‘Natural leader’ QB Oakmon blossoms as chief running threat under first-year Panthers coach. Freshman rocks for Pflugerville
When Elijah Oakmon first began showing up at the Pflugerville High School field house for unprompted workouts early in the summer, football coach Charles Taylor didn’t know much about the eager freshman.
But Oakmon certainly knew plenty about Taylor. At least, he knew about the first-year Panthers coach from his tenure at McCallum in the Austin school district.
Several of Oakmon’s cousins played football for McCallum, including Sabian Cannon, a quarterback who ran for almost 4,000 yards for the Knights when Taylor was the offensive coordinator under current Connally coach Jason Cecil before becoming head coach prior to the 2015 season.
Two other cousins, Braylon and Kris Cannon, played for former McCallum coach Todd Raymond, who now works as the Pflugerville school district’s athletic director.
As a youngster, Oakmon spent plenty of Friday nights at House Park or Nelson Field, rooting for his cousins and the Knights.
“I grew up watching all of
them,” Oakmon said of his relatives. “I was at every game.”
And when Oakmon found out that Taylor had been hired to replace longtime Pflugerville coach George Herrmann in the offseason?
“My cousin (Sabian) called me up and said, ‘Hey, you’ve got my coach!’ ” Oakmon said. “I was real happy when (Taylor) took the job, and I got real excited to see what he was going to do.”
Three games into Taylor’s tenure, the excitement is starting to build in Pflugerville for the Panthers and Oakmon, who has earned the starting quarterback spot.
The Panthers are 2-1 entering Friday’s road trip to Waco La Vega, and they’ve been winning with a formula familiar to those who followed Taylor at McCallum. Pflugerville runs the ball. A lot. And like Taylor’s teams at McCallum, the quarterback plays an integral role in the rushing attack.
Pflugerville averages 336 yards on the ground, and Oakmon leads the team with 533 yards rushing on 59 carries and six rushing touchdowns. All but 14 of those yards have come in the past two games, a 37-20 win over Leander and a 40-17 victory over Elgin.
At 5 feet 7 inches and about 150 pounds, Oakmon won’t bowl over many defenders. But a stocky build and a sudden burst make him a handful for would-be tacklers, and Taylor describes him as a “natural leader” who has quickly picked up the Panthers’ new offense.
“The kids follow him, and that’s a rarity for a freshman to have that type of command and presence,” Taylor said. “To have that at that young an age, it’s remarkable.”
According to senior left tackle Michael Friberg, Oakmon’s dedication during the summer set the tone for his strong early season.
“We’ve had freshmen come up before, but he took it more seriously,” said Friberg, who started at tight end last season. “He’s a leader in the locker room; he always makes sure people are paying attention.”
Taylor was certainly paying attention to Oakmon once the Panthers put on the pads in the summer.
A standout running back at Park Crest Middle School in Pflugerville last fall, Oakmon reeled off a long touchdown run in the Panthers’ first intrasquad scrimmage. He scored again in scrimmages against Hendrickson and Stony Point and had a touchdown and 74 yards from scrimmage in a 45-13 loss to Bowie in the season opener.
That loss forced Taylor to “step back and see what we had,” he said.
The early evaluation began behind center, where the Panthers had little experience back from a 2017 team that went 2-8.
“And we had to make some adjustments in a hurry,” Taylor said. “If you can run the ball and stop the run, you’ll always have a chance to win, and that’s what we wanted to do. With my run game optionwise, Elijah was what we needed in that spot for this offense.”