Welcome back to The Deep Post, a weekly column covering the happenings from around the area.
After a long hiatus, The Deep Post is back for football season!
Camps opened Monday, with several getting a 12:01 a.m. jump on the season meaning we’re back! This edition of The Deep Post canvases my top six storylines that I’ll be monitoring as the season approaches and once it arrives.
1. How does a relatively young Bluefield handle the target?
Go back a year.
Nobody in the media space knew who Jeremiah Jones, Jaleel Jones and Pax Calhoun were. Now they’re all first team all-staters as juniors with what amounts to a year of experience under their belts.
Jeremiah and Calhoun hadn’t played a snap of high school football and Jaleel played sparingly. By Christmas they were all statewide stars alongside quarterback Max Simpson who ascended to the tune of 41 passing touchdowns to just nine interceptions, tying or breaking five Class AA state title game records.
Talent wise, this rising junior group has a chance to be the best to come through one of West Virginia high school football’s blue blood programs. Simpson has already annihilated every QB record in program history with two seasons ahead of him, Calhoun did the same to the single season receiving records last year and the Jones’ twins are defensive superstars who could be just as good on offense.
They’ll be without their second leading receiver from a year ago in Jordan Hess who elected to play soccer this year. That might not be a bad thing. There are a lot of mouthes to feed.
Willis Wilson, the starting running back who broke his leg in Week 5, will be back and merit touches while Jamarius Smith has had a strong offseason and looks to be the favorite to win the burner role on offense.
Can the young Beavers avoid getting lost in their headlines?
All of those aforementioned blue-chip players (aside from Wilson), as well as fellow all-stater Ethan Thompson (left tackle) are juniors. Youth can cloud judgement and redirect the focus from a team-first mentality to a me-first mentality.
As evidenced when the 2024 Bluefield basketball team walked off the court and left the state runner-up trophy on the floor, this program and school mostly judge your legacy based upon the result of the final game of the season.
To the Beavers’ credit they handled success well and improved leaps and bounds from Week 1 to the state title game.
The reclassification numbers will be tallied this fall and go into effect next school year with Bluefield sitting right up against the Class AA-AAA border.
The window for a title may never be as wide open as it is this year for the Beavers. Can they stay out of their own way and remain unified behind the goal of winning that final game on championship Saturday?
2. How long will it take for Independence’s new transfers to fully acclimate to their system?
Independence’s offense isn’t overly complicated but it requires a level of unification and chemistry that’s beyond what you’ll see in most high school football games in West Virginia.
Practitioners of the Art Briles offense that made the Baylor Bears of 2010s so explosive (think back to the 70-63 Baylor-WVU shootout in 2012), the Patriots run a lot of choice routes in the structure of their offense. The receiver and quarterback read the alignment, leverage and depth of the defense and go from there. There’s as much room for error as there is reward. It’s not as simple as “We called this play so you’re running a slant or an out.” It takes reps – a lot of them. Those reps build trust and at all points the quarterback and receiver need to be on the same page.
Last year the Patriots had an all-state senior in Christian Linksweiler at receiver to serve as a reliable go-to player for quarterback Brock Green.
This year they’ll have KJ Viars, who posted 1,000 yards as a freshman opposite of Linskweiler, but have lost most of their other skill players including all-state running back Sylas Nelson.
Enter the transfers.
Former Oak Hill standouts Carson Treadway and Antoine Hicks come to Coal City with the talent to make Independence a 3,000-yard passing team but they’ll need to acclimate to the offense and gain Green’s trust.
There’s belief in the Independence camp that Treadway is actually Indy’s best receiver as it stands and may find himself at running back at times. While he may be, I’d be surprised if his statistical output eclipses Viars’.
Indy’s schedule is brutal. We don’t know much about its first three opponents other than they all hail from out of state. After that they’ll travel to state quarterfinalist Mingo Central, state runner-up Bluefield then host perennial playoff team James Monroe in their second and final home game of the regular season.
