Julian Edelman dropped back to pass only to have four defenders in his face. He scrambled to his left, but now there were two additional defenders looking to tackle him.

What happened next was a scene straight out of a Michael Vick highlight-reel.

As Edelman turned to his right, two defenders lunged at him, nearly knocking him down. But Edelman somehow stayed on his feet, before making a wicked cut to the right. With six defenders in his vicinity, Edelman shifted into another gear down the sideline.

Moments later, Edelman had scored on a spectacular 63-yard run, catapulting the Woodside High football team to a 36-20 win over Westmont in last year’s Central Coast Section Medium School Division title game.

Fast forward to this season, and that scene repeats over and over — except this time, it’s happening on Saturdays, where the 5-foot-11, 185-pound quarterback is starring for College of San Mateo. A jump to the junior college ranks hasn’t stopped Edelman from making jaws drop and heads roll.

The freshman sensation rushed for 216 yards on 31 carries, passed for 79 more and accounted for four touchdowns in the Bulldogs’ 38-28 win over Foothill Saturday. The Owls came into the game as the sixth-ranked team in the country, but they had no answer for Edelman, who used his supreme athleticism and drive to make a number of big plays. CSM offensive coordinator Bret Pollack, a noted perfectionist, could only rave about Edelman’s performance.

“He had just three misreads out of 45 reads,” Pollack said. “That’s less than a 10 percent error rate. He was over 90 percent, and 85 percent is considered good. That’s about as good as you can get.”

The Bulldogs (5-2, 1-1 NorCal Conference), ranked No. 21 in the state, hosts No. 2 City College of San Francisco (7-0, 2-0) Saturday at 1 p.m., and Edelman can hardly wait.

“It was important to play well against a team like Foothill, and playing City is going to be a huge game for me,” he said. “The only thing that matters is winning, but I also want to show that I don’t need them (CCSF).”

CSM’s little secret

It’s often said that ignorance is bliss, but the other junior colleges in the area have to be kicking themselves for not so much as saying hello to Edelman. CSM was the only team that recruited Edelman. The CCSF coaches visited the Woodside High campus after the completion of the 2004 high school season, but showed little or no interest in Edelman. Instead, they targeted their attention toward Edelman’s teammate, running back Tyreece Jacks, who is now starring for the community college juggernaut.

“Of course I was disappointed that I received no (scholarship) offers, but I didn’t expect to get picked up,” Edelman said. “I’m a short kid by Division I standards, but that’s never stopped me from achieving my goals. When CSM called me, it put a smile on my face. They actually wanted me. I always had it in the back of my mind that I was too small and I wouldn’t be able to overcome that.”

He’s overcome that and then some, and Saturday’s game will make for quite a reunion for the two former Woodside greats. In fact, Edelman was at Jacks’ house on Tuesday playing video games. Safe to say, the two weren’t sharing any secrets.

“He asked me what plays we were running, and I asked him what his team would be running,” Edelman said. “He said he didn’t know, and I did the same.”

Athletic his whole life

Hyper-competitive and strong-willed, Edelman’s athleticism was evident from an early age. He started playing soccer at 4, baseball at 5, football at 8 and basketball at 10. You might ask where soccer fits into this whole equation. Well, Edelman’s parents, Frank and Angela, needed to do something to get their youngest son out of the house. Edelman was so hyper as a kid that his parents nicknamed him Bam Bam, because of his propensity to break everything in sight, including his crib.

“I did a lot of damage,” Edelman said. “My parents actually had to lie about my age so that they could get me out of the house. I was a wild kid.”

But also a smart one. Frank helped hone his son’s talent by taking him out to the batting cages, throwing around the football on various fields, and renting a gym to shoot basketballs and run drills. The son kept on rising, and he gained an understanding of each sport. As a result, Edelman developed the hand-eye coordination, quickness and hunger that most of the athletes his age lacked. What Edelman didn’t have was size. He was only 5-foot-1 and 110 pounds as a freshman, 5-2 and 120 as a sophomore, 5-5 and 150 as a junior. It was only during his senior year when Edelman took off, growing to 5-10 and 170. Not so coincidentally, so did his game. But looking back at his freshman year, no one — not even Edelman — could’ve predicted any of the success he is having today. As a freshman on the Wildcats’ frosh-soph team, Edelman was the starting tailback. But once Jacks came on later in the season, Edelman knew his days as a running back were over.

“The real reason I switched to quarterback was because of Tyreece,” Edelman said. “He just blew everyone’s socks off. I figured I had no choice but to switch positions. I guessed it worked out.”

Reaching his potential

Edelman endured two tough seasons before everything came together in his senior year. As a sophomore on the junior varsity, Edelman knew he was in trouble when he couldn’t throw the football 20 yards. As a junior, he won the starting quarterback competition on the varsity, but separated his shoulder a week before the season. When he came back midway through the year, he re-injured his shoulder only to return a week later against Capuchino. Against the Mustangs, he was sacked 14 times yet passed for 368 yards, Edelman said. That was merely a harbinger. This season, Edelman has rushed for a team-leading 727 yards and seven touchdowns on 104 carries, averaging 7.0 yards per rush, and has completed 43 of 108 passes for 665 yards, with 10 touchdowns and three interceptions. Timed in 4.5 seconds in the 40-yard dash, Edelman uses his quickness to turn plays that would go for no gain into positive yardage.

“He was here for spring (practice) and picked up things real fast,” Pollack said. “He conceptually understands the offense, and he’s way ahead of where I figured he’d be at this point. I was unsure because he was untested coming from high school to playing teams like Foothill and City. His main obstacle is understanding that he doesn’t always have to make the big play. He reminds me of myself sometimes, having cases of ADD (attention deficit disorder). He gets bored quickly. We’ll run eight plays in practice, and when we do it again, he’ll try it his way and improvise. That gets him in trouble sometimes, and that’s the part we have to eliminate.”

Edelman agreed: “Coach (Larry) Owens will give me crap — and rightly so — because I’ll drop back to pass in practice, and instead of throwing to the wide open man, I’ll throw the slant, where it’s tight, just to see if I can get it in there. When people say it can’t be done, I want to do it.”

And to think: Edelman could’ve grayshirted this season. The CSM coaching staff let Edelman know that he had options as a freshman, and that he could take a year to get physically and mentally tougher, as teammate Jose Avina did last season. But Edelman never gave it a second thought.

“You play the game to start,” he said. “I was actually disappointed at first because I didn’t get to start right away. There was a chance heading into this that I wouldn’t play. I took the risk, made the decision not to grayshirt and I’m glad I stuck with my heart.”

Up next: vs. San Francisco City College, 1 p.m.

Things only get tougher for the Bulldogs.

After knocking off the sixth-ranked team in the state in Foothill, the Bulldogs get the top-ranked Rams Saturday.

City College has the state’s best defense, allowing only 199 yards per game. The Rams will have their hands full, however, with a CSM offense that averages 471 yards per game.

“We have one of the top offenses in the state,” said CSM wide receiver E.J. Boganey. “I don’t think anyone can just stop us. In the games where we didn’t get a lot of yards, we stopped ourselves.”

The Bulldogs defense will have its hands full as well against a Rams’ offense that averages 445 yards per game. City College has built its reputation on the big plays, something CSM head coach Larry Owens is well aware of.

“What it boils down to is us taking care of business,” Owens said. “They’re a big-play team. You can’t make mistakes against good teams.”