Prospect has great name, great game

Even if he had nothing else going for him, he’s got a great name for a football player.

Steele Chambers.

“Pretty good, isn’t it?” his high school football coach, Tim McFarlin, said with a chuckle.

With a name like that, he’d seem destined to be a stud athlete or a movie star. Fortunately for Ohio State, the commitment for the 2019 recruiting class lives up to his name on the football field.

The four-star running back from Blessed Trinity Catholic High School in Roswell, Georgia, has gotten off to a stellar start to his senior season.

In four games, Chambers has already scored 11 touchdowns and is averaging 7.9 yards per carry. He has scored four touchdowns in each of the last two weeks against top competition for the defending state champion Titans.

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Last week Blessed Trinity faced Benedictine, the top-ranked Class AAA school in Georgia and the best defense the Titans had seen.

“They shut us down the first two series,” McFarlin said. “Steele kept carrying the ball and finally busted loose. He just kind of wore them down.”

A week earlier, Blessed Trinity led by only 8 in the third quarter. McFarlin said he planned to give a sophomore running back some time to keep Chambers and the Titans’ other top runner, Elijah Green, fresh.

“Steele is always respectful,” McFarlin recalled, “but he looked at me and said, ‘Coach, leave me in, give me the football and let’s put this game away.’ As a coach, I got chills. That’s what you want to hear.”

Sure enough, Chambers scored three touchdowns in the second half as Blessed Trinity pulled away.

At 6 feet 2 and 220 pounds, Chambers has the size to grind opponents down. He also has the speed to break long runs.

“Steele sees things very well and has a unique ability to make a hard cutback,” McFarlin said. “I’ve seen him change fields many times. It looks like there’s nothing there and then he’s out the back door.

“He did that last week on his second touchdown. We ran a toss play and they stormed it pretty good. He changed direction and cut back and scored on the opposite end of the field. It’s fun to watch him run.”

Chambers is also a star linebacker, and McFarlin said many schools recruited him for defense. Bucknuts recruiting analyst Bill Kurelic said that Ohio State gave Chambers the choice and he wants to be a running back. Kurelic said Chambers was originally a three-star prospect who was under the radar of many schools, though Ohio State liked him all along.

McFarlin said there’s much to like about Chambers apart from football. He said he has a 3.9 grade-point average at Blessed Trinity, which McFarlin said is quite demanding academically. The coach described Steele as quiet and mature, not one to engage in trash-talking on the field.

“His reputation in the school is just unbelievable,” McFarlin said. “His teachers love him. He’s tight with guys on the team but still has a friend base that extends (beyond that). To me as a coach, that’s refreshing to see.

“He’s got high morals, high standards. As a high school coach, especially when we see all the stuff surrounding football and people calling attention to themselves, that’s not Steele. He’s not a ‘me’ guy. When football is over for him one day, he’s going to be just fine. You’re getting a top-shelf person and player.”

brabinowitz@dispatch.com

@brdispatch