Lincoln Kienholz wowed coaches in South Dakota with his dual-threat skill set and impressed Ryan Day with his competitiveness in his journey to becoming an Ohio State quarterback.
“We're not bringing in anybody to be a backup,” Day said. “I think that's the other thing, there's times where someone can say ‘Well, you're just coming to Ohio State just to get in line.’ If that's the case, they don't understand what we're recruiting. I say that a bunch because that's some people's recruiting pitch to a quarterback, ‘Well, don't go there. They have all these other quarterbacks, they have all these five-star quarterbacks in a room.
“That was a huge push by our coaching staff was to make sure we got him out for football as an eighth grader,” Steele told Eleven Warriors. “We kind of saw his talent progress from there. We kind of understood that at that point in time, maybe he's a quarterback, maybe he wants to play wide receiver. But realistically from our perspective, he was just the best athlete in that grade. And he's a kid that we needed to play in football.
As a sophomore, Kienholz was named the team’s starting quarterback and led T.F. Riggs to a 9-2 season in his first year as a starter. At certain points of the year, Kienholz had what Steele called “big arm syndrome,” where he trusted his arm a bit too much, resulting in 16 interceptions that season. Two-thirds of the way through his sophomore year, Steele said Kienholz settled down, flipped a switch and became a completely different passer.
At the start of his junior year, Steele trusted Kienholz’s ability and understanding of the game to expand T.F. Riggs’ playbook and put in more passing concepts. By his senior year, the playbook expanded even more and Kienholz was trusted to even call some plays himself. T.F. Riggs ran primarily empty sets offensively, which presented a lot of freedom for Kienholz to escape the pocket and create plays with his legs once he finished his dropback. Some opponents tried to compensate for Kienholz’s legs by using a linebacker as a spy. That strategy usually failed because a linebacker spying at six yards deep with his heels in the ground was no match for Kienholz’s acceleration and top-end speed.
“A lot of coaches say this throughout the recruiting process, but, I mean, if we're not in the middle of South Dakota, is he still a four-star? Is he a five-star? You don't know,” Steele said. “So I just think that's one of the things where he's excited to try and go and prove himself.
In 12 games this season, only two teams stayed within single digits of T.F. Riggs. Brandon Valley High School was one of them, as the Lynx played in South Dakota Class 11AAA, one higher than T.F. Riggs and the largest division in South Dakota High School football. But Kienholz and Pierre emerged victorious in the end, 43-34, on Sept. 30.
Brandon Valley jumped out to a large lead because it successfully disguised its blitzes and concealed whether it was running zone or man coverage. As the game progressed, Kienholz read the defense like a book and exploited the defense for big gains with his legs. “Playing against him was simultaneously wonderful and maddening,” Christensen said. “To behold the accuracy, loft, trajectory, touch, velocity of his throws was impressive. To witness his rare combination of speed and agility up close was beyond impressive. Kienholz has the ability to fake out whole levels of defense with his torso while his legs are taking him somewhere else.
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