10 storylines to watch heading into the 2024 Utah high school football season

With the 2024 high school football season getting underway this week, here’s a look at some of the most intriguing storylines to watch throughout the season.

Transfers aplenty

When the UHSAA board of trustees finalized the new transfer rules back in May, the discussion immediately shifted to how much or littles the rules would impact transfer students beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Beginning this fall, the new transfer rules state that student-athletes who don’t qualify for a transfer waiver — bullying, family move, etc. — can still transfer but they must sit out the first 50% of that season’s varsity or sub-varsity competition, or 30 days, whichever is greater.

As of Tuesday, the UHSAA confirmed that there are 217 football players in Utah who have transferred schools without a waiver and will be sitting out the first five games of the regular season. Unless a team has a bye in the first five weeks, those 217 players will be eligible to return in Week 6.

A handful of the those players may still be waiting for waiver approval, which means that number could go down slightly.

That 217 number doesn’t include any players who transferred between December and May, who weren’t subject to the new transfer rules.

Under the new transfer rule, if any of those 217 players were to seek a second transfer after this season, they would have to sit out an entire season.

Helaman Casuga transfers from state champ to state champ

For the third time in the past five seasons, Corner Canyon will start a transfer quarterback behind center this year.

Helaman Casuga had a wildly successful sophomore season in leading Timpview to a 5A state championship, but within a couple weeks of the conclusion of the season he stunned many by transferring to juggernaut Corner Canyon.

No school has cranked out college-level quarterback talent better than Corner Canyon in recent years, and Casuga jumped at the chance to be the next great one with the graduation of Isaac Wilson — who was named the back-up at Utah this week as a true freshman.

Casuga is following in the footsteps of recent Corner Canyon QBs Zach Wilson (Denver Broncos), Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss) and Devon Brown (Ohio State).

A year ago he threw for 4,135 yards and 33 TDs for the T-Birds. He only rushed for five TDs, there should be a big uptick in that production in Eric Kjar’s offense with the Chargers.

In two years at Timpview he passed for 6,457 yards and 58 TDs. With two seasons upcoming in Kjar’s offense, by the time his career is over Casuga will likely own the state’s career passing TDs record (137) and passing yards record (12,929).

Casuga’s departure from Timpview created a vacancy at quarterback that former Pleasant Grove QB Carson Rasmussen jumped at to fill. Ironically enough, he played his sophomore season at Corner Canyon.

Rasmussen had a great junior season in leading the Vikings to the quarterfinals after being projected to finish last in Region 3. He finished the year with 1,927 passing yards and 22 TDs.

San Juan on history’s doorstep

Heading into the 2024 season, San Juan’s 37-game winning streak ranks third in state history.

If all goes well, it will own the record all to itself.

Duchesne (2010-2014) and Timpview (2018-2021) are tied for the state record with 48 straight victories.

If San Juan runs the table on another perfect regular season, it would extend its winning straight to 47 straight heading into the playoffs. It could then tie the record with a win in the quarterfinals and then break it with win No. 49 in the semifinals. A fourth straight championship would result in its 50th win in a row.

The Broncos have three regular season games schedule against higher-classification teams — Week 1 at Grantsville, Week 2 vs. Juan Diego and Week 10 at Hurricane.

All three of those programs appear poised to have improved seasons than a year ago and will be great challenges for San Juan in its chase for history.

Major coaching shake-up

A 20-25% turnover rate with head football coaches has been pretty common over the past decade, but this past offseason soared past that number. Of the 106 schools that played football last season — not counting 8-player football — 31 have new coaches for the 2024 season.

When factoring in new school West Field, that’s 32 schools with a first-year head coach roaming the sidelines (29 percent).

Of the 32 coaches, 23 will be first-time head coaches.

Among the other nine were several notable coaches who jumped to another school.

After 17 wildly successful years at Duchesne, Jerry Cowan made the jump from 1A to 4A and took over as head coach at Hurricane. Matt Richards spent the past 11 years at Kearns, but he’s now the new head coach at Herriman.

Eric Alder made the jump from Stansbury after five very successful seasons to return to his alma mater Sky View.

Also of significance is the return to the sidelines of Stansbury coach Lee Leslie. He hasn’t been a head coach in Utah since the 1999 season at Hillcrest, but he’s returning to the Beehive State after several coaching stints in several different states.

Jerry Cowan shooting for the moon

When football coaches move from one school to the next, it’s often a modest jump, from perhaps 4A to 5A or 5A to 6A. Sometimes a coach will jump two classifications, but rarely does anyone ever make a bigger jump than that.

New Hurricane coach Jerry Cowan is bucking that trend.

After 17 years as Duchesne’s head coach — in addition to four years as an assistant in between from 2008 to 2011 — Cowan departed his 1A stomping grounds this offseason to try and revive 4A’s Hurricane.

In four years at Duchesne his teams went 154-42 with five state championships.

Hurricane hasn’t had a winning season since going 6-4 in 2015 when Steve Pearson was the head coach. Cowan is a graduate of Grand High School and Southern Utah.

The lost time a coach made a comparable jump from small rural school to larger school was Weston Zabriskie in 2019 as he moved from 2A’s South Sevier to 4A’s Cedar Valley.

