It was clear almost as soon at Hayden Johnson arrived at Lehigh University that he was ready for a football team’s hardest and most important job.
He’d been training to be a Division One college quarterback since he was eight years old. Not just playing. Training.
“All my coaches, up through the ranks, helped with trying to perfect what I do,’’ Johnson said by telephone from Bethlehem Thursday.
“When I got (to Lehigh) I could see there was a connection. You get to know people just on the team already, and that helps you get a gauge of where you're going to be at.’’
Johnson, a Manheim Township graduate, was a contributor from day one this fall. By week 10 of the season, he was the starting QB on a team that won nine games and reached the second round of the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
In his first start, against Colgate Nov. 16, Johnson completed 16 of 21 passes for 204 yards. That began a three-game stretch in which he completed 77 percent of his throws for 10 yards (9.96 to be precise) per attempt.
Lehigh’s other quarterback, in 2024, was a fifth-year senior. There’s a good chance that Lehigh will be Johnson’s show to run for a while.
Johnson, at 6-1, 185, isn’t a massive pro-style gunslinger or a hyper-mobile dual-threat guy. Rather, he is the product of multiple elements - high-level athleticism and coaching and systems and teammates and work ethic - that add up to success at, perhaps, the hardest position to play in sports.
“When I first saw in him, he was running RPOs (run-pass option plays), and this was in youth football,’’ said Township coach Mark Evans, whose program has become a quarterback factory.
“By the time he was in seventh or eighth grade, he was reading defenses at a high level.’’
Evans’ last five QBs have gone to Bloomsburg (Erik Benjamin), Harvard (Luke Emge), Colgate (Harrison Kirk) and Penn State as a preferred walk-on (Evan Clark) and now Carson Weissner, who quarterbacked the Blue Streaks in 2024, headed to Sacred Heart.
“They were all really invested in their craft,’’ Evans said, “but Hayden took it to a new level.’’
It was around age eight that Johnson began working with Jim Cantafio, the former Conestoga Valley and Wilson coach, as a personal QB coach and at Cantafio’s camps and clinics.
“He came to everything,’’ Cantafio said Thursday. “He’d show up at a clinic, and we had just had a one-on-one session. I’d say to him, ‘Why are you here?’ ’’
Now Johnson is helping Cantafip run clinics.
By the time he got to the varsity level at Township, high school football was like a test for which had long ago memorized the answers.
He was all-state twice, and threw for 7,536 yards and 121 touchdowns. In his senior year, he completed 76 percent of his throws for 2,896 yards, 49 touchdowns and zero interceptions.
Still, Johnson understated, “Playing at this (Division One) level is kind of a little different.’’
Heading into Johnson’s senior year, his only offers were from Lehigh and Sacred Heart. In the spring after his junior season, Lehigh head coach Kevin Cahill showed up at one of Cantafio’s clinics.
He asked Cantafio what he thought of Johnson.
“Do you have an hour?’’ he answered.
“Nobody’s going to outwork him,’’ Cantafio added. “(Cahill said) that’s why they love him.’’
During the 2023 season, a few other schools, including Penn State, started checking in. But Johnson loved Lehigh, too.
“I had a solid connection,’’ he said. “There weren’t any major talking points (with other schools).’’
He can get better. Don’t even get him started on all the ways.
“It's timing on the release, accuracy, rotation on the ball and stuff like that,’’ he said.
“Just working on my strength. And then moving around in the pocket. Just keep my eyes up.
“Make a play downfield. Being able to decide when to take off and run, make plays, make throws.
“I mean, there's infinite details within our offense, little things my coaches and I go over, whether it's like a simple play design or just moving my eyes, getting the progressions and then, … just, overall, getting better in the pocket.’’
Having prepared so well for so long doesn’t make college football, or college, easy. It makes the difficulty easy to see coming.
He wasn’t bragging, even a little, when he admitted that, “I kind of knew what to expect.’’
