AMG football: Houston County's Jake Fromm stays on target

WARNER ROBINS -- For a chunk of the season, Jake Fromm's numbers were down a little bit.

He's not a stat-watcher, but he felt it, saw it and was a little befuddled, if only for a moment.

"I was like, 'Man, my numbers aren't quite what they were last year at this time,' " the Houston County junior quarterback said. "But I didn't worry about it too much. I just worried about getting that W and playing tough."

Indeed, the Bears were cruising, even if Fromm wasn't quite lighting things up in the eyes of some. They scored at least 34 points in every game to start off 6-0. Then came a hiccup against Jones County, a 24-17 loss during which the Greyhounds' defense put all sorts of heat on Fromm.

After that, he put a little more heat on the opposition.

"I'll tell you, the whole second half of the season, from Week 5 on, it felt like a backyard football game," said Fromm, whose offense was victimized in that Jones County loss by a season's worth -- for Houston County receivers -- of drops. "It didn't matter who we were playing, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted to do with the ball at any given time. The game was slow for me."

And the numbers showed as much.

Fromm's junior season ended earlier than he wanted, with a 59-47 GHSA Class AAAAA quarterfinal loss at Allatoona, but he still came up with the fourth-best season in passing yardage in state history with 4,099 and the 17th-most touchdown passes in a season with 36.

And thus, Fromm is The Telegraph's All-Middle Georgia Football Player of the Year.

He'll begin his senior season with 8,835 yards and 75 passing touchdowns, good for fourth and 13th, respectively, on the state's all-time list.

That's nice, but he'll focus on what he still needs to work on.

The two "worst" games for Fromm were the two losses, during which the Bears had to play from behind.

"The fourth quarter, that's just straight throw, throw, throw, throw," he said. "And try to make something happen."

Fromm's completion percentage in those two losses were 37 and 46.9, but he still passed for 393 and 371 yards.

Starting with the 393-yard night against Jones County, Fromm passed for fewer than 353 yards the rest of the season only once, going 15-of-22 for 231 yards in a 42-15 rout of Evans.

That came a week before a GHSA Region 2-AAAAA title game against Northside, so it wasn't like Fromm was going to be behind center for long.

And in that showdown with the defending state champion Eagles, Fromm went 25-of-39 for 384 yards and three touchdowns, leading the Bears to a 34-13 win, the program's first over Northside.

That was also a game that stands out in the mind of head coach Von Lassiter, that one and the one a year earlier.

Houston County led Northside 33-20 in the fourth quarter of the 2014 game but lost 34-33.

"We looked at video of that game and thought we had a lot of chances to win had we not tried to take the deep ball and threw the checkdown," Lassiter said. "He watched that, and he learned that, and he did a real good job doing that in the region championship."

That's not surprising, since Fromm is a football version of a gym rat, between the weight room and film room and finding enough room to throw the ball.

"He continued to get better all offseason," Lassiter said. "Anything he could improve on, he could learn, he committed to doing that."

But the lessons continued.

"I think he improved throughout the year, handling situations, knowing where we were at," Lassiter said.

Fromm started getting offers from Division I programs only a few games into his career as a starter during his freshman season and picked Alabama over Mississippi and South Carolina back in early October.

His attire splits between Houston County black and Alabama crimson, and he didn't waver after getting an offer last week from Georiga and new head coach -- and former Alabama assistant -- Kirby Smart.

Fromm is set for Tuscaloosa but has plenty of unfinished business in south Warner Robins.

Like getting the Bears past the quarterfinals, where they've lost the past two seasons. A year ago, it was 42-22 at Stockbridge. This year the loss came at Allatoona in a game the Bears trailed by 18 points twice in the fourth quarter before cutting their deficit to five.

Still, there was nothing to do the following Saturday.

"I remember that weekend," Fromm said, his face indicating as much. "I didn't do anything. I stayed inside all day, watched college football. Woke up real late, sore.

"I didn't do anything all weekend, still sick to my stomach."

Soon enough, preparation for 2016 started.

"Now's the time to really focus on and write down some things on a sheet of paper you think you need to work on," said the oldest son of Emerson and Lee. "Just have that self drive to always get better. That's one thing nobody can take from you is your self drive."

This story was originally published December 24, 2015 at 6:39 PM with the headline "AMG football: Houston County's Jake Fromm stays on target ."