Mission Viejo High’s offensive line did not want to be on the field against St. Paul on Friday night. This was evident by their first two plays.

The Diablos’ opening drive began with a 60-yard rushing touchdown, created by a massive gap on the left side of the offensive line. Senior running back Carson Vandermade wasn’t close to being touched by a defender on his way to the end zone.

A 60-yard passing touchdown immediately ensued on the next possession. Of course, the offensive line made sure sophomore quarterback Brett Burnor had more than enough protection to launch one deep to a wide receiver

Coach Chad Johnson knows the level of skill he has on his hands. He’s never had a more talented and cohesive line in his two-plus decades of coaching high school football.

“It’s abnormal for us to have a line like this, and I’m really enjoying it,” Johnson said after Mission Viejo’s 77-12 victory.

The reason for that rarity is a simple one: every single starting lineman this season is a returning player. Nobody lost to graduation. No transfers. Johnson said he doesn’t recall that ever being the case.

In addition, four of the five starting lineman have NCAA Division I offers.

Senior left tackle Dylan Felli has offers from the University of San Diego and Montana. The guy who helped him create the first touchdown of the game, senior left guard Amaziah Siale, is committed to Louisiana State. Center Max Davidson, who is a junior, has an offer from Northern Arizona, and senior right tackle Tyler Johnson is committed to Cornell.

If the experience and college offers aren’t enough to prove their stature, their size should. Davidson and Felli are listed at 6 feet 4. Siale is 6-7 inches tall and weighs 345 pounds, while Johnson is 6-6 and nearly 300 pounds.

They wouldn’t look out of place lining up across from USC or UCLA. Standing near them is staggering. Trying to out muscle them is nearly impossible.

Johnson said that his team finally has a threatening run game because of the gaps the linemen create.

“Usually we have to throw the ball to get [opponents] to back off, and then we can run it,” he said. “This year, we’re gonna run the ball until they commit everybody and then we’ll throw it.”

There are two other linemen who also play key roles: senior right guard Noah Lee and senior Baxter Middagh.

Lee is the smallest guy in the group. At 5-10, he looks out of place standing next to the big boys. Once he is on the field, however, the size difference is forgotten.

At 295 pounds, with a low center of gravity, Lee can’t be moved. It’s why he has earned his starting position over the last two seasons despite competing with potential DI players. He might not have any offers, but he doesn’t drag the rest of the group down. In fact, he’s often the leading voice on the sideline.

As for Middagh, his role is adding a new wrinkle to the offensive scheme this season. Last year he was playing on the line. Against St. Paul, he was deployed at tight end. His blocking expertise and size — 6-6 and 295 pounds — allow him to still help in pass and run protection, but now his impact can be felt with the ball in his hands.

Case in point, Middagh scored a touchdown on a screen pass Friday. He was surprisingly fast, making it even harder to tackle him. Opponents will struggle if Mission Viejo can get Middagh, who is committed to Idaho, into open space.

Johnson said he might rotate who plays on the line based on what a possession needs, but that their best 11 includes Middagh on the field.

“He is super athletic and can catch the ball really well,” Johnson said. “The catches he makes are insane, some one-handed, and he runs a 5.3 [second] 40-yard dash at 300 pounds.”

Off the field, the mountainous young men turn into humble and funny teenagers. After being taken out at halftime, all six players cheered on the backups and joked with each other about everything and nothing.

At one point, Middagh’s family came down to the sideline and he went over to hug everybody and chat. There was no embarrassment by their presence near his teammates and friends, just an appreciation for those who love and support him.

Siale also sheepishly waved to his family in the stands, getting a slight grin on his face when they yelled back down to him. Late in the fourth quarter, the public-address announcer credited Siale with a block on a big run play even though the big man hadn’t touched the field all half. He just laughed and high-fived some teammates who were offering sarcastic congratulations.

Despite their talent, cohesiveness and positive personalities, Johnson said that his offensive line isn’t perfect. In Mission Viejo’s 55-17 win against Chaparral in the season opener, they made some silly penalties for unnecessary roughness after the play ended, which negated big gains. Johnson wants that cleaned up moving forward.

“You don’t play up to a good team and down to a team that is not as good. You stay consistently great,” he said.

His team obliged. Whenever the offensive line gives the quarterback time to pass and the running backs space to run, there isn’t much complaining a coach can do.

“I’m going to try to take it all in and soak every game up, because I know at some time the curtain is going to call and they’re going to graduate,” he said.

Two guys standing on Mission Viejo’s sideline were wearing custom made shirts of the offensive line. It was a picture of them all standing together, with the words “Higher Council” printed below. The message is clear.

Siale succinctly said what everybody else was dancing around.

“We’ve got the number one offensive line in the nation,” he said.

That claim will be put to the test against one of California’s best teams next week, when Mission Viejo travels to Sacramento to play Folsom High. Northern California will meet the Higher Council.

With the 2026 MLB season now entering the home stretch, both Cy Young races are taking shape. 

Let’s check out the odds for this season’s winners at DraftKings Sportsbook as of Sept. 3. 

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Cam Schlittler: -215 (bet $10 to win $14.65 total)
Dylan Cease: +190 (bet $10 to win $29 total)
Drew Rasmussen: +5000 (bet $10 to win $510 total)
Sonny Gray: +5000 (bet $10 to win $510 total)

What to know: When the season began, Detroit’s Tarik Skubal was favored to win a third straight Cy Young. That’s how dominant he’s been. However, he was forced to have surgery to remove loose bodies in his throwing elbow, was sidelined for months, and has now been traded to the Dodgers. The Yankees’ young star, Cam Schlittler, owns a 2.04 ERA (second), 210 strikeouts (fourth) and a 0.94 WHIP (fourth) this season, and remains the favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award. His only competition at this point is Toronto’s Dylan Cease, who has won his last three starts and has the second-most strikeouts in baseball (221).

