Borrowed Time: Omaha Gets One Fall With Trae Taylor
Everybody already knows how this ends. In January, Trae Taylor is scheduled to graduate early from Millard South and head to Lincoln as a five-star quarterback and one of the top-rated passers in the 2027 class.
Between now and then, Omaha gets him for one season. Nine regular-season games, plus up to four more in the playoffs if the Patriots play deep into November like they have the last two years.
Four of those games are already gone.
That’s the part worth sitting with. High school football usually gives a town three or four years to watch a quarterback grow up. This one showed up as a senior, already committed to Nebraska, and spent his first summer here getting named Elite 11 MVP. There’s no sophomore season to remember him by. There’s just this fall.
He Picked Nebraska Twice
Taylor took over as the starter at Carmel Catholic in Mundelein, Illinois, as a sophomore in 2024. That team went 4-7, but he still threw for 3,061 yards, and the offers kept coming. The following May, he committed to Nebraska with a bit of showmanship, teasing his home-state Illini with the wrong hat before revealing a Husker one.
Then he went back to Carmel and got a lot better. His junior numbers were absurd: 205 of 251 passing for 3,571 yards, 38 touchdowns and just three interceptions, plus 633 rushing yards and 12 more scores in an 8-3 season.
He could have stayed in Illinois for his senior year and coasted into January. Instead, he decided this past winter to move to Nebraska and spend that year at Millard South, about an hour from the program he’d already picked.
Millard South made sense. If any program in the state has practice living with a spotlight quarterback, it’s the one Jett Thomalla just left.
Replacing the Record Book
Thomalla, now at Alabama, left Millard South holding Nebraska’s career records for passing yards and touchdown passes. His last high school game was a 49-0 state final against Papillion-La Vista South, and he had seven touchdown passes before halftime. The 2025 Patriots went 12-1 and won a second straight Class A title, and the lone blemish was a forfeit, handed down after they had already won that game 49-7.
Following that is a strange job. Nobody in Omaha needed Taylor to prove Millard South could win. They needed to see the machine keep running with a new driver.
The summer answered the first round of questions. In late May, he threw seven touchdowns on the final day of the Elite 11 Finals in Southern California. A few weeks later, Millard South beat Westside in a 7-on-7 tournament. Then in late June, after The Opening Finals at Nike’s headquarters in Oregon, he was named Elite 11 MVP.
But summer awards are summer awards. The real test started when the pads came on.
Four Fridays, Four Different Answers
The opener against Millard North was ugly for most of the night. In front of a packed Buell Stadium, the Patriots were down 34-21 with 8:32 to go. Then everything flipped in 80 seconds: a screen pass that turned into a long touchdown, then a Millard North punt snap that sailed over the punter’s head for Drew Kozeal to jump on for another score. Millard South escaped 35-34. Taylor threw for 311 yards and two touchdowns, and when the Patriots needed tough yards, they let him go get them, more than 20 times.
Week 2 was a grind. Lee’s Summit North, one of Missouri’s better programs, went into halftime tied 7-7 with the Patriots while Matt Rhule looked on. Taylor piled up 216 yards of offense and ran one in after the break, the defense picked off two passes, and Millard South pulled away 24-14.
Week 3 opened with his first pass at Elkhorn South getting picked off. He didn’t blink. Millard South scored on each of its next four possessions before halftime, and in the second half Taylor finished off a 99-yard drive with a touchdown throw on fourth down. He ended the night with six touchdown passes in a 49-17 win.
That night might say more about him than any stat line this year. Plenty of quarterbacks start pressing after a pick on the first throw. He just went back to work.
Then came a road trip to St. Louis. Against Cardinal Ritter, a ranked Missouri program, every one of Millard South’s eight touchdowns went through Taylor, five through the air and three on his own feet, in a 55-40 shootout. Aidan Marshall caught two of them and intercepted two passes on the other side of the ball.
That’s 4-0, 16 straight wins, and still the team everybody in Class A is chasing.
Everybody Has a Stake
That opener also showed the tricky part of borrowed time. More than 20 carries in a season opener is the kind of number that makes people in Lincoln a little nervous.
Nobody has to be the villain there. It’s just what it looks like when one high school senior belongs to three groups at once. Millard South needs him to chase a third straight state title right now. Nebraska needs him in one piece in January. Omaha just wants to enjoy him while he’s here. Every scramble at a Millard South game gets watched in Lincoln, and every carry gets counted by somebody.
Circle Week 9
One-year windows get judged at the end, and the end of this regular season is Westside.
The Warriors are 4-0 too, putting up almost 50 points a game with Braylen Warren, a four-star Missouri commit who shared the Elite 11 stage with Taylor this summer, running the offense. They just beat Omaha Central 62-0. Last November, Millard South ended Westside’s season 62-21 in the state semifinals. That one has had a long offseason to sit.
Two Elite 11 quarterbacks. Same city. Same night. Maybe twice, if November goes the way both teams think it will.
Before any of that, there’s Omaha North, also unbeaten, then Millard West, Westview and Lincoln East. None of them are interested in being a footnote.
His First Start at Memorial Might Come Early
Someday Taylor will probably be starting at Memorial Stadium on Saturdays.
It just might not be his first start there. The Class A state final is played at Memorial Stadium, and Millard South has won it each of the last two years. If the Patriots make it back, Taylor’s first start in that building could come in late November, in a Millard South jersey, with a three-peat on the line.
Plenty of people will say they saw him coming. The ones who actually did will be the ones who showed up this fall, when he was still the new kid under center at Millard South.
Five regular-season games left. The clock’s already running.
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