With Cowan’s move to Region 9, two of the state’s longest-tenured coaches are now in the same region. Dixie’s Blaine Monkres leads the state with 33 years of head coaching experience. Cowan has 17 seasons under his belt, and only North Summit’s Jerre Holmes (23 total seasons), Grand’s Dennis Wells (22 total seasons), Ogden’s Erik Thompson (21 total seasons), Lehi’s Ed Larson (19 total seasons) and East’s Brandon Matich (19 total seasons) have more.

Cowan’s 17 years at Duchesne was the longest-current stretch of a coach at the same school. That mark now belongs to East’s Matich and American Fork’s Aaron Behm who are each entering their 15 seasons.

Corner Canyon taking on the big boys again

For the third straight season, Corner Canyon is poised to take on one of the big boys of high school football as it hosts nationally-ranked IMG Academy out of Bradenton, Fla.

IMG plays as an independent out of Florida and frequently travels around the country to play games on Friday nights. This will be its second trip to Utah in the past three years after it beat East 63-13 two seasons ago.

IMG finished last season ranked No. 4 in the final MaxPreps national rankings, and this season opens the season ranked No. 5.

The previous two seasons Corner Canyon played Bishop Gorman out of Las Vegas, and last year the Gaels end the season ranked No. 1 nationally according to MaxPreps.

Only two of Bishop Gorman’s games last year were competitive, and one of those was in Draper against the Chargers . Led by Isaac Wilson, who racked up six total TDs, Corner Canyon led 28-21 and was very much in the game only trailing 49-42 midway through the fourth quarter. Bishop Gorman tacked on two more scores to pull away late.

Corner Canyon will hope for another competitive performance in Week 2 this season when it takes on IMG.

The Gaels feature players who committed to schools like Miami, Ohio State, Alabama, Missouri, Michigan and Washington.

Three new schools to compete in 2024

West Field High School and the two Utah Military schools will begin playing football this fall, as the number of teams competing swells to 116 this season.

Utah Military Hill Field and Utah Military Camp Williams have participated in other sports in the past, and this season its adding football to its list of sports as it’s competing in 8-player football, boosting that league from seven to nine teams in 2024.

“We are extremely excited to represent the first football team in the history of Utah Military Academy Camp Williams. I couldn’t be more proud of how our young men have bought into the work and grind of the summer,” said coach Michael Graham. “We have a lot of youth, with only three seniors and one junior who plans to graduate early. It is many of our athletes first year playing organized football and we look forward to making some noise in an exciting 8-man classification.”

West Field is a brand new school in Taylor in Weber County. It will compete in 4A in Region 11 in its inaugural season.

“Region 11 is full of great teams, coaches, and players. We’re expecting to face a gauntlet of talented, well-coached programs with winning traditions,” said West Field coach Eric Jones, a Roy High graduate who spent the past two years as Bingham’s head coach.

Year of the O-linemen

There’s a natural ebb and flow when it comes to the football positions churning out the top talent in Utah.

In recent memory, linebackers and defensive line are the positions that have generated the biggest recruiting interest.

In 2024, the buzz is with offensive lineman.

In both Rivals’s and 247sports’ recruiting rankings from Utah for the Class of 2025, five of their top 10 players are offensive lineman.

The state’s top two prospects according to Rivals are Skyridge offensive tackle Darius Afalava (Oklahoma) and Spanish Fork tackle Aaron Dunn (Utah).

Lone Peak tackle Austin Pay ranks is the fourth prospect, while West’s Brian Tapu (Nebraska) and Vaea Ikakoula (Stanford) rank as the seventh and ninth prospects.

Skyridge’s Ben Howard (Cal) is ranked in the top 10 according to 247 sports.

Will 2024 be the year of repeats?

As the high school football season gets underway this week, six of the seven state champs from a year ago begin ranked No. 1 in their respective classifications in the Deseret News preseason coaches rankings.

Only the coaches in 3A deviated from the defending champ with Morgan getting voted No. 1 instead of Richfield.

The other six preseason No. 1s are Corner Canyon (6A), Timpview (5A), Crimson Cliffs (4A), San Juan (2A), Beaver (1A) and Rich (8-player).

As much as preseason rankings have no bearing on the eventual champ, the voting from last year’s coaches was almost spot on as five of its seven preseason No. 1s went on to claim the state championship.

Only Morgan and Monticello didn’t go on to win championships.

Bounce-back season?

Twelve high schools in Utah won either one or zero games last season, and all 12 head into the 2024 season with very little external expectations. The preseason is a time for optimism though.

Five of those 12 teams made a coaching change this past offseason (Clearfield, Skyline, Murray, Carbon and North Sevier), which they hope steer the programs to more success than a year ago. Five other schools (Layton, Riverton, Hillcrest, ALA and South Sevier) are heading into the second season with their current head coach, and they hoping that continuity contributes to a higher win total.

Stark turnarounds aren’t common, but every year there’s one or two, which should give last year’s bottom 12 hope for 2024.

Last season Green Canyon went 10-4 and reached the 4A state championship game a year after the program went a dismal 1-9.

Maple Mountain also posted a 1-9 season in 2022 but improved to go 6-6 last season. Salem Hills made a jump from 2-8 in 2022 to 8-4 last season.

The season before Woods Cross went 0-10 to 6-5, and in 2001 Northridge recorded a 7-4 record after an 0-10 season the year prior.