Are return playoff trips in the cards for Marquette, Seneca, Dwight, Sandwich and Flanagan-Cornell/Woodland?

Five of the eight football teams in The Times’ coverage area earned playoff bids in 2024. Sandwich finished with a 5-4 regular season and a first-round loss in the Class 4A playoffs. FCW posted a 6-3 regular season before falling in the opening round of the I8FA playoffs. The area’s three Chicagoland Prairie teams – Seneca (8-1 regular season, second-round loss in 2A); Dwight (6-3 regular season, third-round loss in 2A) and Marquette Academy (5-4 regular season, second-round loss in the 1A field) – all played until at least Week 11.

Fieldcrest (1-8), Ottawa (1-8) and Streator (3-6) all missed the playoff field of 256 teams with sub-.500 regular seasons.

Even with some bulked-up schedules – especially for the three Chicagoland Prairie schools who each have six nonconference games on their respective schedules – and new head coach Ken Carlson at Marquette, there’s reason to believe all five of last year’s playoff qualifiers in the area are capable of getting back to Week 10 in 2025.

How will Ottawa bounce back from one win in 2024?

For the sixth time in the past decade and first since the COVID-19-shortened spring 2021 season, the Ottawa Pirates were limited to one or fewer wins in 2024, finishing 1-8 overall and winless in the Interstate Eight Conference.

Ottawa will try to turn things around this fall in head coach Chad Gross’s eighth season and make the playoffs for the first time since gaining a 5A bid in 2022, that playoff berth ending a nine-year drought. Having just shy of 20 returning varsity players is a definite plus for the Pirates, as is an opening third of the season that features winable games at Plano (2-7 last season) and then at home against rivals Streator (3-6) and La Salle-Peru (3-6), the first of two games on the schedule against the archrival Cavaliers. Ottawa also has downstate Granite City (0-9 in 2024) visiting King Field in Week 9.

Can the Jay Slone era of Streator football get off to a fast start?

Being a member of the Illinois Central Eight Conference means perennial playoff qualifiers Coal City, Wilmington and Peotone automatically fill up a third of your regular-season schedule. And with last-place Lisle not fielding a varsity team and Streator replacing them with another powerhouse – old NCIC rival Dixon – the Bulldogs’ schedule grew a bit more difficult.

There is, however, what looks to be an opportunity for Streator and new head coach Jay Slone to get off to a solid start the first three weeks of 2025, as all three of the Bulldogs’ opponents in the opening third of the season – Decatur Eisenhower, Ottawa and Reed-Custer – are coming off 1-8 seasons in 2024. Last year’s Bulldogs went 2-1 against the three, beating Eisenhower and Reed-Custer but losing to Ottawa for the Pirates’ lone win of the season.

Is this the year Seneca breaks through to the state semifinals, and maybe beyond?

Since the home stretch of the 2021 season, head coach Terry Maxwell and his staff have built the Fighting Irish into one of the state’s powerhouse Class 2A/3A programs. That includes a 26-1 regular-season record over the past three seasons and at least one playoff victory each year.

What it does not include, however, is a berth in a state championship game, or for that matter, a state semifinal. In 2024, a 21-14 second-round loss to Bismarck-Henning-Rossville-Alvin ended the Irish’s run in 2A. In 2023, it was a 20-14 quarterfinal loss in overtime to eventual 2A state champion Wilmington in the only close game the Wildcats played all postseason. And in 2022 in the 3A bracket, Seneca fell 56-21 to eventual state semifinalist Byron.

There’s every reason to suspect Seneca will be back in the state-title picture in 2025, perhaps even playing Thanksgiving weekend.

Whose season will be worthy of being named the 2025 Times Football Player of the Year?

The reigning Times Football Player of the Year, Seneca fullback Brody Rademacher, will be at Wartburg College. It was the third consecutive season a Fighting Irish standout won the honor, with lineman Chris Peura claiming the honor in 2023 and QB/DB Nathan Grant winning it in 2022.

With multiple Times All-Area Football first-team selections back for their senior seasons this fall – namely Sandwich RB/LB Jeffrey Ashley and RB/DB Nick Michalek; Marquette RB/LB Grant Dose; Streator OL/LB Cole Winterrowd; FCW RB/LB Leelynd Durbin; Ottawa OL/DL Cooper Smith; and Seneca OL/DL Zeb Maxwell and RB/DB Gunner Varland – plus a baker’s dozen of returners from our second team, the honor is there for the taking, starting when the season opens Aug. 29.