Bishop Guertin's Matt Santosuosso is using his athletic ability to steer the Cardinals' offense as their new QB this season. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – A few years ago, Matt Santosuosso couldn’t even throw a football.

A couple of years later, part of his job as the quarterback of the Bishop Guertin High School football team is to do exactly that.

The junior from Pelham started to go to QB guru Trevor Knight’s – the former Nashua South and UNH standout – training sessions and became a different player.

“I learned almost everything I do now; I couldn’t really even throw a football before going there,” Santosuosso said, “so he really taught me everything.”

Many fans will get their first look at Santosuosso over center Saturday night for BG’s home opener vs. Salem at Stellos Stadium. There was a competition in camp the last month, as the Cardinal coaching staff was trying to decide where Santosuosso would help them the most. Finally, Guertin coach John Trisciani went with the age-old theory:

“We had him (last year) playing receiver,” Trisiciani said. “But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out we probably want to put the best athlete we have at quarterback.

“He’s a really good athlete. Sometimes he’s raw,but the instincts he has just from playing sports are really impressive.”

It’s been the making of a quarterback: the work with Knight, also with a personal trainer, and then his older brother Dylan, who QB’d Guertin the last couple of seasons and is now a freshman at Colby-Sawyer, where he expects to continue a fine basketball career. The two enjoyed winning a Divsion I state basketball title together last March. The older Santosuosso was the 2021 Telegraph Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

But before then, Dylan was also his unofficial QB coach.

“He was definitely great,” Santosuosso said. “He would walk me through what to do, my footwork, and throwing. He helped me a lot.”

And of course there was the sibling rivalry.

“We don’t really fight a lot,” Santosuosso said with a wide grin. “He knows I’m faster than him. I’d win by a good amount.”

Santosuosso has learned how to read defenses, etc., as the QB position is all-encompassing. But he’s up for the challenge. He felt in his element last Friday night at Keene.

“It felt great, it felt amazing,” Santosuosso said. “I like to have the ball in my hands. I like to run and pass, I like both.”

But he says he’s better at running.

Santosuosso first started with youth football (Pelham Razorbacks) in the second grade, and found out he just loves to “be on the field and play.”

He started with Flag Football and then took off.

Matt says he doesn’t have a favorite, but there’s a plan in place: His favorite will be whichever sport brings the best return.

“I like both,” he said, “Whichever can get a college higher division scholarship I’d go there. But I love both.”

Santosuosso is serious about his game. He has a trainer he worked with most of the summer, away from Guertin, Ben Brownsburger, who has his own training company, in Londonderry. He discovered him when a friend told Matt about Brownsburger after Matt suffered an ankle injury his junior year playing basketball and got great recovery results.

“He just trains me to become faster, stronger, and works with me on everything,” Santosuosso said. “He definitely pushes me hard.”

But that ability to make quick decisions on the field is what sets Santosuosso aparT.

“He does things on film that you can’t really coach it,” Trisciani said. “We want to make sure he’s making really good decisions, and kind of knows where we want him to go with the football.

“But he’s probably the first kid I’ve ever coached that we can’t over-coach him. We kind of just have to let him go. He’s just that good of an athlete.”

On a few runs vs. Keene, there were plays where while following his blockers, he cut away when he saw daylight, “and let that athletic ability take over,” Trisciani said. “That was probably what I’m most impressed with.”

Santosuosso said he was nervous at the start of the Keene game, especially after the Blackbirds had scored on the opening kickoff. You could tell he was relaxed when, on his long 99-yard TD run, he handed the ball off to lineman Jake Baker who was right with him, for the last 10 yards.

“In practices, on like a punt return, one of the linemen would be lead blocking,” he said. “I told one of them I’d hand them the ball. And before the game (last Friday), I told Jakob I’d hand him the ball if he was behind me. It was the perfect time and I just gave it to him.

“It felt great to accomplish it, and the 99 yard run out of the end zone felt great.”

“It’s a cool gesture,” Trisciani said, “but it’s one of those things as a coach you can see where it might go wrong. But I think it’s more of a reflection on his relationship with his teammates, some of the linemen, and how he appreciates them. A selfless act.

“You don’t imagine a kid doing something like that after such an awesome play, but in the big picture, it was neat.”

Santosuosso also plays safety on defense – he started there as a sophomore – enjoying being in a spot to make a play from anywhere on the field. He says it helps him become a better quarterback.

“Being a safety, you know how to read the receivers,” he said. “And being a quarterback, you can see how the safety would read it, and just make a play on them.”

“What we noticed right away is he’s just really tough,” Trisciani said. “Instinctive. Always around the football. Some of those traits you can’t really teach.”

Santosuosso is 6-2, shifty, and deceptively fast. He’s not the most vocal player but leads by example.

“He’s very level headed,” Trisciani said. “His body language is also very good, never too high or too low. I have to imagine some of that comes from being a multi sport athlete, very competitive.”

He began playing QB at the sub varsity level, and knew he needed to improve his throwing. “I could run, I just couldn’t really throw,” he said.

But he felt more comfortable throwing the ball toward the end of last season, just throwing in practice as he was on varsity and made sure to get time to work with his brother and the other quarterbacks.

How good of an athlete is he? Santosuosso even returns kicks, and when Trisciani told him earlier this week the Cards might take him off that duty, he didn’t look happy.

“It’s one of those where we might have to protect him a little from himself,” Trisciani said. “But he’s an athlete. He’s tough mentally and physically and he doesn’t want to come off the field.

“He’d probably be our best quarterback, our best receiver, our best safety, our best corner, our best outside linebacker. He can do everything.”

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