Oct 11, 2024 | By: Miles Walker

Offensive Line Igniting Pequot Lakes Football’s Perfect Start to 2024

Pequot Lakes football is putting on a clinic in 2024. They’re 6-0 on the season and are ranked third in Class AAA. With less than two weeks until section tourney time, we stopped by practice to find out what is powering the Patriots’ best record in over a decade.

All the Patriots have done in 2024 is win, win, win. Decisively, too – owning an average point differential of 37 points a game. And it all stems from their dominance in the trenches.

“It is not talked about enough, to be honest,” stated senior RB/LB John Paul Elsenpeter. “You don’t often get a line that has three, four years of experience like these guys do, and they’re just able to keep blowing open the holes and then they block downfield. So even when you get past the four, five yards, then you can make those cuts 10, 15 yards down the field and you got only a few men to break loose from.”

The Patriots’ ability to block, both at the line of scrimmage and downfield, enables the boys to establish an identity whether on the ground or through the air.

“We can do anything. We can go all the way into bone,” said senior quarterback Michael Oseland. “We’re strong and we can spread them out in empty sets and stuff like that. We can pass the ball over and then we can run smashmouth football. So it’s really hard to attack our offense.

And Pequot Lakes football is getting active on defense as well, holding opponents to under seven points a game thus far, already accounting for three shutouts.

“It starts up front and our front seven has been doing a great job of this, really shutting people down,” explained senior WR/DB Bryar Nordby. “We play in a run-heavy schedule, so better bring the intensity, and our front seven, it starts with them and they’ve been doing it.”

“I think we have 175 yards passing on us through six games, which is ridiculous,” Oseland said. “Our secondary is really good and our linebackers are good. We don’t have any holes in our defense.”

But the Patriots know the job’s not finished. For the boys to return to the state tournament for the first time since 2017, it’s going to be all about mentality.

“Play with no regrets,” Nordby emphasized. “Every week we’re 0-0 – we just got to have that mindset that every week, new week, just go in there and play the best football we can and just keep improving, week in and week out.

Pequot Lakes will go for the team’s first 7-0 start in over 20 years on Friday, October 11th as they hit the road to face off against Proctor.

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