Southmoreland grad Zach Cernuto has played many roles in Washington & Jefferson offense
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Penn State tight end Tyler Warren has made waves across college football this season. The 6-foot-6, 261-pound senior has contributed to the Nittany Lions’ lofty ranking as a pass catcher and as a runner.
Entering Saturday’s game against Purdue, Warren had 59 receptions for 681 yards and four touchdowns. He also had carried the ball 13 times for 94 yards and three touchdowns. He even has thrown a touchdown pass this season.
Warren’s performance has coach James Franklin touting him for multiple postseason awards: the Mackey Award for the nation’s best tight end and the Hornung Award for the nation’s most versatile player.
Washington & Jefferson senior tight end Zach Cernuto? Been there, done that.
Cernuto (5-11, 215), a Southmoreland graduate, is listed as a tight end on the Presidents’ roster. But he has done everything from running the ball to returning kicks to throwing a pass during his three-plus seasons.
All that multi-purpose stuff that has earned Warren national acclaim? Nothing new to Cernuto.
Heading into Saturday’s regular-season finale against Allegheny, Cernuto had not carried the ball this season. But in 2023, he earned first-team All-Presidents’ Athletic Conference recognition after he rushed for five touchdowns and caught two touchdown passes.
The year before, he scored four rushing touchdowns and three receiving touchdowns.
That is in addition to his duties as a blocker in W&J’s rushing attack, which had piled up more than 1,500 yards through the first nine games. The Presidents were 8-1 heading into Saturday.
“I never really played tight end or a blocking position,” Cernuto said. “I played quarterback on offense, so learning the footwork, learning the blocking schemes, getting all of that stuff down, that was probably the biggest adjustment to tight end.”
Running the ball was second nature. He played what amounted to wildcat quarterback at Southmoreland, so he understood how to find holes in the line.
He wasn’t asked to catch a lot of passes at Southmoreland, but he said his time playing quarterback helped him to understand how to play tight end.
“Playing quarterback in high school, I just had a knack for learning the whole offense,” he said.
And catching passes is how Cernuto has made his biggest contributions this season. Entering Saturday, he had 32 receptions — more than the previous two seasons combined — for 237 yards and five touchdowns.
In the Presidents’ Nov. 2 victory over Case Western Reserve, Cernuto had his biggest college performance. He caught 14 passes for 123 yards and a touchdown. It was the most catches by a W&J player in five years.
Normally, decorated quarterback Jake Pugh would be looking for receivers Jacob Macosko and John Peduzzi, who have combined for 113 receptions, 22 touchdowns and more than 1,800 yards. But with the Case Western Reserve defense keying on Macosko and Peduzzi, Pugh turned to Cernuto.
“They kind of ignored me for a little bit, and I was kind of able to get the ball and make some plays with it,” Cernuto said. “So we kept taking what the defense was giving us.
“We were just saying, ‘Well, if they’re not going to guard you, we’re just going to keep throwing you the ball.’ We were getting into a groove on offense, and once we were in that groove, we were pretty good.”
The result was a 34-21 win that kept W&J in the conference title race. Cernuto was lauded as the PAC Offensive Player of the Week and also earned a spot on the D3football.com national team of the week for his performance.
Cernuto has had other big games this season:
He had eight catches, including a touchdown, in the Presidents’ 21-14 win over Westminster on Oct. 5. Two of his receptions came on the winning drive, and the second of those two catches put the ball at the 1-yard line, where Kobe Derosa ran it in on the next play to break a 14-14 tie in the fourth quarter.
He also had a two-touchdown game in a 58-7 win over Thiel on Sept. 14. His scoring receptions were from 4 and 6 yards.
Cernuto gave a lot of credit to Pugh not only for his own success but for that of the offense.
Pugh, a Thomas Jefferson grad, is the reigning PAC Offensive Player of the Year and, entering Saturday, had thrown for 2,716 yards and 34 touchdowns against only five interceptions.
“He’s a stud,” Cernuto said. “He is, in my opinion, the best quarterback in the nation. … Anything you say about him is going to be great because you know he’s going to perform for us week-in and week-out.
“Knowing I have to be a reliable target for him whenever I do get an opportunity to run routes and protect and block for him whenever I’m in pass protections just to help him out and give him that time … because if he has time, he can do some special things.”
Entering the final game of the regular season, W&J, Grove City and Carnegie Mellon had 8-1 records in the PAC. The Presidents seemed destined for the postseason, whether that was the NCAA Division III playoffs or an ECAC Bowl game.
Cernuto certainly has done his part to contribute to the Presidents’ success, even if he has been “only” a receiver this season.
“We kind of did short-yardage packages last year and my sophomore year, so that’s how I got those rushes before,” he said. “We switched it up a little bit this year.”