Quarterback depth keeping Liberty on track for Open Division

In five games this year, Dom Ochoa has passed for 1,044 yards, rushed for 232 and added 14 touchdowns. In those games — the ones in which he’s started at quarterback — he’s led Peoria Liberty to a 3-2 record, helping the Lions to a No. 7 ranking in the Open Division.

The 2021 season, though, has also brought a seemingly never-ending series of misfortune for Ochoa. Two days before a September win over Peoria Sunrise Mountain, Ochoa got in a car accident, injuring his wrist and missing the game. A week later, he suffered a head injury in the third quarter of an eventual loss to Chandler. The past two weeks, he’s been sick. Against Scottsdale Chaparral, he was too ill to come to the game. Against Phoenix Pinnacle, he was available in emergency but still not 100%.

But through three missed games from the quarterback who began the season as its starter, Liberty has persisted. In those games, the Lions are 3-0.

The reason is simple: sophomore Navi Bruzon.

In his three starts, Bruzon has completed 49-of-65 passes for 583 yards, five touchdowns and one interception. On the ground, he’s added 257 yards and a score.

“He's tough, he's a good runner, he's been really accurate in the passing game the past few games,” Liberty coach Colin Thomas said. “In two big games, Navi came in and didn't miss a beat.”

Alternatively, here’s Thomas’s assessment of Ochoa: “Dom, three years in the system now, very experienced. He brings an explosiveness to the offense with his legs, but also doing it by throwing the ball down the field. He brings that element to us. We're a little bit more explosive with Dom in there.”

With equal confidence in both his options, Thomas now enters the final stretch of the regular season with a full-fledged quarterback controversy. Over the phone Wednesday, he wasn’t yet able to declare a starter for Friday’s home finale against No. 9 Brophy Prep.

Thomas, though, sees that as a positive.

“It's definitely nice having two guys you feel great about,” Thomas said. “Because a lot of teams you watch play, if one guy gets hurt, it's a pretty big difference, whereas I've got two guys great that I feel very confident with that can beat any team we play.”

In the playoffs, that could prove especially critical. The stories of promising seasons ending due to a quarterback injury — at every level of the sport — are endless.

Now, that’s not a variable Liberty has to concern itself with.

“It gives me confidence as a coach,” Thomas said. “I can let those guys go play, knowing the other guy can also play if something happens.”

Going forward, Thomas sees his starting quarterback as a fluctuant decision.

“Each week, we'll (decide) how we can best win a football game, whether that's playing both guys or going with one guy,” Thomas said. “What's the matchup for us as far as what the team does the best on defense. So now, (it’s) definitely giving us some flexibility.”

While Ochoa entered the season as the starter, this is — to an extent — what Thomas envisioned at the beginning of the season.

Before this year, neither player had started a game for the Lions. Naturally, that tilts the upper hand to Ochoa, a junior who has an extra year of experience in Thomas’s system. Bruzon, though, was too talented to ignore. In the Republic’s preseason list of 2024 recruits, Bruzon ranked ninth.

“We certainly thought we could have an effective quarterback room,” Thomas said of his thinking in preseason. And while he couldn’t have predicted the circumstances in which Liberty found itself needing that depth, he knew that, come November, both Ochoa and Bruzon could prove critical.

Through eight games, they have.

Theo Mackie covers Arizona high school sports and Phoenix Rising FC. He can be reached by email at theo.mackie@gannett.com and on Twitter @theo_mackie.