Bingham junior Lincoln Tahi was asking for more at Syracuse. 

He didn’t seem to care that he might be sore, or that his 5-foot-10-inch, 205-pound body had already been blocking several yards down the field on plays when he wasn’t carrying the rock. 

Tahi already knew the mantra of new Bingham head coach Josh Johnson. “If you can’t block, you can’t play,” was a tagline that carried Miners wide receivers and tight ends several yards down the field this season. 

Aside from a few lows running the football during the Miners’ first four games, it was obvious Bingham’s beautiful brutality was back. When it came right down to it, and the calls weren’t going the way of the Miners, the coaches would put the ball in Tahi’s hands and let him go … off. 

That’s a lot to ask of any junior—but Lincoln Tahi was not your typical junior. At Syracuse, he was handed the ball 23 times, a move that, if not for a questionable call on fourth down would have ended in a Bingham victory at one of the toughest places to play in the state. 

The Miners lost 9-7 on that chilly night in Syracuse—but Tahi’s 7-yard-run for six with seven minutes left in the game was pure energy. It was Tahi’s 150 yards rushing in that game that gave the Miners the shot in the arm they needed. 

The following week at Bingham, after Tahi sprinted past Copper Hills defenders for a 40-yard touchdown, and after he blasted into the end zone with 22 seconds left in the first half to give the Miners a 22-0 lead, he was already at 100 yards rushing. 

By the time the game ended, and Bingham got a 35-14 win against Copper Hills, Tahi had racked up 233 yards rushing on the same number of carries [23] he had the previous week at Syracuse to go with those two TDs. 

Though Bingham should have been 2-0 after its last two games, getting back into the win column was just as important. 

That juice carried over to Bingham’s next home game against crosstown rival Herriman, as Tahi not only carried the rock 20 times for 102 yards and a tuddy—he blocked for his teammate Filisi Filipe, who himself had been gaining steam as the season went on. 

Filipe had 30 yards rushing and a score, and junior quarterback Ayden Dunn was nearly letter-perfect: 6 of 8 completions for 67 yards passing and one TD. Add an 80-yard interception return TD from Charger Doty, Bingham’s all-purpose star in the secondary, and the Miners were celebrating a 21-0 blanking of Herriman. 

The following week at yet another rival in Riverton would test the Miners’ character. Tahi again had his 20-plus carry night, and again punched in a touchdown when the Miners needed it most—in the fourth quarter with the game on the line. 

But, it was the running of Filipe behind that blocking from Tahi and others that led to two scores for the sophomore on just eight carries. It was the kind of game that put all of Region 2 on notice; that if you were going to beat Bingham, you’d have to find a way to overcome that brute physicality. And the Silverwolves simply couldn’t do it as the Miners won, 21-16, in a dogfight. 

It might have been the next game, however, that really sent a notice to everyone. At Corner Canyon, in a game that the Miners had no business competing in on paper, they did. By the time Tahi bulled into the end zone from 2 yards out, tying the game at 7-7 midway through the second quarter, it was borderline comical to hear the collective sighs of assembled media around the stadium as they got punched by a nasty, grimy Bingham front, so to speak. 

It literally took two miracle plays in one minute to hand Corner Canyon a two-score advantage at the half, and one of those came from an interception. 

Behind Filipe’s two scores to start and punctuate two Bingham drives to begin the third quarter, the Miners drew even at 21-21. It would be the closest they got to Corner Canyon, and Tahi’s 18 carries were the lowest he’d had in over a month to go with 93 yards rushing and a TD. But, junior Teki Finau had 92 yards on eight carries, too. 

 In Bingham’s regular season finale, the three main backs shared some of the carries—but the move paid off big at rivals Mountain Ridge. Every yard in this game was hard fought; the Miners were beaten, bloodied and bruised but Tahi had 18 carries, Finau six and Filipe two. In the end, it was Dunn’s rollout to his right that found senior Karl Tuaao open in the end zone. 

At that point, it was only fitting for Tahi to get the handoff to defeat Mountain Ridge 8-7 and help Bingham go 3-for-3 against their rivals this season. On the year, the junior had 1,001 yards rushing and five touchdowns to go with five 100-yard games, at a 5.8 yard per carry average. 

It was a great starting point for next season.