Mentor powers past four turnovers to open 2026 season with 38-17 win over Olmsted Falls

The Mentor Cardinals opened the 2026 football season with a 38-17 victory over Olmsted Falls at Jerome T. Osborne Stadium on Aug. 21 — but not before four turnovers exposed the growing pains of a young roster that returned only four defensive starters and had to replace a graduating class stacked with Division I and Division II college signees.

"We made too many mistakes," head coach Matt Gray said afterward.

The mistakes were real: three interceptions and a fumble handed the ball back to the Bulldogs repeatedly and kept a game Mentor dominated on the stat sheet tight into the third quarter. Olmsted Falls trailed just 17-14 at halftime, then tied it at 17-17 on a third-quarter field goal.

What happened next defined the night. Mentor answered with 21 unanswered points to pull away for good.

Senior wide receiver Logan Berwald was the catalyst. He hauled in 12 catches for 235 yards and two touchdowns, a performance that ranks among the top single-game receiving outings in program history. Berwald opened the scoring with a 56-yard catch-and-run touchdown in the first quarter, then broke the 17-17 tie with a 64-yard score from quarterback Brogan Jones late in the third.

Jones finished 20 of 31 for 285 yards and added a 14-yard rushing touchdown in the fourth quarter. Cleveland.com named him among the week's top performers. "We just had to finish it," Jones said. Brayden Littlejohn capped the scoring with a 5-yard touchdown run with 3:22 remaining. Mentor led 24-17 after three quarters and tacked on two fourth-quarter scores to reach the final margin.

The win improved the Cardinals to 1-0 and extended Gray's regular-season winning streak to 25 games. Gray enters his seventh season at Mentor with a 55-18 overall record, guiding a program that owns 25 playoff appearances and a 47-25 postseason mark. Last season's squad went 12-1 and reached a Division I regional final.

Still, the opener laid bare a tension this Cardinals team will have to resolve: an offense capable of explosive, game-breaking plays through the air, paired with ball-security lapses that allowed an 0-1 Olmsted Falls squad to stay within striking distance deep into the second half.

Mentor gets its next chance to sort that out tonight, hosting McDowell of Erie, Pennsylvania, at 7 p.m. at Jerome T. Osborne Stadium. McDowell went 3-8 last season. The Cardinals have the firepower — whether they can protect the football will tell us more about where this young team is headed.