Three years ago, during a break in the preseason football scrimmage between Mentor and Chardon, Cardinals coach Matt Gray took notice of a group of players parading in from the far end of the stadium.
Taking his whistle out of his mouth, Gray got the attention of a few scrimmage onlookers and pointed to the group, which was being led in by a handful of rather large human beings.
“Look at those guys,” he said, pointing to the linemen on the freshman football team that was just entering Jerome T. Osborne Stadium. “That’s going to be a special group when they get up here.”
The “up here” Gray was referring to was the varsity lineup.
The “when” he yearned for has arrived.
When the Mentor season opens Aug. 22 at Olmsted Falls, it will do so with an offensive line that is bigger than most in the program’s history. That offensive line boasts four college commits, including three who have committed to Division I college football programs.
It’s true the Cardinals’ offense, in general, boasts some outstanding talent this season, including Miami (Ohio) commit Justen Hodge at receiver and running back Jackson Farley, who ran for more than 1,900 yards last season. That being said, if Mentor is to reach the destination it wants this season, which is the Division I state championship game, the Cardinals will have to lay it on the line.
As in the big, experience, college-level offensive line.
“When you look at the foundation of a football team, it starts up front,” Gray said. “It starts with the offensive and defensive lines. The guys we have on our offensive line have played a lot of varsity football for us. More importantly, they are unbelievable kids, great leaders and workers. They set the standard for our program every single day.”
Mentor has a trio of Division I college recruits on its offensive line this season (from left) – Colin Prichard (Kent State), JoJo LoDuca (Naval Academy) and Landry Brede (North Carolina State) – Tim Phillis, (For The News-Herald)
The line features:
• North Carolina State commit Landry Brede (6-foot-6, 310 pounds) a left tackle.
• Tiffin University commit Gabriel McLendon (6-3, 275) at left guard.
• Naval Academy commit JoJo LoDuca (6-3, 285) at center.
• Kent State commit Colin Prichard (6-5, 265) at right tackle.
• Amari Bradley (5-10, 255) at right guard.
Gabe LaSpina (6-0, 250) is coming off ACL surgery and is also in the mix. He gives Mentor depth and flexibility to go with six offensive lineman in short-yardage and/or goal-line situations.
“I’ve been here since 2013 and we’ve had some really good teams here,” Gray said. “Each and every one of those good teams had a common denominator — a strong offensive line. The average teams were average up front.”
Combine size and talent with experience and chemistry, and that is where Mentor’s magic can be found. McLendon, Prichard and Bradley all played together at Memorial Middle School, while the rest were together at Ridge.
When they were freshmen, they started a bond that still exists today.
“Chemistry is 100 percent the most important thing,” McLendon said. “If you can’t work together with the guy next to you, you can’t achieve anything. It starts up front. If you don’t have chemistry, you don’t have anything.”
LoDuca burst onto the scene first when — out of necessity, Gray said — he was called up to start a handful of varsity games as a ninth-grader. The rest of the group played freshman ball that year and were quickly elevated as sophomores.
“We moved them into our PM class, our afternoon conditioning class, early,” Gray said. “We knew several of them would play on Friday nights as sophomores. Moving them into that experienced conditioning group sped up the process for them.”
Mentor’s offense churned out the points and yard over the past two years with the line leading the way, including the 2024 season in which Mentor averaged 37.4 points and 412 yards of offense per game.
“I’ve played with these guys a long time, so yeah that helps,” Brede said. “We’ve worked hard and have gotten better every day. We’ve got guys with experience who have played together for a long time. That’s going to make for a great season.”
Mentor’s skill-position players know where their bread is buttered, and it’s with the behemoths up front who open the holes to run through, give the quarterback time to throw and receivers time to run their routes.
“Those guys have gotten bigger and faster every year,” said Farley, who scored 26 touchdowns last year behind this line. “I feel so comfortable with those dudes up front. (To reach our goals), we need to set the tone up front, for sure.”
First-year starting quarterback Brogan Jones said he is “grateful” for the group, noting, “those are the guys who are going to protect me me and keep me safe this year.”
One of the area’s — and Ohio’s — best receivers is Hodge, who caught 51 passes for 973 yards last year, a gaudy 19-yard-per-reception average. If the line doesn’t block, he doesn’t have time to get downfield for those big-yard receptions.
“Now we can focus on what we need to do to get us that goal of a state championship,” he said.
Gray said what makes the line special isn’t just their God-given size, but how they have developed themselves. For instance, he pointed out how Brede’s mentality and physicality transformed him him from “a big freshman who wanted nothing to do with playing offensive line” to a Power Four recruit.
And he marveled how Prichard went from a 6-foot-4, 185-pound receiver in eighth grade to getting a full-ride scholarship at Kent State.
“These guys all did it the right way,” he said. “They’re not big, sloppy guys. They’re big, high-character guys who worked very hard to get to where they are today.”
How will it translate come season’s start? That’s yet to be seen. However, the Cardinals have big goals this season and if those goals are to be met, it will be thanks in large part to those big human beings up front that three short years ago were sitting at the turf at the JTO during a Mentor-Chardon scrimmage watching the action.
“This line sets the standard for what this team is going to be this year,” Gray said, “and these guys embrace that every day.”