Michelle Collaros prepared to put her youngest son, Dimitrios, to bed when he came running into a back room yelling, ‘Mommy, Zach’s in! Zach’s in!’

She was uneasy. With her stomach in knots, she trudgesd into the living room of her Steubenville, Ohio, home and looked at the television. It’s Oct. 15, 2009, and her eldest son, Zach, has taken over at quarterback for Cincinnati against South Florida.

‘I can’t watch when he’s on TV like that,’ Michelle said. ‘I’m very nervous.’

Seconds later, her stomach flipped again as Zach is sacked on his first play.

Wait a few more seconds, though, and the scene has changed completely.

Michelle’s younger brother, Zach’s uncle, was yelling to her frantically through a cell phone. The Collaros’ home phone rang incessantly in the next room.

Michelle was nervous, but considering her son’s winning pedigree, she shouldn’t have been.

Facing third-and-11, Zach darted up the middle on a quarterback draw and broke away from the Bulls defense, racing 75 yards for a touchdown to put the Bearcats ahead for good.

‘I knew from the very beginning that he was going to be a winner,’ said Reno Saccoccia, Collaros’ high school football coach. ‘All he needed was an opportunity.’

Now, less than a year later, Collaros looks to continue his remarkable success as UC’s starter. An injury to the forearm of starting quarterback Tony Pike pushed Collaros into the spotlight during the heart of the Big East schedule. Collaros led the Bearcats to a 4-0 record and the No. 5 national ranking during his time as Pike’s replacement. His name may have been new to teams and households across the country, but his success wasn’t. Collaros has been a winner his entire life, boasting a 41-1 record as a starting quarterback in high school.

He showed few weaknesses a year ago and frustrated opposing defenses with his ability to make plays with his arm and his legs. A dual threat in football, yes, but Collaros is also a dual athlete. He flirted briefly with a career as a baseball player in high school and at Cincinnati. Collaros comes in as the clear No. 1 quarterback for the Bearcats and using the athleticism honed through both sports, he is looking to prove his four-game tear last year was no fluke.

‘Those four games really helped me into this offseason with people on the team looking to me in adverse situations,’ Collaros said.

Adverse situations often brought out the best in Collaros. Each of his first three touchdowns in 2009 came on third down. In all he posted six scores on third or fourth down.

‘I don’t know if it will make a difference whether you can game plan for him or not,’ Syracuse head coach Doug Marrone said. ‘The guy is a playmaker. … I don’t know what he can’t do. I think he’s a heck of a quarterback.’

In his best game as the starter last season, Collaros threw for 480 yards and ran for 75 more against Connecticut on Nov. 7 with three combined touchdowns. The passing total ranks second in school history, and his 555 total yards is now the school record.

Over the course of his four games at the helm, Collaros put up staggering numbers: 1,233 yards passing, eight touchdowns and just one interception and a 78 percent completion rate. The Bearcats beat each opponent by an average of 14 points per game.

‘Zach did a great job getting himself ready,’ said Pike, now with the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. ‘His performances from last year spoke for themselves. … Zach’s a winner.’

Perhaps Collaros was destined to have that breakout moment. Mark Glaser, his uncle, remembers high school coaches sitting up on a hill, intently watching Collaros when he was only in the seventh grade.   

While at Steubenville High School in Ohio, Collaros broke every major passing record and won back-to-back state titles in his junior and senior seasons. And he never left the field. When he wasn’t under center, Collaros was a starting cornerback for his final three years. When he wasn’t on offense or defense, he was returning kicks on special teams. He took three kicks back for scores in his senior year alone.

The way Collaros became Steubenville’s quarterback had Saccoccia thinking déjà vu while watching that long touchdown run against South Florida.

‘He was in a playoff game, and our quarterback went down,’ Saccoccia said. ‘Zach came in and the third play he took it for a 72-yard touchdown run on a draw, the same as he did against USF.’

‘It was eerie the way that happened.’

His 41-1 record in high school includes one season as quarterback of the freshman team. It was during that year, 2003, to be exact, that Collaros suffered his last loss as a starting quarterback.

