Ex-Montclair Coach To Return
This Saturday With Bloomfield

There will most certainly be a variety of emotions running through the mind and heart of Jermain Johnson as the former Montclair High head coach returns to Woodman Field this Saturday afternoon (Sept. 13) as the first-year defensive coordinator for his alma mater Bloomfield.

Kickoff is 2 p.m. as the 1-1 Bengals take on the 0-2 Mounties looking for their first victory over MHS since 2015 when they won 41-27 in the two teams’ once annual Thanksgiving holiday week meeting.

“There are going to be some strange feelings because many of those (Mountie) players were my kids,” said Johnson, a 1991 graduate of Bloomfield, who directed the MHS gridiron squad for three seasons (2022-2024), including a 4-6 record last fall, before resigning from his post with the Mounties this past May. “It’s going to be a tough situation, but it’s all business once the game starts.

“Still, in the course of our day-to-day lives, I always feel that those Montclair kids know I’m here for them if they ever want to talk.

“Montclair is a great town with a tremendous high school football history, but now I’m back home at Bloomfield, and I feel blessed to have this opportunity to once again work with ‘Coach’ (Mike Carter) and help him lead the Bengals into battle each weekend.

“He’s my guy, and growing up in town I don’t think I would have made it as far as I did without Mike and his mom (Pat) who were like family to me, and still are.

“As Coach winds down in his own career I just want to help the Bloomfield football team succeed, and I think we might surprise a few people this season.”

The 64-year-old Carter (Bloomfield Class of ’79) is the longest current, active coach in Essex County, now in his 35th season after starting his reign as head coach in 1991. He enters this weekend with 146 career wins with a current 1-1 record following last fall’s 3-7 mark.

The Bengals began this season with an exciting 26-20 overtime win vs. Newark Central at Foley Field on Aug. 28, and then dropped a hard-fought 21-14 contest to neighborhood rival Nutley (2-0) in this past Friday night’s (Sept. 5) Mayor’s Trophy Game at the Maroon Raiders’ Tangorra Field.

The Bengals are just 3-30 vs. MHS since Carter’s first game as head coach in September of 1991 when he began his reign on a high note with a season-opening 12-0 win over the Mounties at Foley Field, which was also the first game for the ill-fated MHS coach Len Rivers, who would last just two seasons in Montclair following his successful tenure as the head man at Franklin High School.

Bloomfield also defeated MHS, 13-12, in overtime on Thanksgiving in 2002, which was the second of two meetings that season between the two local rivals, with the second contest coming just two weeks after the Mounties had crushed the Bengals, 37-6, in a first-round playoff contest.

MHS held out its injured star, and then future Buffalo Bills player Alvin ‘Ace’ Bowen, from that 2002 Thanksgiving meeting with Bloomfield so that the standout running back and linebacker would be rested for the Mounties’ North 2, Group 4 playoff final the following week which saw a successful culmination to that 2002 season for MHS which registered a 12-7 victory at Morristown as then future Mounties Athletic Director John Porcelli was still guiding the Colonials.

Perhaps the Bengals will be at least a slight favorite vs. coach Ron Anello’s Mounties in this Saturday’s Super Football Conference-Freedom Red Division showdown as the young MHS team is still looking for its first victory after a 41-28 loss at Ridgewood (2-0) this past Friday night (Sept. 5) despite four touchdown passes thrown by the Mounties’ junior quarterback Samad Jiles.

Junior Cameron Withington and senior Adam Schmitt each had two TD receptions for MHS vs. the Bergen County school which rode a strong effort from its QB Gavin McCrone who accounted for four TDs against MHS, including a pair of TD aerials.

That more positive offensive effort by the Mounties followed the 56-3 thrashing that they absorbed from St. Thomas Aquinas in Edison in the Aug. 29 season opener.

For Johnson, who still appreciates what he experienced and learned in his 3-year tenure in Montclair, this week is all about preparing the Bloomfield defense to try and stop the Mounties on Saturday afternoon.

“I’m busy getting our defense ready for Montclair, and we’re certainly not taking anything for granted because we know they have some good athletes,” said Johnson, who was also previously a head coach at both Paterson Eastside and Belleville along with being a defensive coordinator at Wayne Hills. “I have a lot of respect for Coach Anello who came back to Montclair in my first season there (in 2022) to be our line coach after he had retired following a tremendous career as both an athletic director and head football coach.”

While he is happy to now be home coaching the players at his high school alma mater there is no denying the fact that it has been quite a whirlwind last few months for the popular, former Bengals and Montclair State University standout back.

Johnson resigned his Mounties football coaching post this past spring, but began the newly-unveiled school year still teaching at MHS for what he said could be a 60-day period of time before he is released from his current teaching contract and can then accept a new teaching position in the physical education department at Bloomfield High School.

“I’m back coaching where it all started for me, where I enjoyed being a player (in 1988-90) for Chet Parlavecchio, when Mike was his assistant coach, and I also had a previous tenure as an assistant coach for eight years at Bloomfield after I had spent three seasons on the staff at Montclair State, and before being named as Paterson Eastside’s head coach,” continued Johnson. “No doubt, a lot has happened for me these past few months, but I’m ecstatic to be back home again, and I feel so comfortable in Bloomfield where it is an absolute honor to work with ‘Coach’ once again!”