Friday night’s Class 6A football final should be a fun one for all viewers, with two of the state’s elite big-school passing games squaring off for a state title in the weather-proof confines of U.S. Bank Stadium.
Moorhead junior quarterback Jett Feeney has played six full games this season and is averaging 287 passing yards in those contests. He has thrown for 25 touchdowns against just one interception and has completed 75% of his passes.
His top receiving target is 6-foot-1 junior David Mack, who has 114 catches for 1,499 yards and 25 — yes, 25 — receiving touchdowns this fall. He has scored at least once in every game, and has three-plus touchdowns in four games this season.
Mack has an offer from the Gophers, while Feeney has one from Wyoming.
Edina senior quarterback Mason West has offers from the likes of Kent State, Marshall and Miami (Ohio). But the 6-foot-5 signal caller won’t be suiting up for any of them next fall. The first-round draft pick of the Chicago Blackhawks is all hockey from here on out.
He will, however, wrap up his football career on a grand stage. West has thrown for 2,311 yards this season and 26 scores. That includes a masterful semifinal showing in which he threw for 314 yards and four scores in Edina’s upset of Minnetonka to set the stage for Friday’s scintillating showdown.
Wondering what to expect? These two teams met in mid-October. the final week of the regular season, and the Spuds won, 51-44.
West threw for 214 yards and three touchdowns, but the Feeney-Mack combo proved unstoppable. Feeney passed for 387 yards and four touchdowns, all of which went to Mack, who had 18 grabs for 202 yards.
Friday figures to provide plenty of fireworks, and also a welcomed changeup.
Class 6A football has largely become a contest of the trenches, where only the biggest and strongest survive. That’s the sport at its core. But the beauty of sports is that there is often more than one formula for success.
Yet a dominant running game — with a 2-to-1 rush to pass ratio, or higher — seemed to be a requirement to hoist the big-school trophy at season’s end. Here are the team passing and rushing totals for the Class 6A champions, dating back to 2018:
2024 Maple Grove: 3,047 yards rushing, 1,687 passing
2023 Centennial: 3,497 rushing, 1,138 passing
2022 Maple Grove: 3,114 rushing, 1,365 passing
2021 Lakeville South: 4,262 rushing, 655 passing
2019 Wayzata: 2,858 rushing, 1,656 passing
2018 Lakeville North: 3,805 rushing, 947 passing
It’s been 12 years since Roseville’s Jacques Perra and Rosemount’s Jackson Erdmann were dueling in a state semifinal at the Metrodome.
At a certain point, there only felt like one way to join the championship fraternity: Line it up and run the rock. The problem is, not every program has the size and numbers to successfully play that brand of football. And it seemed the teams that didn’t had a ceiling on their seasons, either because they couldn’t execute their offense as the weather worsened or they simply couldn’t match the physicality of their opponents in the deeper rounds.
This year’s finalists buck the trend. Moorhead has passed for 2,863 yards this season while rushing for 1,569. Edina has 2,371 yards rushing to 1,796 rushing. Certainly, both teams still can run the ball; it’s how Edina beat Eden Prairie.
Moorhead and Edina aren’t exactly Cinderella stories, but they do things a little differently, and in the process have potentially provided a slightly more replicable road map for the programs who may never have the bodies to line up man to man, pound for pound, with some of the current big-school superpower programs.
Now, they can legitimately believe they may just be a couple hyper-skilled kids away from giving themselves a puncher’s chance at their ultimate goal.
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