The defensive formation ‘cover two’ takes on different meaning this football season at Rancho Cucamonga High School. When the two are cornerback Chris Hawkins and safety Tahaan Goodman, it creates a coverage nobody else in the country can claim.
Certain formations employed by Rancho Cucamonga will place Hawkins, a USC-committed cornerback, on a receiver with Goodman, the second four-star recruit in the Cougars’ secondary, providing coverage over the top. What must a quarterback think while taking a pre-snap look at close to 100 scholarship offers on one side of a secondary? The answer is, he doesn’t.
“They’re probably looking the other way,” Goodman said. “We might not get a lot of people throwing at us.”
Hawkins, rivals.com’s No. 7 cornerback in the country, is a 6-foot-1, 170-pound senior with 42 scholarship offers who verbally committed to USC April 1. Goodman, rated the No. 2 safety in the country by rivals.com, is a 6-2, 185-pound senior who has lost track of his number of scholarship offers. His best guess is 50.
It’s safe to say there is no other high school team in the nation with a better duo in its defensive backfield.
“It’s pretty rare to have two guys like that in the same secondary,” Rancho Cucamonga coach Nick Baiz said. “It gives us the freedom to do a lot of things defensively. But just because we have those two guys doesn’t mean we’re going to win every game.”
In fact, Hawkins and Goodman are the only two members of the Rancho Cucamonga secondary with varsity experience. But the Cougars do return six starters on defense, including a pair of linebackers who also will be playing on Saturdays next season. It all adds up to some lofty goals for the team that has been to the CIF-SS Inland Division semifinals each of the last two seasons.
“We want to go undefeated,” Hawkins said. “We want to take care of our league. That’s the first thing. And we want to win a state championship. We don’t want to lose a single game.”
As for the goals of a defense that allowed a league-low 16.3 points per game last year, they are just as lofty.
“Donuts,” Hawkins said. “We don’t want to be giving up any points.”
“Between all of us,” Goodman said. “I don’t even know how many picks. Double digits.”
The duo’s reputation grew in a hurry following last season. By the end of January, each had eight scholarship offers. At the end of February, that number had doubled. By April the momentum had reached break-neck speed. The number of calls from college coaches and media was so overwhelming Hawkins went ahead and chose USC over Stanford in a tight race.
Both are still receiving scholarship offers as of this week. But those they’ve already gotten are hard to beat.
Goodman is hoping to narrow his list early in the season to 10 or 15 schools but isn’t close to making a final decision.
All of the publicity can be taken one of two ways by teams that run into Rancho Cucamonga this season. Teams can shy away from the dangerous duo, or their reputation could have the opposite effect.
“I think there will be some people that will enjoy the challenge of going at these guys,” Baiz said. “There will definitely be some quarterbacks who will roll the dice and try to beat them.”
