With Friday night's Cutoff Weekend high school football games all in the books, Central Jersey Sports Radio is updating the unofficial NJSIAA playoff standings as we head into Saturday action. We'll have further analysis late morning into the afternoon Saturday, with our 2025 "Playoff Projection Show" scheduled for 6 pm where we give our bracket projections. The full tournament for the public schools will be unveiled on Sunday by the NJSIAA via Gridiron New Jersey.

As we've been doing all season long, Central Jersey Sports Radio is highlighting the high school football "Speedster of the Week" presented by Higgins Speed Lab in South Brunswick, recognizing the top runningbacks in the Big Central Conference every week. And the Week Seven winner is Somerville's Aidan Vesuvio-Bush! Back on Friday night, in a 40-28 win over Plainfield heard live on Central Jersey Sports Radio…

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It's Cutoff Weekend in New Jersey high school football, and we're taking a look at the playoff scenarios for every Big Central team in contention. This week, Strength Index values are locked in, and out-of-state opponent SI values also have been updated by Gridiron New Jersey, which does all the official calculations of the NJ UPR formula for the NJSIAA. And we've double- and triple-checked our own standings to make sure they match with Gridiron's.

With the NJSIAA's Cutoff Weekend for high school football next week in New Jersey, Central Jersey Sports Radio is taking a closer look at the race for the playoffs, including who's in the running for top seeds, who's in, who's jockeying for position, and who has some work to do just to get in, or stay in the hunt. We'll break down each supersection, with individual team analysis for all Big Central Conference schools.

As we've been doing all season long, Central Jersey Sports Radio is highlighting the high school football "Speedster of the Week" presented by Higgins Speed Lab in South Brunswick, recognizing the top runningbacks in the Big Central Conference every week. And the Week Six winner is Sayreville's Shaun Jackson! Last week, Jackson carried 20 times for 338 yards and four touchdowns in a big 37-28 win over Franklin, that keeps Sayreville in the hunt for the top seed in Central Jersey Group 5, with Cutoff Weekend just two weeks away.

While most high school football teams across New Jersey played Friday night, still more have to play Saturday. But with much of Week 6 in the books, here's a look at Central Jersey Sports Radio's projections on updated playoff standings. All our projections are unofficial and based on scores reported to Gridiron New Jersey - the official calculator of the NJSIAA's UPR formula - with additional scores gathered from various media sources.

As we've been doing all season long, Central Jersey Sports Radio is highlighting the high school football "Speedster of the Week" presented by Higgins Speed Lab in South Brunswick, recognizing the top runningbacks in the Big Central Conference every week. And the Week Five winner is Andrew Avent of Rahway... again! Last week, Avent became the fifth different Big Central student-athlete to be honored as "Speedster of the Week" in the first five weeks of the season (Weeks 0 through 4).

Following an 0-10 season, Brearley made a football coaching change for 2025, bringing in alum Elliot Platt. And after three losses to start the season, making it 15 straight defeats going back to the final game of 2023, all of a sudden the Bears have figured it out and won three straight. The latest came Friday night all the way out in Lambertville against South Hunterdon, a 21-0 victory that evened their record at 3-3, with winnable games down the stretch against South River, Metuchen and Dayton.

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It was nearly a perfect 10-for-10 for the Big Central Conference teams that entered Week 4 undefeated. Spotswood kicked things off in fine fashion with a solid 34-3 win over a good Highland Park team Thursday night, behind 108 rushing yards from Sebastian "Sebby" Saracino, and two TD runs from Se'mir Tolbert-Brimage, who also scored on defense with a pick-six.

One of the big names people were talking about in the preseason - in the context of who could have a really big year - was Brody Nugent of Old Bridge. The senior quarterback had 2,170 passing yards and 1,831 career rushing yards coming into the season, and with a host of talent around him was expected to be the leader of an offense that had a lot of pieces back.

The newest coaches in the Big Central Conference continue to get their first wins for their new schools, with four turning the trick this past week, including Zack Gega of East Brunswick, Elliot Platt of Brearley, Mark Ciccotelli at Linden and Isa Abdul-Quddus at Hillside. There was plenty more going on around the league, as reporter Mike Pavlichko takes a closer look at all that and much more - including a look at this Friday's Bellamy & Son paving Game of the Week and a peek at how the playoffs will look under the NJSIAA's newest tweak to the process for 2025 - on this week's edition of "The Big Central in Two Minutes!" Click below to listen to the Week 4 edition of "The Big Central in Two Minutes":