GREENWOOD VILLAGE — Brian Brogan looked at the goal posts standing 28 yards in front of him, and gathered himself.
It was a short distance, but could’ve been a canyon for the freshman. After all, a spot in the Class 5A football championship game was on the line.
“I kind of had that heart-drop thing,” Brogan said, tapping his chest. But after he kicked it, “I looked up, and it was going through, and I’m running to the sideline.”
Brogan drilled the 28-yard-field goal as time expired, giving Valor Christian a 10-7 win over Cherry Creek in the 5A semifinals at the Stutler Bowl on Saturday afternoon.
“Wow,” said Valor Christian Rod Sherman of the kick. “It was emotional, highly emotional.”
Brogan was pulled up to the varsity team just prior to the season from the freshman program when the presumptive kicker came down with mono.
“I was thinking it was a ‘must-do’ kind of thing,” Brogan said of the winning kick. “So I just kept my head down and kicked the ball.”
Saturday’s matchup, a rematch of a 42-26 Valor win on Sept. 26, was dominated by both defenses. Valor held a 7-0 lead at halftime, and Cherry Creek got a touchdown on its first drive of the second half, but that was basically it.
In the fourth quarter, Valor Christian blocked a 25-yard field goal — that later proved to be the difference — and then the teams traded four punts.
Finally, after another punt, Valor Christian took over at its own 45 with exactly two minutes remaining. And Dylan McCaffrey, Valor’s senior quarterback who will start in his third state championship game next Saturday, trotted out.
(John Priest/CHSAANow.com)
“I got excited,” McCaffrey said of that final drive. “I started sitting by coach, hearing what we were going to call, and started to think about the things on the last drive that we needed to fix.”
Quickly, the Eagles found themselves on the 10-yard-line with 29.9 seconds to play, thanks in large part to McCaffrey.
A short running play went nowhere, but that made it third down from the 11, and the clock ran down to 2.3 seconds before Valor took a timeout.
That set the stage for Brogan, who had missed a 28-yard field goal earlier in the game. He delivered, and his teammates rushed to hoist him onto their shoulders.
The moment was a stark turnaround from where the team was four games into the season. The Eagles dropped games to an out-of-state team, Pomona, and Mullen, and were 1-3 on Sept. 23.
“We weren’t going to wake up after we lost to Mullen and be a good team the next day,” Sherman said. “We were going to have to stay the course and get better. And I feel like we have.”
Since that last loss, 23-16 to Pomona, Valor (10-3) has won nine games in a row.
“It’s been a great journey. I’ve learned so much,” McCaffrey said. “That’s a great part of our motto, which is to play hard teams at the start of the season, expose ourselves early, expose the flaws early, so we can get back to work, get back to the chalkboard and fix those mistakes so later on in the season we can peak. So far, we’ve done that.
“I think there are a lot of things to improve on after this game. It’s a never-ending journey, really.”
Much of the credit for that turnaround falls on the shoulders of McCaffrey, a Michigan recruit who has now thrown for more than 2,600 yards this season.
“I don’t know that this state will realize how good Dylan was until Dylan is gone,” Sherman said. “He’s an unbelievable quarterback. … I would tell you: I’ve gotten to know Dylan as a young man outside of football. He’s an unbelievable young man. What you see on the football field is actually a microcosm of who he is, with his character. I’m really sad that I only get one more week to coach Dylan, but at least I get one more week.”
Now Valor will return to a championship game for the eighth straight season. The Eagles have won six championships, including the 5A title last season over Pomona.
They’ll play Pomona again in this year’s 5A championship game. Pomona beat Regis Jesuit in the other semifinal matchup.
Next Saturday’s game, which will kick off at 2:30 p.m. at Mile High Stadium, will be the fourth time the teams have met in the last two seasons.
“I’m looking forward to a rematch,” McCaffrey said. “They got us earlier in the year and I think we’ll have a little bit of extra fire coming after that. They’re a great team, and it’s going to be a great fight.”