The irony could not have been lost on Walled Lake Western junior quarterback Sam Johnson.

Standing on the field and basking in the glow of leading Walled Lake Western to a 19-14 win over West Bloomfield in his first game with his new team, Johnson’s former team, Southfield A&T, was on the field also.

A&T was coming on for warm-ups for Thursday’s second game of the Prep Kickoff Classic at Wayne State, and Johnson couldn’t help but look over and smile at his former teammates after being the starting quarterback at Southfield two years ago and then newly-formed A&T last season.

“I wish them the best of luck,” Johnson said. “I hope they do good. I’m just focusing on Milford now.”

If Johnson’s former teammates managed to sneak a peek at the Western-West Bloomfield game, they had to have been impressed with how Johnson looked with his new team.

A 6-foot-3 quarterback, with scholarship offers from nine Mid-American schools along with Indiana, Syracuse and Temple, Johnson was 17 of 27 passing for 236 yards and two touchdown runs to outshine what had been the more heralded quarterback on the other side.

A lot has been made going into the season about the lethal passing game West Bloomfield will have behind three future Division I players, quarterback Bryce Veasley (Bowling Green) and wideouts A.J. Abbott and Taj Mustapha, who both are headed to Wisconsin.

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Walled Lake Western quarterback Sam Johnson runs the ball during the second half of the 19-14 win over West Bloomfield on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017, at Wayne State. (Photo: Kirthmon F. Dozier, Detroit Free Press)

While that trio will be tough on defenses all season, Johnson showed he will as well. 

Johnson’s signature pass of the game came midway through the fourth quarter with Western trailing, 14-13, and facing a third-and-24 from the West Bloomfield 49-yard line. 

Johnson lofted a perfect pass in space towards the sideline to junior wide receiver Kevin Jackson, who hauled it in and went out of bounds for a 32-yard gain to the West Bloomfield 17. 

Five plays later, Johnson scored on a 2-yard touchdown run with 2:15 remaining for what turned out to be the game-winning score.

“At that point, somebody had to make a play,” Johnson said. “That’s all I was thinking and that’s what I did.”

Jackson said he estimated there was only a 3-foot window for Johnson to fit that all-important conversion pass to him.

“It was a really good throw,” Jackson said. “Sam’s a really good quarterback. I knew he would put it in the right place.”

Johnson started school at Western in January after he said his dad started another job in the Walled Lake area, and sought to get familiar with the school and football program right away. 

Helping the transition for Johnson was that he was around Western head coach Mike Zdebski a lot, since he was in Zdebski’s geometry and weights classes and would also chat with Zdebski often at lunch.

Initially, Zdebski said those conversations revolved very little around football.

“Just going over math, getting him acclimated to school and making sure he understands the counseling department,” Zdebski said. “He did so much on his own during the off-season.” 

Zdebski said Johnson, through his own workouts, did a wondrous job improving his mechanics, but there were two other areas of Johnson’s game during the spring that Zdebski had a bigger role in enhancing.

Also Western’s track coach, Zdebski was determined to improve Johnson’s speed and strength.

“The kid can run,” Zdebski said. “He fought it a little bit at the beginning but as his times started getting faster and faster, he was saying this is pretty cool. He has always been told he’s not a runner and that he’s a pocket quarterback.” 

As his past and present came together for a fleeting moment on Thursday, Johnson ran really fast off of the field in triumph, knowing his future should consist of a terrific first year at Western.

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