Cedarburg receiver has sky-high skill
Prior to the 2020 prep football season, the Journal Sentinel will reveal the Supreme 17, a look at the top players in the area. Each day before the first day of practice Sept. 6, one player will be revealed with a feature story. This is our eighth installment.
Brian Leair is going to get Drew Biber the ball.
When a coach has a talent like Biber, a 6-foot-5 wide receiver with speed, strength, good hands and an incredible knack for plucking balls out of the sky, you can't blame them for going to the well over and over again.
“You've got to put the ball in his hands,” Leair, the head coach at Cedarburg, said. “That kid's got to touch the ball more than five times a game because he has a real chance to score every time he's got it.”
Leair is speaking from experience. Through Biber's junior season with the Bulldogs, he has amassed 151 receptions for 2,198 yards and 20 touchdowns. Historically speaking, those numbers are almost unheard of through three seasons.
In a full nine-game season in 2020 with additional playoff games, Biber could realistically have cracked the top three in both receptions and receiving yards in state history. That will be a tougher task now, with a shortened regular season and potentially fewer teams making the playoffs, but it doesn't change how remarkable Biber's production has been to date.
As a junior last year, Biber caught a touchdown in eight of 10 games as he helped Cedarburg return to the playoffs for the first time since 2016; and in the two games where he didn't find the end zone, he still averaged 98.5 yards.
“None of that surprised me at all,” Leair said. “We were counting on it, to be honest, that he would be that productive.”
Big-play ability
The first thing that jumps out at you about Biber's film is, rather fittingly, his leaping ability.
It seems unfair at times how Biber can be blanketed by multiple defenders as a pass moves toward him, only for him to plant his foot, explode up and sky for the catch with seeming ease.
“That part always did come naturally,” Biber said. “I always had the natural instinct to go and get the ball and get in the right position to catch the ball.”
A lot of that, Biber thinks, comes from his years of basketball. Biber first dunked as an eighth grader and, to this day, he says he would rather go shoot hoops for fun than do almost anything else.
Biber averaged 20.3 points per game and was named first team all-conference this past season, but figured out early on that those same skills that made him excel on the hardwood translated to football.
“I went into high school thinking I was a quarterback, but they moved me to receiver and in my first game on JV as a freshman, I caught something like 10 passes for 150 yards and two touchdowns,” Biber said. "I was kind of just jumping over people and was like, 'Oh, I can do this sport, too.'"
After a sophomore football campaign in which he caught 66 passes for 880 yards and six scores, Biber realized that his goal of playing sports in college would be accomplished through football.
Biber did receive two Division II basketball scholarship offers, but in April locked in his future home when he committed to play football at Northern Illinois.
“He came to the realization that there are a lot of really good basketball players similar to him and his size and skillset out there, but there not as many guys like him in football,” Leair said. “I would agree.”
Becoming a complete receiver
Nobody — especially North Shore cornerbacks — is questioning Biber's ability to high-point a ball or dominate in the red zone, but the senior is setting out to prove he can check every box at the receiver position.
“A lot of the defensive backs that will be on me are a little smaller and not as fast, so the height and my jumping ability can win,” Biber said. “But I'm trying to get even better this year at all the little things instead of always jumping. I really want to run crisp routes, be more of a technician and get the ball with space.”
Biber has filled out his frame to 215 pounds; Leair calls it “good weight.” He forced more missed tackles last season than the year before and wants even more big plays as a senior.
He spent three weeks this summer living with his uncle in Chicago and working with personal trainer Kofi Hughes, a former receiver at Indiana, twice a day five days a week.
“I'm getting trained on all these techniques, like how to use my upper body to gain speed, shin angles, things like that,” Biber said. “If I can go a little bit faster, I can just outrun guys instead of just jumping for the ball.”
The drive to improve isn't any surprise to anyone at Cedarburg who has seen Biber compete in everything he does, like when he's on the scout offense and makes it his mission to take it to the Bulldogs starting defense.
“He's a competitor,” Leair said. “He's playing to win games. He's locked in to win no matter the sport he's playing.”
Biber is clinging to hopes of having a full senior season and getting that chance to compete, although nobody able to say with certainty at this point whether the prep football season will play out in its entirety.
If there is a season, though, one thing is for sure. The Bulldogs will get the ball in Biber's hands.