Broadneck’s Ehrlich unique freshman
Quarterback leads third-ranked Bruins to perfect regular season
Josh Ehrlich was a bundle of nerves his first night. The heat of the lights and the Bowie crowd, as well as the fact that he’d never played a single snap on high school turf before and here he was threatened to chew him up.
“Things didn’t start out so hot,” Ehrlich said.
But then, a force of nature. Storms pushed the game to Saturday. In the light of day, Ehrlich threw for two touchdowns in the 21-13 victory.
Since then, the freshman quarterback has been chasing perfection, and coming pretty close.
Ehrlich has for 2,070 yards and 35 touchdowns, as well as running for our touchdowns to lead unbeaten Broadneck (10-0) in a bid for its first state title.
Abundant success could overwhelm a first-year high-schooler. But Ehrlich doesn’t see himself that way.
“No, I don't think like that. I'm a perfectionist,” he said. I want to make every ball, throw every ball right on the money. When you have that attitude … I don't really see myself as freshman.”
On that first night, though, like so many other days this season, Ehrlich leaned on his veterans, Andre Woods, Jason Carcamo and Ethon Williams, who each had a touchdown in the Bowie game.
“They taught me how to play the unit,” Ehrlich said. “They brought me in right away.”
It was Carcamo that quickly adjusted Ehrlich to the speed of a high school game.
“The first time I worked with Carcamo, I missed him through the hole giving him the handoff,” Ehrlich said. “He was literally through the hole before the ball was stuck out.”
Ehrlich knows Williams can be anywhere on the field for his spiral, and the Boston College commit will “have a shot at it.” But that’s not the biggest impact Williams has had on the helmsman.
At last fall’s game against Annapolis, Ehrlich was in attendance. He met his future receiver, who embraced the eighth grader.
“Ethon really, really talked to him that night a lot,” Josh’s father, former governor of Maryland Robert Ehrlich said. “He said, 'Don't you want to throw to me next year?' ”
It’d be difficult for the avid Bruins football fan to imagine that their freshman quarterback could be anywhere else but in the Broadneck pocket this season.
He wasn’t exactly bred for offense. His father played as a linebacker at Princeton. Josh’s older brother Drew is a linebackerturned-strong-safety at Villanova.
But at first, Ehrlich wasn’t a quarterback at all. He was a wildcat.
The 7-year-old started as a running back, which made him happy because he’d be able to rack up carries. And yet, he was the one calling plays on the field. He just didn’t want the label that usually came with it.
“At 8, we were having trouble with our snaps,” Robert Ehrlich said. “We couldn't get the snaps down.”
Coach Anthony Hawkins, the Cape St. Claire youth coach then and now, called Kendel, Josh’s mother, with a request — “We need to make Josh the quarterback.”
“And Kendel said, ‘No, you can't do that,’ ” Robert Ehrlich said. “Josh is smart enough to know at that age if he got to be the quarterback, he was going to hand off, not get his carries. He was not going to be a happy camper.”
So the adults fashioned a made-up position — the “wildcat.” They off-centered him at the line of scrimmage and designed plays (“wildcat right,” “wildcat left”) to throw Josh off the scent.
“He figured it out soon enough, but the bottom line is, he became our quarterback,” Robert Ehrlich said.
Josh was dynamic under center, and, by age 13, led his Cape squad to become Division I county champions and on to the state title game.
But it was early on that his Cape coaches — as well as another one — knew there was something special about him.
Broadneck coach Rob Harris had a son in the league who played alongside Ehrlich and was therefore at the seedling stage of the young quarterback’s career.
“It was a chance to see him up close,” Harris said.
The Bruins coach watched him sprout from a kid who hated the idea of being under center to a quarterback managing a successful offensive crew.
“He’s very smart,” Harris said. “He really absorbs information. Always asking questions.”
Ehrlich could have gone on to a private school like Gilman, as his father and older brother Drew had. But Harris had always been there. “He grabbed me — I'll never forget — at an All-Star game at 11 [years old] at Spalding, and said, 'Look. I'd really like you guys to think about Broadneck,’” Robert Ehrlich said.
The starting job at the Bruins was still a long way away for the youngest Ehrlich, though. Broadneck had two quarterbacks already. The rising freshman had to work for it. “I was working on the plays all winter, all spring,” Ehrlich said. “I was getting ready, getting bigger. I was pretty skinny last year.”
His father calls him “religious” about his alternate-day workouts. Father and son sit down to watch hours of film three nights a week, as they have for years. And, as no surprise to anyone, Ehrlich loves to run.
The freshman has five rushing TDs already this year.
But it’s his arm that’s truly shined this season.
“We call him a drop-back passer, he prefers himself a versatile, multi-dimensional,” his father said. “He likes to run. With his age and his build at this time, we don't like him running a whole lot.”