Odessa High wide receiver Terrance Samuel wasn’t immediately sold on what new head coach Dusty Ortiz and his incoming staff were selling when the transition began in March.
Samuel was hearing things that sounded good, but an underlying loyalty to former head coach Danny Servance was causing him to step back and evaluate the situation.
“I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really with it,” Samuel said. “Then, when they started saying they were going to do more passing and changing up the offense, I was like okay.”
The Bronchos are very fortunate that he did.
Offensive coordinator Creighton Reed knew what he had with Samuel, a big-play receiver able to stretch the field and put pressure on defenses from sideline to sideline.
Samuel also is soft-spoken, but Reed needed his senior wideout to be a leader and mentor for some of the younger skill position players.
“We challenged our seniors to be leaders,” Reed said. “I think the biggest thing was building relationships with them.
“When we came in, it wasn’t all about football, we didn’t just talk football, it was about building relationships with them and finding out who they are as people, who their parents are, who their siblings are and what they like to do and just try to get them to know that we care about them and love them as more than football players.
“I think anyone, once they feel that someone cares about them and they love them, they’ll go above and beyond for you on the football field.”
Samuel is quickly proving Reed right.
He has caught 30 passes for 422 yards and two touchdowns through the first five games this season.
That’s a 400-percent increase in receptions and nearly 700-percent improvement in yardage from a season ago when he had six catches for 54 yards and one score.
“It’s way more fun now,” he said. “Instead of going out there and blocking every play, they have us running sweeps and that’s from the coaches.
“They gave us more confidence. The receivers are more focused, not afraid to go get the ball; I like it, feeling like that was what we needed for our offense.”
He’ll get the chance to add to those numbers when the Bronchos host San Angelo Central at 7 p.m. Friday at Ratliff Stadium.
Samuel has taken to the leadership role his coaches set in front of him, staying level-headed even as things are spinning around him.
It also helps that Odessa High has seem the emergence of Ivan Carreon at the other wide receiver spot, his 6-foot-6 frame making it difficult for defenders to stop him, which they didn’t through the first four games of the season.
Last week, however, Midland High was able to take Carreon out of the Bronchos’ game plan for most of the evening and quarterback Diego Cervantes needed someone to step up and make plays.
Samuel answered the call, catching nine passes for 165 yards in the District 2-6A opener. To him, it was just another night on the field.
“It’s how I play,” he said. “When one of our receivers has as bad night, the rest of us have to step up.
“If I have a bad night, I expect Ivan or someone else to step up. I think that started during the offseason and then 7-on-7 and in the summer.”
For Reed, it was a culmination of six months of work on and off the field, watching Samuel guide his teammates when needed and then shake things off when they weren’t going well in the loss to the Bulldogs.
Reed never saw a change in demeanor from Samuel.
“He’s not a vocal kid, he leads by example,” Reed said. “If you watch the Midland game, that kid never took a play off.
“He was out there making every play we asked him to make and the effort level never changed. Before I got here, I was a college coach and I think TJ can play at the next level if he really wants to; he’s one of the best high school route runners I’ve ever seen and he has great hands and I just think he’s going to get better every week.”
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