After Damarrion Lloyd’s huge night, can Madison football rebound from Wooster loss?

MADISON TOWNSHIP — Damarrion Lloyd needed 11 carries to put up 227 yards and four touchdowns against Norwalk at home on September 4, the kind of night that made the Rams look like the most explosive team in the Ohio Cardinal Conference.

A week later, Madison scored 13 points and lost 34-13 at Wooster. The Generals came in 0-3 and left with their first win of the season, and the Rams left with the question now hanging over the rest of the schedule: which team is real — the 42-7 squad or the 34-13 one?

Lloyd's big night

The Norwalk win ran through Lloyd. His four scoring runs covered 17, 65, 78 and 18 yards, and he averaged more than 20 yards a carry. The Ohio High School Athletic Association put the 227-yard, four-touchdown night in its weekly football notebook, and Mansfield News Journal readers named Lloyd the Football Player of the Week with 1,328 votes in the fan poll.

Lloyd was not alone that night. Quarterback Carson Cook threw for 200 yards and two touchdowns, hitting Camden Moysi and Daniel Norris on big plays down the field.

Then Wooster

The Wooster game flipped the script. Madison's 13 points were 29 fewer than the week before, and the Rams never found the rhythm that buried Norwalk. Wooster improved to 1-3 overall and 1-0 in the conference, the 22nd all-time meeting between the programs.

The loss was Madison's conference opener, and it came on the heels of a 3-7 season in 2025.

The answer came a week later

If the Wooster loss raised the question, West Holmes answered it. On September 18, the Knights held Lloyd to 44 rushing yards on 10 carries — though he caught six passes for 42 more — in a 42-7 home loss.

Cook threw for 149 yards and a touchdown against West Holmes, including a scoring pass to Moysi. After the loss, Madison stood 2-3 overall and 0-2 in the Ohio Cardinal Conference, two straight losses since the Norwalk win.

Put the two nights side by side — 227 rushing yards against Norwalk, 44 against West Holmes — and the throughline is plain: when defenses key on Lloyd, Madison has not yet found a consistent second option to keep drives alive.

What's next

The Rams entered 2026 needing to replace graduated running back Kaleb Gordon, now at Walsh University, which put more of the rushing load on Lloyd from the start.

The next test comes Friday, September 25 at Ashland, where Madison will try to stop a two-game skid and get back to.500. The season-ending home game against Mansfield Senior on October 23 gives Richland County a rivalry date to circle.

A rebound will take more than a win. It will take a second option emerging alongside Lloyd — the way Cook, Moysi and Norris did against Norwalk — so the Rams are not a one-man show good defenses can shut down. The team that beat Norwalk 42-7 is in there somewhere. The next Friday night will show whether it is coming back.