Brent Carden photos - AJ Whitman has been dominant through five games this season, rushing for 922 yards and
There are certain names in Warren County football that don't require much explanation: Womack, Lusk, Northcutt and CJ.
Mention them around somebody who has followed Pioneer football long enough and there's a good chance they can tell you a story. Maybe they watched one of them play - their parents did for sure. Or, perhaps they've just heard the stories so many times that those names have become part of Pioneer football folklore.
AJ Whitman isn't there yet. But he's starting to show up on the same lists - And he's doing it in warp speed, kind of the same way he plays on Friday nights.
Whitman enters the back half of the schedule with 922 rushing yards and 11 rushing touchdowns. Add in the 76 yards he rushed for in spot duty as a sophomore, along with a 21-yard run he had in the late stages against Wilson Central as a freshman, and you can note that AJ is now the 16th Pioneer to rush for 1,000 yards in his career.
Another 76 yards Friday night and he'll reach an even bigger milestone - 1,000 yards this season alone. That hasn't happened at Warren County since CJ Taylor rushed for 1,768 yards during his Mr. Football season in 2020.
And it’s going to take him five games . . . and probably one more half. That's it.
Whitman has gone from a promising, yet unproven signal caller leading the Pioneers to the doorstep of 1,000 yards in five Friday nights. Speaking of doorsteps, when the Pioneers are on the verge of scoring, they call No. 10’s number and he delivers. Whitman has already rushed for 11 touchdowns - yes, some have been long runs - and thrown for four more.
Those are the kinds of numbers that make you start pulling out the old lists. And if Whitman is going to cross the 1,000-yard threshold Friday night at Nunley Stadium, there probably couldn't be a more fitting night to do it.
Taylor's No. 1 will be honored with a jersey retirement ceremony Friday, bringing one of the greatest players in Warren County history back to the same field where he became something more than a man or myth around here. He became a legend.
The numbers certainly helped. Taylor finished with exactly 3,000 career rushing yards, third all-time at Warren County, and his senior season ended with him becoming the first Pioneer football player to win Tennessee's Mr. Football award. But numbers only tell part of the CJ Taylor story.
There was a swagger every time No. 1 touched the football. More than that, there was just a certain juice about him when he decided to lower his shoulder and go get the yards he wanted.
I still think about his 307-yard night at Blackman. The Blaze Chain Gang knew what kind of night they were in for almost immediately. On Warren County's first possession, Taylor took what looked like it should have been nothing near the goal line and somehow churned out eight yards. He punctuated the run by bowling over a Blackman defender.
The guys working the chains looked at each other and said the same thing, "We're going to lose."
They were right.
That's the kind of inevitability great runners can create. Everybody knows what's coming - The defense knows who is getting the football, the offense definitely knows and the people in the stands know. Heck, even the people at home can call it out.
But somebody has to stop it. And until somebody does, the Pioneers don’t mind being predictable.
Everybody around Warren County has heard some version of the old joke about the Pioneer offense when Jeff Womack was carrying the football: Womack left, Womack right and Womack up the middle.
It worked pretty well.
Womack finished with 6,450 career rushing yards, more than twice as many as anybody else in Pioneer history. His 2,550 yards in 1980 remain the Warren County single-season record and he owns three of the biggest rushing seasons the program has ever seen.
Nearly 50 years later, are things really all that different? Whitman left, Whitman right and Whitman up the middle.
Of course, coach Eric Belew has added another one to the playbook - AJ throw. And, by the way, that one seems to be working a little better every Friday too. Whitman has thrown four touchdown passes already, giving defenses one more thing to worry about while they try to figure out how to get No. 10 on the ground.
His running style isn't exactly the same as Taylor's, but the feeling can sometimes be familiar. You may stop him once. You may get him down twice. You may even convince yourself for a possession that you've figured it out.
Eventually, the AJ Train is going to get on the tracks. And lately, its lone stop has been Pioneer Paydirt.
That's why what Whitman is doing deserves some perspective.
When you start digging through Warren County's career rushing leaders, you find Womack sitting at 6,450. Caleb Northcutt - perhaps one of the more underrated all-time great Pioneer runners - is second with 3,029. Taylor is third at 3,000. Jerry Lusk had 2,916. Curtis Lusk had 2,707. Randy Nowlin, Cameron Lusk and Keith Martin all topped 1,900. Braylon Grayson, now making plays at Carson Newman, and his brother Isaiah Grayson are both in the top 10 too.
These are names that have lasted.
And look, nobody needs to start measuring Whitman for Womack's crown after five games and nobody is going to call him the next CJ Taylor either.
AJ is writing his own story. But I hope it's becoming one everybody is paying very close attention to. At his current pace - and, remember, he’s just a junior - Whitman very likely could push his way into some uncharted waters. There's something fitting about the possibility of it happening Friday.
Warren County will gather at Nunley Stadium to celebrate No. 1, a player who showed a generation of Pioneer fans what it looked like when a special talent combined numbers, toughness, swagger and winning to become something people would talk about long after his final carry.
Then the game will start and No. 10 will take his place in the backfield. And, if the first five weeks have taught us anything, it probably won't be long before the AJ Train starts rolling again.
It may go left, right or right up the middle. Whatever Eric Belew calls, keep an eye on the numbers Friday night. We're starting to reach the kind people remember.
