a close comparison, Bernhard’s 2024 campaign is threatening to become the best dual-threat season for a quarterback in AHS history (2,013 yards, 20 TDs passing; 900 yards, 17 TDs rushing).

He had touchdown runs of 88 and 54 yards in a win over Mansfield Senior, then went for a 62-yard rushing score against West Holmes.

Housewright and Fuller laughed while admitting they were never a threat to do that.

“He’s got good speed at his top-end, it’s just a matter of him getting going,” Valentine said. “He’s got the long stride, but it’s that burst at the beginning (that’s still developing). He’s worked at it and gotten better at it.”

Bernhard said another improvement for the Arrows has been their ability to counter six-man blitz packages. He said handling pressure was his biggest hurdle as a sophomore.

Now a junior who is clearly following Ashland’s sophomore-to-junior-year QB trend, Bernhard said it was interesting to think about how all those Arrows of the past made such big leaps and – more importantly – led the team to such huge seasons.

“I think we’ve set ourselves up to have the same level of success so far,” he said. “But we still have a lot of work to do.”

He credited the improvement of his offensive line and the talent of his receivers, then was asked if there was one specific stat or number that told him he was doing things right as a junior quarterback.

“The (team’s 9-0) record, flat-out, that’s the most important thing. Stats don’t win games,” he said. “The stats are great and that can tell a little bit of the story, but the zero in the (loss column), that means the most.”