He might have missed the first two weeks of the football season, but Northwestern sophomore Justin Holmes has made his presence felt in the two games he’s played this season.

Saturday, in the Tigers’ fourth game this year and Holmes second, he caught eight passes for a school-record 215 yards. For his performance, Holmes was named Player of the Week by the Times News of Lehighton.

“I took what I could from the time on the sidelines and got as many mental reps as I could,” said Holmes of dealing with the early injury. “It was pretty much getting back to the offense and (quarterback) Deven (Bollinger) and the rest of the offense really was a big part of the game last week. The running game opened things up and their corners became a little indecisive and I was able to beat them on a couple of plays.”

After making his 2019 debut in the third week of the season, Holmes role in Northwestern’s offense has increased each week and Saturday he even played defense and intercepted a Wilson pass.

“We wanted to take it a little slow with him, give him some playing time and let him sort of fit into the offense,” said Tiger head coach Josh Snyder. “We knew his workload was going to increase, but we didn’t quite foresee him doing as much as he did against Wilson.”

Holmes earned a place on the varsity team in three sports as a freshman - football, basketball and baseball, where he was one of the Tigers’ top pitchers.

“He’s just so athletic,” said Snyder. “I really think playing right field with the baseball team last spring helped his confidence. When you can start in a sport like that as a freshman, it says something about your ability. We saw his size and the fact that he has good hands and would be able to make plays for us and it made sense to move him out there.”

What he did against Wilson in week four was set a school record for receiving yards in a game. The old record of 184 yards was set by Trevor Cunningham and Holmes eclipsed that with 215 yards receiving on eight catches for three touchdowns.

“I’m just trying to do what I can as part of the team on both sides of the ball,” said Holmes. “We have a good team and have the potential to go really far this season and I just want to do what I can to help us do that.

“One of the strengths of our team is that Deven really spreads the ball around and we also have a good running game, so we can beat teams a lot of ways. Our defense has had a few miscues, but we’re working to eliminate any mistakes and we’ll be stronger as the season goes along.”