Playing as a freshman against the junior varsity team from John Marshall High School, Collaros vividly remembers that feeling of defeat.

 ‘They scored on a trick play, and they beat us (on the final drive),’ he said. ‘It still hurts. Me and my friends still talk about that stuff. That was our only loss in any sport.’

It’s not surprising for that one loss to be firmly planted in Collaros’ mind. After all, it’s his only blemish in more than six years.

How is that possible?

Anyone who knows him chalks it up to his unparalleled competitive nature.

‘Ever since he was young he had such a drive to win,’ Collaros’ uncle, Mark Glaser said. ‘It was unbelievable. You’d have to almost tell him that it was OK to lose. He didn’t get that.’

This wasn’t just true for sports, Glaser said. Any card game with his family had the same stakes as football.

‘Handling losses is not something you want to be good at,’ Collaros said, smiling.

Saccoccia said Collaros gets his competitive streak from his mother. Her assessment of her son’s lone high school defeat shows that Saccoccia is probably right.

‘In this house we didn’t count that game, because they were junior varsity and our kids were just freshmen,’ she said.

Despite all the accolades and awards Collaros was earning on the football field — he was the Ohio Division III Player of the Year in 2006 and named an EA Sports All-American Third Team — baseball presented the more likely path for him to follow.

As a talented high school shortstop, he committed to play baseball at Kent State like a number of former Steubenville players.

‘He was playing a position where he stood out,’ said Scott Stricklin, the Kent State head baseball coach. ‘Everything you see him do in the pocket and then scrambling as a quarterback, he did the same thing as a shortstop.’

Eventually, that football talent paid off, catching the eye of coaches in the Big East such as former UC head coach Brian Kelly and his staff. That led to a better-late-than-never scholarship offer to play quarterback in the Big East, something that couldn’t be passed up. So he backed out of his commitment to Kent State.

‘We recruited him out of high school and we missed on him,’ Pittsburgh head coach Dave Wannstedt said. ‘You talk about intangibles and being a winner. …They don’t come any better than Zach Collaros.’

Sweetening the Cincinnati offer was the chance to play baseball at the school as well. Collaros went out for the Bearcats baseball team in the spring of 2009, playing in 36 games and hitting .204.

Besides the pure enjoyment of being a two-sport athlete at UC, Collaros said baseball actually helped him improve as a quarterback.

‘Footwork especially carries over from baseball to football,’ he said. ‘Turning a double play is kind of like throwing a quick slant. (You practice) different arm angles, too. You might have to sidearm it sometimes instead of throwing it over the top. There’s a lot of things that help out in football.’

Most people already had an idea that his time as a two-sport athlete would be brief, UC head baseball coach Brian Cleary said. But that breakout run against South Florida cut it even shorter than he anticipated.

‘As I’m watching him break that 75-yard run, I’m cheering for him to get in the end zone,’ he said. ‘And as soon as he does, I kind of realize, ‘Holy cow, there goes his baseball career.”

Collaros opted not to play baseball in the spring of 2010 in order to learn the football playbook under new head coach Butch Jones. With all of his time focused on improving during the offseason, Collaros can’t wait to return to the field, especially with the Bearcats getting back their leading rusher, two of their top-three receivers and two All-Big East offensive guards.

One of those receivers is the 6-foot-3 Armon Binns, with whom Collaros had special chemistry a year ago. Binns was on the receiving end of half of Collaros’ passing touchdowns and 30 percent of his passing yards.

‘The guy has got eyes in the back of his head for me,’ Binns said. ‘He can see me no matter where I’m at on the field.’

In Collaros’ mind, a successful season would be winning all 13 games. If that’s going to happen, the connection with Binns must flourish once again.

Not one coach denied Collaros’ talents as a player. Now it’s time to see if they can come up with a game plan to stop him.

‘Now he is ready for the team to be his this year,’ Pike said. ‘He has done all of the work to get himself there, and I expect big things from him this year.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu

 

Published on September 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13