Nashua South's Osgood takes a different path to football success

A year ago, Max Osgood was just looking to have some fun on the football field.

In his first year of organized football since sixth grade, the Nashua High School South senior was trying to add a sport to keep himself occupied in between lacrosse and basketball season.

Instead, Osgood might have found a ticket to playing at the next level.

"He's on a lot of people's radar," South coach Scott Knight said. "He's going to play (college) ball somewhere, we just don't know where yet."

When Osgood first showed up for spring camps at the end of his sophomore year, Knight and the Panthers' coaching staff saw a guy who, at 6-5 and 220 pounds, had the size to be a key player. They just had to get him there.

"He was pretty aggressive and he had good skills and moved well," Knight said. "So it was just a matter of let's teach this kid our system and see how he fits in. As the year went on, he started to figure it out."

That was the hardest part, admits Osgood, who found a spot in South's lineup at tight end and outside linebacker.

"The second I came back, I loved it," he said. "It was awesome. It was hard to learn the offense because it's a complicated offense, but midway through the season, I started to get it and that's when I started excelling, I think."

Like many players on South's 2015 roster, Osgood was getting his first taste of varsity football, and with so many players returning this season, the Panthers knew the lumps they took during a 2-8 campaign would help them down the road.

"All last year, we set the foundation of what we needed to do to win," Osgood said. "We didn't win a lot, but we got the skills to do it. Now, with all of that, we're going to do good things."

Osgood got some good news of his own after the end of last season. Despite breaking his wrist against Nashua North in the Turkey Bowl, he recovered quickly and ended up only missing three regular season games for the boys basketball team.

And during that time, he started receiving letters from college football coaches.

"He gets mail from UConn," Knight said. "He's what they call a big athlete in their system, which is exactly the way we use him. He's still on UNH's radar. He has an offer from Bryant."

A few coaches even started showing up to South's lacrosse games in the spring, just to see Osgood perform in person.

"Coaches would just show up and (South lacrosse coach Bill) Monson would come over and say 'you better play hard, because there's a coach over there,' " Osgood said. "All the recruiting stuff has been pretty exciting. You never know who is watching, so you've always got to play hard."

Knight feels that's the biggest thing that Osgood needs to work on, if he's going to emerge as a top player in the state this season and have a chance to be successful at the next level.

"He's got great hands and he runs pretty good routes," the coach said. "He's physical when he has the ball in his hands. He has some pretty good pass rush moves and he moves well in space. His weakness is trying to get him to go a hundred miles an hour on every down. That's something that comes with maturity and trying to figure that part of the game out."

In South's season-opening win over Spaulding last Saturday, Osgood had five catches for 50 yards and a touchdown as the Panthers put up 76 points. He believes that's just a starting point for the Panthers, as they try to make it back to the playoffs for the first time since 2013.

Although he's played basketball and lacrosse for a lot longer, Osgood expects that it will be football that he'll continue playing once he moves on to college, which is something he still has a hard time believing.

"I probably would have laughed," Osgood said when asked what his reaction to being recruited would have been a year ago. "I'd always planned on playing lacrosse in college. I was just playing football to, I don't know, just do something in the fall and have fun."