Is East Lincoln’s Chris Daley the best running back in North Carolina? His coach says yes
East Lincoln High School running back Chris Daley, one of the stars of the school’s 16-0 state championship last year, said he knows people are waiting for the Mustangs to fall off this season.
“They’re expecting us to lose a couple games because we lost so many seniors,” he said, “but I feel like we have a good enough team to go ahead and win this thing. Man, we have all the talent we need.”
Daley is one of eight starters and 12 lettermen back for an East Lincoln team that, if nothing else, will look different than last year’s dominating 3A state champ.
A year ago, East Lincoln beat all but one of its 16 opponents by two touchdowns or more, winning its third state title in 10 years.
But a lot of the stars of that team are in college now.
Quarterback Ty Mizzell, who threw for nearly 2,500 yards, is at Wake Forest. Defensive back Keandre Walker is at Virginia. Linebacker Ben Cutter, who had more than 180 tackles, is at West Virginia.
That leaves Daley and senior defensive end Marcel Johnson as the team’s stars this year. Johnson was a conference defensive player of the year in 2022.
Daley? He ran for 1,767 yards and 21 touchdowns as a sophomore, near the school’s single-season rushing record. He plans to break that this season. And his teammates said they know they can lean on him.
“He’s just a great guy to on your side for sure,” said junior quarterback Hunter Bolling. “He opens up the whole defense for me. They have to crowd (the line of scrimmage) and we just start throwing, because they have to crowd the box on him.”
East Lincoln coach David Lubowicz thinks Daley is the best running back in North Carolina, and he thinks Daley will have a good offensive line to run behind, led by 6-foot-3, 240-pound junior Christian Garcia.
“We lost a lot of talent last year,” Lubowicz said, ‘but that junior class coming up, there’s a lot of talent there, a lot of kids with college looks and offers.”
And Lubowicz said the Mustangs will have a rare home run hitter in Daley, their best junior, who has scholarship offers from Appalachian State, Charlotte, East Carolina and Liberty.
For now.
“It’s his balance and his vision,” Lubowicz said, “those two kind of go hand-in-hand, but he’s got this great patience hitting the hole, and when he hits the hole, he’s really quick. He runs with a really low pad level and he’s got the ability to see gaps other backs can’t see.
“He’s got that and those intangible things you can’t teach. It’s not like we coached him up to be a great running back. He came to us as a great running back. So I say he’s the best because he’s (on my team) but I think a lot of people would argue that same thing.”