Two-time defending state champion Frankfort is also on the slate later in the year.
Independence, in my opinion, is one of the top two teams in Class AA alongside Bluefield but with the gauntlet ahead do they have the luxury or time to get their newest acquisitions up to speed? The spring ball period the Independence meticulously plans should help but will that and a pair of scrimmage games be enough?
3. Can Princeton rebuild its defense?
Much of the focus will be on Princeton’s offense coming into the season. There are familiar faces in different spots as well as established blue-chip players. I believe they’ll be fine there and I’m intrigued to see how they utilize all the pieces they have in place.
The storyline I’ll be following is how they replenish a defense that sealed the state title game. For years Princeton’s achilles heel was its inside linebacker position. One of the coaches who has served on staff in the last five years even told me the team went as far as to hide some of its linebackers before they were put in the scope.
They even went as far as moving two-time first team all-state defensive lineman Kalum Kiser off the line of scrimmage to an off-ball linebacker role to help mitigate those struggles.
Landon Crane solved a lot of those problems when he came over from Bluefield, as did the philosophical shift to a blitz-heavy approach on defense.
“Pressure makes diamonds or it bursts pipes,” head coach Nate Tanner said all of last season.”
With Kiser and Crane, both first-team all-staters a year ago, now gone along with Wyatt Cline, Brad Mossor, J.D. Meadows and more, how will the Tigers go about reconstructing a defense that made multiple game-changing plays in the postseason, including the state title game.
4. What does Midland Trail have in store for a follow-up act?
Expectations were lukewarm last year for a Midland Trail team that thought 2024 would be its year.
It all came together last season for the Patriots who went 9-1 and won their first playoff game since 2018.
Now they’ll need to find a way to replace at least 19 seniors including the area’s leading rusher (1,753 yards) and first team all-state running back in Jayden Roop.
Add in sack artist Zander Ooten and you can comprehend the scope of the reload facing Trail.
They do return rising junior Rayce Dickerson at quarterback but there’s disclaimer – he was involved in an accident in March and was just released on July 29. There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to play this year.
Circling back there was the belief that the Patriots missed their shot to make noise after 2024 then followed up with their best season in nearly a decade. Can they approach this season with the same mentality they did a year ago and play deep into November?
5. What does life after Kaiden Sims look like for Meadow Bridge?
During Kaiden Sims’ historic run at Meadow Bridge, the Wildcats went back to their roots as program, shifting from a brief run as a spread team to a power-run team spearheaded by all-stater Kaiden Sims.
The star back was a 2,000 yard rusher in 2024, a 1,500 yard rusher last year when he became a jack of all trades last year, tossing, catching and rushing for scores while leading Meadow Bridge to playoff berths as a junior and senior.
Players such as Bow Wykle (442 yards rushing) and Trent Roles (697 yards receiving, 13 touchdowns) were juniors a year ago and will likely lead the offense again in some capacity.
Was Roles’ production as a receiver a signal to how the offense might look after Sims’ graduation?
6. What does the new-look James Monroe offense look like?
Graduation hits every team in different ways. James Monroe is no different. The Mavericks have had stability at the QB position for the better part of five years. Layton Dowdy was the starter for three years with Ryan Mann taking some snaps in 2024.
In 2025 Mann became the full-time starter and threw for over 1,900 yards and 24 touchdowns.
Mann has graduated and his top receiver in Kadyn Hines, arguably the most talented overall athlete in the area, elected not to play with a college baseball career on the horizon. Last but not least, leading rusher Brock Parker has also graduated after a 900 yard rushing season.
Mann’s father Kelly resigned from his role as offensive coordinator, a position he’s held for the better part of this decade.
The Mavericks have some talented returning pieces such as Jayden Miller and Bryce Gardinier but to navigate back their way to their sixth consecutive playoff berth they’ll need to find a way to navigate a schedule that features six playoff teams from a. year ago, five of which won a playoff game.
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