Defending Champs Should Thrive Despite Graduation of Caleb Downs
Next up in our series of 2023 football previews featuring the 2022 Georgia high school football state champions, we take a look at the Mill Creek Hawks, the defending Class 7A state champs.
A Look Back at the Hawks’ Dominant 2022 Season
Coach Josh Lovelady led Mill Creek on a dominant run throughout the 2022 regular season and continuing into the 7A playoffs, culminating with perhaps their most impressive game of the year: a 70-35 drubbing of previously-undefeated Carrollton in the state championship game.
Caleb Downs was a “generational type player,” as Coach Lovelady told us, and he was the centerpiece of a team loaded with talent. But Downs is off to the University of Alabama, where, according to his former coach, he is already making an impression on the Tide coaching staff.
He will be missed, and his talent will be impossible to replace, but this 2023 Mill Creek team will return a heckuva lot of the talent and playmakers who were a part of last season’s stunning 7A championship season.
It starts with Lovelady. This will be his fifth season as the head coach, but it’s year number 19 for him as a member of the Mill Creek staff. He came to Mill Creek with Shannon Jarvis, who was the first head football coach when the school opened in 2004. (Jarvis is now the athletic director and head football coach at Elbert County.) Lovelady served as an assistant on the staff until being named head coach in 2019; he promptly went to work building on the success Mill Creek had enjoyed under Jarvis and taking it to another level.
“It takes a lot of building blocks, what I call stacking the bricks, to make a foundation,” Lovelady told ITG Next Georgia in a recent episode of Next Take Georgia, our weekly podcast.
While Mill Creek has enjoyed moderate success since that inaugural season in 2004, the Hawks are 40-12 with Lovelady as the head coach, including quarterfinal appearances in his first season and again in 2021, before winning it all last season and finishing with a 14-1 record.
“We’ve always had something pretty special here, in the sense of our culture, our community, and the players,” Lovelady said.
It all came together in 2022, with Mill Creek’s impressive run to the 7A state championship interrupted only by a loss to Buford in one of the most anticipated games of the season. With an overflow crowd packed into Tom Riden Stadium, Mill Creek entered the game undefeated at 6-0, but fell behind early and could never fully recover, losing 39-27. Despite the loss, Lovelady said it turned out to be a defining moment in his team’s season.
“We had the best loss in school history,” Lovelady said. “It refocused us and exposed us in a good way, and showed us things we still needed to work on.”
Lovelady said his team came in the following Monday with a list of things it needed to fix and improve, and that became the defining moment.
“I thought, ‘Wow, we got a chance,’” the coach recalled.
They had more than a chance – the loss awakened a sleeping giant. Mill Creek would go on to win eight straight, including a playoff win streak that saw the Hawks outscore their five opponents by an average of 51-18.
Can Mill Creek Do It Again in 2023?
A repeat state championship is tough to accomplish in any sport, but in the super-competitive GHSA Class 7A, it becomes a mighty big mountain. (Ask Collins Hill or the 2023 Buford team, which had won three in a row but found that the higher you go, the thinner the air gets.) For the 2023 Mill Creek football team, there’s no Caleb Downs, but this is no one-man squad.
“We have five returning starters on offense and six on defense returning,” Lovelady said. “It includes a core group of guys coming back who have had one or two seasons of experience.”
That includes TE/LB Cole Mullins, a 6-foot, 4-inch Notre Dame commit who will lead a group of returning seniors at Mill Creek in 2023. He has 93 career tackles, including 11 sacks, over his last three seasons as a Hawk.
Senior Trajen Greco, a Power 5 recruit, will be back, and according to Lovelady, he will be one of several players expected to help the team on both sides this season.
“He was a former wide receiver who played cornerback for us last year, but he’ll play both for us this year,” Lovelady said.
Aidan Banfield is a University of North Carolina commit who returns to the Mill Creek offensive line. He is a 6-foot, 3-inch, 280-pound guard.
Returning in the backfield will be running back Cam Robinson, a senior who had 214 carries for 1,804 yards rushing and 21 TDs last season, while adding 23 receptions for 255 yards receiving and 3 TDs.
Taking over for the departed Hayden Clark at quarterback will be junior Shane Throgmartin, who Lovelady has plenty of confidence in.
“I think Shane could’ve started anywhere last season,” Lovelady said. “He’s a very talented player.”
Jaiden Patterson and Josh Anglin both return to lead the Mill Creek defense. Patterson is a tall safety who is committed to North Carolina. He had a monster season last year, finishing with 55 tackles, 3 fumble recoveries and 2 blocked FGs. He also had 2 kickoff returns for TDs.
Anglin will return at middle linebacker. Lovelady describes him as “dynamite in a small package. He flies around out there.”
Anglin has racked up 138 tackles over the last two seasons, with 7 sacks and an INT.
“He’s our alpha on and off the field,” Lovelady said of the 5-foot, 11-inch, 215-pound defender.
Anglin will be one of several defensive players Lovelady expects to make a big impact for the Mill Creek defense in the 2023 football season.
“We have some really tough-nosed kids in the box on our defense,” he said.
Lovelady likes what he sees with this 2023 Mill Creek football squad.
“I think we’re reloading, not rebuilding,” he added.
Expect big things again from Josh Lovelady and his 2023 Mill Creek football team.
