Caleb Love has a list of goals for his junior season hanging on his wall. The second item on the list is one that a week ago might have seemed unrealistic.
“I want 15 sacks this season, that was just a goal,” said Love, a defensive end at Belleville. “I have a paper on my wall and it’s just a list of all of the achievements that I want to do this year.”
After Saturday, he’s nearly halfway towards that lofty target.
In Belleville’s season opener at Ferris, Love was an unblockable force, erupting for six sacks as the Bucs rolled to a 41-6 victory over their foe from Jersey City.
As a result, Love has been selected as The Observer Athlete of the Week. Love becomes the first Athlete of the Week for the 2024-25 school year.
The six sacks are the most in a single game by an Observer-area player in several years and a total that even Love couldn’t believe when it was pointed out to him by his teammates.
“To be honest, I really didn’t know how many I actually had. When I went off to the bench for a kickoff, my friends were like ‘do you know how many sacks you have?’” recalled Love. “I said probably like three, right? They were like you have six and I’m like, for real?”
“He was definitely excited,” head coach Brian Antab said. “He said to me, ‘Coach, my motor’s never going to stop.’ He’s just a relentless player. He keeps wanting to get more so he was excited about it, but he was motivated to keep going.”
Love got to show all of the tools in his developing repertoire as a pass rusher. A couple of his sacks were the result purely of his speed and quickness on the outside. On others, Love beat his opposing lineman with pure strength and technique with his hands. Love got sacks from both the left and right side as Belleville moved him all across the defensive line to help avoid potential double teams.
“He definitely has a good speed rush, but he’s also good at engaging with the lineman and then getting their hands off of him and making a move,” Antab said. “He’s got good bend and he finishes well on the quarterback. He really explodes off the block and closes on the quarterback quickly.”
It was two years ago when Love was first introduced to the defensive end position by his coaches. For Love, who was a quarterback before arriving at Belleville it was a move he admittedly didn’t embrace at first.
“I was so mad when they told me I couldn’t be a quarterback,” Love said. “I even told my mom I think I might quit, but I knew I couldn’t. There was no way I could quit on a team like that. So I was like, it’s probably for the better (that I play defensive end), why not just try it out. When I tried it I fell in love with it.
“Later on, I started winning battles in practice as a freshman. I was a 14-year-old freshman winning battles against the varsity. So that’s when I knew I could do something really good (at defensive end).”
As part of the transition, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound Love said he watches film of NFL star edge rushers Maxx Crosby, Micah Parsons and Von Miller. Love also credits his work this offseason with a trainer as a key factor in his improvements.
With just two years of playing defensive end under his belt, Antab believes that Love is just now starting to scratch the surface of what he’s capable of doing on defense.
“That’s what we’re so excited about,” Antab said. “We really think he can do some special things if he keeps working. If he keeps the work ethic that he’s had up to this point, the sky’s the limit for his potential.”
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Jason Bernstein | Observer Sports Writer
Jason Bernstein joined The Observer as its sports writer in March 2022, following the retirement of Jim Hague. He has a wealth of sports-writing experience, including for NJ Advance Media (nj.com, The Jersey Journal, The Star-Ledger.)