Jacob Misiorowski: -600 (bet $10 to win $11.67 total)
Chris Sale: +500 (bet $10 to win $60 total)
Cristopher Sanchez: +2000 (bet $10 to win $210 total)
Yoshinobu Yamamoto: +6000 (bet $10 to win $610 total)

What to know: The NL Cy Young race looks a lot different than it looked a few months ago. Entering June, Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sanchez was atop the board (+145), followed by Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski (+340), Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes (+450) and the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani (+750). Now, while “The Miz” has only become more dominant and Sale has continued to find success, Skenes and Ohtani have fallen off the map. The more shocking fall-off belongs to Skenes, the reigning NL Cy Young winner who entered 2026 as the favorite to repeat is now not even on the oddsboard. He began the season 6-3, but then lost his next nine starts. He has a 3.97 ERA, a far cry from the 1.97 ERA he had last season and the 1.96 ERA he registered as a rookie. His 8.0 WAR from last season has dropped all the way to 2.4 this season. As for Ohtani, he’s been dealing with a bothersome knee and has not taken the mound since July 3. Going back to Misiorowski, he’s quickly become the best pitcher in the NL and possibly in baseball. He leads MLB in ERA (1.97), strikeouts (227) and WHIP (0.97). It is his race to lose at this point. 

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts sent a text message to Shohei Ohtani on Wednesday night informing him that he wasn’t going to be in the lineup Thursday in the series finale against the Cardinals.

Ohtani responded with a salute emoji, Roberts said.

“At the end of the day, he wants to be in there,” Roberts said. “But I’m not going to just put him in there because of the name on the back of his jersey.”

That could be a push-and-pull situation for the rest of the season, as Ohtani continues to manage lingering pain in his right biceps and left knee.

The uncertainty surrounding Ohtani’s health — even though Roberts called an injured list stint “unlikely” — raises questions about the team’s plans.

It’s difficult to fully map out the Dodgers’ rotation plans without knowing whether Ohtani will pitch again this season. And the offense won’t be at its best until he has shaken his slump — Ohtani has just two hits in his last six games after hitting just .241 in August.

“I think great players always feel that their X percentage is better than the next person and they want to be available,” Roberts said. “There is a kind of trusting the player versus taking it out of their hands.

“I’ve had a lot of practice with Clayton [Kershaw]. And Shohei, I think it’s just more of trying to weigh the downside and what potential harm that could do for him and the ballclub versus it’s something that is what it is. That’s just trying to get as much information as we can from the training staff and hear what Shohei has to say.”

Ohtani, who was not made available to speak to reporters before the game Thursday, has not given an interview in over two weeks. He declined requests for comment through a Dodgers spokesperson twice last weekend.

Though Ohtani’s left knee has been the biggest impediment in his return to pitching — his last pitching start was July 3, and his throwing program has stalled twice since receiving an injection to address swelling and soreness — his right biceps is now a problem.

Ohtani reported that the area from his biceps to his neck was bothering him Wednesday night, Roberts said. That was why he kept shaking out his arm.

“It feels like an ebb-and-flow type thing,” general manager Brandon Gomes said of Ohtani’s biceps issue, which has flared at least two other times this season. “It’s hard to recover in August and September, so it’s like just being mindful of if he needs a day here and there, and having those conversations. He’s just one of one, and you can’t say, ‘Well, this guy feels this, therefore Sho’s going to be the same.’ So we have to treat it as a unique case.”

Both the biceps and knee injuries have lingered for months. But Ohtani hasn’t missed two games in a row all season, let alone landed on the IL.

“I think it’s just really hard to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna knock something out in X amount of days,’” Gomes said. “But l think not having Shohei in the lineup for 10 days, or whatever it would be, is something that we would prefer not to do, and it really hasn’t even been something that we’ve discussed.”

Gomes also pushed back on the assumption that Ohtani’s struggles at the plate are connected to his physical ailments, even though the two have coincided.

“I just think there’s also just ebbs and flows of the season, and what to attribute things to and what not to is just too hard to say,” Gomes said. “We haven’t had any indication that he’s not feeling good enough physically to go out and play.

“I also think he’s a victim of his own greatness, of … if Shohei struggles for a bit and then it’s up in arms. Like I said, I don’t think there’s anything overly concerning at this point. We’ll continue to monitor and have conversations and see how he feels.”

If the Dodgers don’t put Ohtani on the IL, giving him consecutive days off could make sense. Roberts said he’ll make that decision Friday, after discussions with Ohtani and the training staff.

The Dodgers also have put off a decision regarding whether Ohtani should pitch again this season. But Roberts said this latest development would be “part of the math.”

Said Gomes: “Once again, we’ve got to see how he continues to feel. At some point, if it’s a, ‘Hey, the upside outweighs the downside,’ then we shut it down. Doc has said this, we’ll continue to say it: We’re not going to … compromise [his offensive performance]. But right now, not feeling that that’s necessarily a thing. We just don’t have enough information to feel strongly on that.”

Though it’s not a huge sample size, Ohtani restarted his throwing progression with catch play on Aug. 8. In 23 games since then, he’s posted a .704 OPS during his worst offensive month of his season.

The addition of left-hander Tarik Skubal at the trade deadline also took some of the pressure off Ohtani to return to pitching.

“It was an opportunity that our guys saw, and grateful that a deal was worked out,” Roberts said. “You look at where Shohei’s at, and Roki [Sasaki is] throwing a bullpen tomorrow but on the IL with the blister, so having a 1-1 starter is huge. And then also getting to know the player, and how he has already impacted our guys, we’re very fortunate.”