Penn Hills head coach Charles Morris Jr. is tired of people overlooking his star running back.
Senior Naytel Mitchell is a 5-foot-10, 190-pound spark plug of a back who has more than 1,300 rushing yards on the season… 254 of them in the Indians’ 30-27 win over Moon Area in the first round of the WPIAL Class-5A Playoffs, where Mitchell contributed three touchdowns and had a fourth called back due to penalty.
Mitchell picked up his first Division 1 bid on November 7, an offer from the University of Albany. If he continues to succeed during the WPIAL playoffs, he could gain even more attention.
“I’ve been saying it all year, dude’s a beast. If people don’t believe he’s a top-five player, he’s a power four or an FBS type of kid, I don’t know what else he has to do,” Morris said following the win. “He is a guy that’s an outlier. I know people are worried about his size, but dude is just different. He just keeps doing it, game after game after game.”
Mitchell, who doubles as a middle linebacker on Penn Hills’ defense, also led the team in tackles during the razor-close win. He said that he lets his teammates do their job, controlling the gaps in front of him so that he’s ready to surge forward and fill them.
“I feel like my game builds off everybody on the team. We’re all dogs,” Mitchell said. ‘So I trust my teammates to be right there, they cut it back to me, I’m the middle linebacker. I’ve gotta make the tackle.”
On offense, Mitchell showed his ability to fight for yards in a variety of ways, using breakaway speed, grinding through contact or giving defenders the slip to pick up any advantage he could. He described his thought process as a ball-carrier as if it were the simplest thing in the world… and game film can attest to how his presence in the backfield opens up the Indians’ offense, which has hit a stride after an 0-3 start to the season. They now sit at 7-4.
“When I’m running the ball, my linemen are hogs. If they make two blocks I’m gone. Simple,” Mitchell said. “My mentality is I will not be stopped, and I know my linemen are dawgs. So if I’m not willing to be stopped, and my linemen are dawgs, we’re gonna push them through and we’re gonna make them stack the box. They do that, we’ll throw it over the top. Works every time.”
“Give Me the Freakin’ Ball”
Although Naytel Mitchell’s head coach complained about how he’s been overlooked in the recruiting game—the type of thing that lights a motivational fire under many high school athletes—Mitchell said that his determination on the field stems from his teammates. He was there last season in the WPIAL 5A semifinals when Penn Hills held a 9-0 lead over the Pine-Richland Rams with less than four minutes to play.
The Rams broke the ice with a field goal, then scored a touchdown with two seconds left, pulling ahead 10-9 on the game-winning extra point. The shock seared into Mitchell’s memory.
“Last year I saw my seniors cry and it broke my heart,” Mitchell said. “I don’t want to see them cry this year. That’s really my motivation. My family members, they’re my motivation.”
Mitchell doesn’t want to let his teammates down, and that means he’s ready to take matters into his own hands. Morris said that his star running back demanded a heavy workload, laughing as he described Mitchell’s mindset in the heat of the game.
“That was the game plan coming in. He screamed at me on Monday [during] preparation. He said ‘Coach, give me the freaking ball, I’m gonna win us this game.’ That’s what he told me. Then at halftime he cussed me out again and said ‘Give me the football,’” Morris said, adding that he didn’t second guess putting the game into Mitchell’s hands. “I said ‘It’ll be coming to you.’”
The Indians trailed 20-7 early in the first half against Moon—their lone touchdown the result of a 55-yard tote from Mitchell—but managed to get back into the game with a 14-play, 73-yard drive out of the half that melted 6 minutes and 50 seconds off the clock, Mitchell battling it out carry after carry. Mitchell described his team’s ability to stay level-headed despite the early deficit in a home game they entered as the favorite.
“We respond to adversity very well, and if they’re going to overlook us that’s on them. We’re gonna punch them in the throat every time,” Mitchell said. “We run the ball very well. If we can take control of the game with our offense, every single time we will win.”
