Nutley head coach Chris Helm was confident that he was in a good position at quarterback for the next two years with sophomore Brady King.The last two Saturday’s have shown Helm and everyone else that the Maroon Raiders’ “QB of the future” is quite capable being the “QB of the present” when faced with injury.
An ankle injury to starter Clark Mohrbutter forced King into action in the first half of Nutley’s Oct. 5 game at Millburn, where King completed 7-of-9 passes for 90 yards in a 21-12 win. Seven days later, in his first varsity start, King threw for three touchdowns, the last coming on a stunning 84-yard hook-and-ladder score by Jordan Small on the game’s final play to give Nutley an 18-15 win over West Milford.
The two wins have kept Nutley’s playoff hopes alive, created a viral highlight and has now made King The Observer Athlete of the Week.
“Honestly, I was nervous at first,” said King about when he was first put into the lineup. “But I knew that my teammates had my back, my coaches had my back and they would call the right plays for me and my teammates would block for me and help me out. So yeah, I was nervous at first, but then I felt really confident. I just knew if I played my game and everybody did their job, I would be perfectly fine.”
“We’re lucky because we saw it in Brady early on,” Helm said. “When he was in seventh, eighth grade, we’d go watch them play and he was awesome. He just had a natural feel for the game and the position. So we knew down the road, he definitely would be a pretty good QB for us.
“There is something special that he’s got. We were always excited about it, we just didn’t know when we were going to see it.”
Facing a must win to keep its playoff hopes in a good place, King and Nutley got off to a fast start as he connected with Jaylyn Caraballo for second quarter TD passes of 35 and 47 yards to give the Raiders a 12-0 halftime lead.
King, who completed 5-of-11 passes for 184 yards on the day, felt his first real taste of adversity in the second half when he threw two interceptions and Nutley saw its 12-point lead turn into a 15-12 deficit late in the fourth quarter.
With just 17 seconds left in the game and 84 yards to go, Helm dug deep into the playbook for his favorite trick play, one that’s been dubbed “Flipadelphia.”
King threw a short pass to Mike Misner, who ran an 8-yard dig route. Running across the field was Small, who was flipped the ball by Misner. Small turned the corner and raced down the right hashmarks and then cut it inside to avoid a would-be tackler and was off to the races. By the time Small dove into the endzone, no one was within five yards of him and the clock read 0:00.
While it is a play that Helm has run in practice all the time, dating back to his time as an assistant at Wayne Valley, it was one King had only run a handful of times.
“This week was really the first time he’s actually really repped it,” said Helm. “He’s maybe done it two, three times before that, but he has the natural ability to find the guy open and throw the dig, which is the start of the play. We were pretty sure he was going to be able to handle that.
“The play has a great design to it. Unfortunately, we probably can’t run it again in the same situation.”
While King is sure to have more special moments at quarterback, it was only 12 months ago when he seemed done with football. As good as King was at quarterback growing up, he’s always been undersized. So the then 5-foot-2 freshman decided not to come out for football last year, instead focusing on baseball.
But after a six-inch growth spurt and at the urging of several of his friends, King decided to come back out during the winter.
“Last year, I didn’t play and was watching those games, I just really knew I made a mistake by not playing,” said the now 5-foot-8, 135-pound King. “Right after the year ended, I made my decision to play again.”
King’s spot on varsity was assured when he threw six touchdown passes in Nutley’s first JV game of the season. While Mohrbutter is expected to be back before the end of the regular season, King has ensured there will still be a role for him within the offense when both are healthy.
“We’re hoping to get (Clark) back soon, then we’ll have some real fun,” Helm said. “You see all these guys on TV with two, three quarterback offenses and doing some crazy stuff. We could get into that too, so it could be exciting.”
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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.)