Delaney poised for a big season for Hollis Brookline football

[Editor’s Note: This story also appears in the 2017 Football Prospectus.]

Joey Delaney found out he was going to be the starting quarterback for the Hollis Brookline High School football team before the start of his sophomore season.

Then he had to wait almost a year to get on the field.

It was the second game of the year when Delaney went down with a season-ending shoulder injury, and the Cavaliers signal-caller was forced to watch from the sidelines almost until the start of the preseason the next year.

But as Delaney, now a senior, and his teammates get ready for the start of this season, he's looking forward to going out with a bang.

"Now that I’m a senior captain, I know everyone is watching me, so I have to bring a positive attitude every day," he said. "I know that if I’m working as hard as I can and they see me doing it, they’re going to do it themselves. I want to keep everyone working hard, keep the enthusiasm up, keep positive attitudes with everyone, and get after it every single day."

That was something Delaney wasn't able to do during last offseason. With no reason for him to rush back after the season was over, HB coach Chris Lones took it slow with his quarterback, holding him out of 7-on-7s to make sure he was a hundred percent going into the year.

"I wanted him to feel comfortable," Lones said. "We didn’t want him to throw the ball when one arm was still lagging. He couldn’t wait. He worked hard mentally preparing for the season. (Offensive coordinator) Shawn (Aubut) would throw stuff on the whiteboard and he would break it down. He wasn’t perfect, but he knew just about every read he was supposed to make last year."

When Delaney finally returned to action, he was physically and mentally prepared to step back into a starting role.

"I’m a student of the game," he said. "I love learning about it as much as playing it. Watching film for me is helping me and benefiting me. If I know it’s going to make me a better football player, then I love doing it."

HB tied a program record in 2016 by winning seven games, and made the playoffs for the second time in three years. Despite losing 11 seniors, the feeling is there are plenty of returning players to make another run at the postseason.

"Our entire receiving core is returning," Delaney said. "Everyone is familiar with the offense. We’re just getting better. We’re in our second or third years in the offense, and that’s just huge."

One big difference for Delaney will be the absence of his brother, Brian, who graduated in the spring. The two had played on the same team almost every year since they started playing for the Amherst Patriots when Joey Delaney was seven.

"We had a great connection," Delaney said. "We’d always work in the offseason together. Me at quarterback and him at receiver, we just had that timing down."

Lones thinks that playing without his brother might help Delaney in the long run, as his confidence started to grow in his other receivers as last season moved along. This year, the quarterback has focused more on finding the open guy instead of the guy he's most comfortable with.

"When something went bad, he’d immediately throw to Brian, didn’t matter what was there," Lones said of the start of last season. "As the season went on, his trust factor with the other guys was greater. He’s reading where he’s supposed to be reading and getting the ball to the guy he’s supposed to."

And if Delaney continues to progress like that throughout his senior season, Lones believes he could have his pick of where to play college football next year.

"I think he can play anywhere he wants to play," the coach said. "He has the arm to make every single throw, I don’t care where it is. He’s stubborn enough to try to make every throw and he’s got a short memory. He has all the tools."