Editor’s Note: This is the third installment in a series that will feature some of the area’s top prep football players. These players are expected to receive the most attention from college coaches/scouts. The Dispatch will profile a player each day leading up to the start of the regular season on Friday, Aug. 17.
Jared Long isn’t shy about providing an honest assessment of his 2017 season with the Heritage Academy football team.
“I was pretty raw as a receiver,” Long said.
Make no mistake, at 6-foot-4, 180 pounds, Long has the size and length to be a dangerous target for quarterback Carter Putt because he can go get the football, or “high point” it, as he describes it. There were numerous times last season in Heritage Academy’s nine-win campaign that Long showed an ability to go up in traffic and make plays on the football.
But Long wants to do more as a junior, which is why he attacked the offseason and focused his efforts on becoming a better route runner and getting in better shape to be an even more dangerous weapon.
The prospects of a bigger, faster, and stronger Long make Heritage Academy football coach Sean Harrison feel good about the prospects for his offense in 2018.
“At the beginning of the year, he struggled with the routes,” Harrison said. “They weren’t very clean, but Jared has that unique ability that he is going to go up and get the ball at the highest point. That is not something we worked a lot with him on. He just had it. This year, the routes have gotten better and he has gotten faster. He has learned to use his long legs and his stride. You watch his legs and it doesn’t look like he is going fast, but his stride is a yard and a half.”
Long’s maturation as a receiver likely will help him attract attention from college coaches. He said Monday he hasn’t received very much attention, but he hopes to make his mark this season as part of a Heritage Academy offense that welcomes back Moak Griffin, who suffered a season-ending injury against Adams County Christian Academy in the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) playoffs, and plenty of other options.
Long said he worked with Harrison and receivers coach Russ Whiteside to get more comfortable with his spacing in multiple-receiver formations. He also said he feels stronger thanks to work in the weight room. Long feels the added experience and conditioning will help him gain separation at the line of scrimmage so he can maximize his improved route running.
“My legs have gotten a lot stronger, I am running faster, and my stride is longer,” Long said. “That is due to the hard work we have put in in the weight room. There have been a lot of mornings in here and a lot of afternoons out there running. I am repping 225 (on squats) and my max is pushing 300 pounds. I am going to keep that up and get my legs stronger and run better routes.
“I just did what I could as a sophomore. We had a lot of big-name guys last year — Dontae Gray and Moak (Griffin), who luckily was a junior last year, so he can come back. I was just out there doing what I could to help the team, putting my two cents in. This year, I am going to have to take on a big role and do a lot more, play a lot better, play a lot smarter, play a lot faster, play a lot harder. That is what I plan to do.”
To ensure he can do all of those things, Long said he has worked to strengthen the bond he has with Putt, who also is a junior. He feels the 2017 campaign helped them develop chemistry that has grown stronger after another year.
Harrison feels Putt also has a better understanding of the offense and is stronger after another year of conditioning. He anticipates Long and Putt having plenty of opportunities to make things happen in 2018.
“Carter and Jared have a great relationship,” Harrison said. “Last year during the season every Sunday after film they went out and threw. This summer, they met up here a lot outside of workouts and threw. A lot of it came down to Carter had the trust that he didn’t have to throw a perfect ball to Jared. If Jared had somebody covering him, he still had the confidence to know he could throw the ball that either Jared was going to catch it or it wasn’t going to be caught by anybody.”
Long will continue to work on the fundamentals of judging balls, getting out of his break, getting his head around faster, and looking the football into his hands and tucking it away to ensure all of the preparation for this season will pay off in results.
“I feel the offense will do very good things,” Long said. “This is going to be a very interesting year. We should still be very powerful, very explosive, and be able to put up a lot of big numbers.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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