10-touchdown start to high school football season for BGM’s Jacob Maurer

CEDAR RAPIDS — Jerod Burns isn’t necessarily a fan of 8-Player football.

The BGM head coach understands his school has to go that route. Enrollment numbers dictate it.

Still there’s just something about the game.

“I’m a defensive guy,” Burns said. “To have to score 70 to win just blows my mind.”

So consider Burns’ mind officially blown after his team’s 78-74 win last Friday night over Iowa Valley. The teams were tied at 62 going to the fourth quarter, with an interception in the last minute finally sealing it for BGM.

A defensive play clinching a score-a-thon. Ironic.

“It was something,” Burns said. “It was weird. It just got to the point where you stopped getting (mad) and started laughing about it. Unbelievable. We had to drive the football, they scored on chunk plays. We go fast, we’re a high-tempo offense. We signal in plays from the sideline, so it was probably my fault. I could have shortened the game a lot. But we’d just get into a rhythm and start going.”

Which leads us to Jacob Maurer. All he did for BGM was directly account for 68 of his team’s 78 points.

The senior quarterback rushed for a cool 306 yards and five touchdowns on 36 carries. He completed 21 of 30 passes for 278 yards and five more TDs.

That’s 10 total touchdowns, folks. Throw four two-point conversions in there as well.

The 8-Player game lends itself to some huge individual performances from time to time. Certainly this was one of them.

“All the stats went around me, I guess, but that doesn’t really make a difference to me,” Maurer said. “But, yeah, it was fun.”

This was the second 10-TD game in Maurer’s career, as he rushed for seven and threw for three in a win last season against Woodward Academy. He also had a nine-touchdown game against Colo-NESCO.

The kid can play.

“He’s real tough,” Burns said. “Obviously he can throw it and run it. Since he’s dual threat, that’s so much more for a team to prepare for with him. Makes him that much more dangerous.”

To the coach’s point, Maurer threw for 1,807 yards last season and rushed for exactly 1,900. He accumulated 63 combined touchdowns.

“I never really played quarterback growing up,” he said. “Sophomore year, I got thrown in there. I was always the running back, so I’ve always known how to run, been a runner, I guess. I use that in 8-man better. I can still throw the ball, obviously. It helps a lot in 8-man being able to run and throw.

“You never have the advantage offensively or defensively. There’s always someone unblocked, someone unguarded. It’s good being able to run around in the pocket, get out of the pocket and throw.”

His offensive productivity is somewhat reminiscent of area-mate Eddie Burgess, who put up PlayStation numbers at Montezuma. Burgess is a freshman at NCAA Division II Upper Iowa.

Maurer would love to follow in his footsteps by playing college football. Unlike the much bigger Burgess, who is a tight end for UIU, Maurer has modest size at 6 feet and 175 pounds.

But if determination accounts for anything, he’ll find a place somewhere. And a position.

“Any opportunity I get, I’ll take it,” he said. ”Division I is the goal, obviously. Any position I will play. I went to a couple of camps this summer (at Iowa and Iowa State), played wide receiver at them. Running back I know some people have thought of me as playing. I don’t know. I don’t see myself playing quarterback at the next level much. It’s other positions.

“But, really, I’d do anything.”

Continuing to post 10-touchdown games should help Maurer get noticed.

“We don’t know where, yet, if he’s a scholarship guy or not. He wants to play receiver, and we’ve got some sets where we put him out there,” Burns said. “We’ve got a pretty good young freshman quarterback, but he’s still getting his feet wet and stuff, so we haven’t used any of it, yet.

“He can catch it, too, and we’ve got to try and find other ways to get him the ball. He got pretty beat up the other night, carrying it that many times. But that’s kind of old hat for him, too. Forty carries is not anything he hasn’t done before.”

Comments: jeff.johnson@thegazette.com