RESERVE — August of 2016 is turning out to be a piece of cake for Riverside Academy football coach Bill Stubbs.

Knock on wood.

The last two Augusts were not so easy for Stubbs as he was forced to scratch his projected starting quarterbacks at the 11th hour.

Just before the 2014 football season, projected starter Deuce Wallace suddenly announced he was transferring out of state.

Last August, projected starter Jordan Loving went out with a back injury. Another potential starter, Jared Butler, came up with a sore elbow.

Never one to panic, Stubbs simply shuffled personnel around, put a basketball player under center and came up with a lineup that went 11-2 and advanced to the Class 2A state championship game in December.

So as he embarks on his fifth season as coach of the Rebels, Stubbs must be pretty relaxed as he looks at his lineup and sees not one but two projected starters on the board, both proven and here for a while.

Knock on wood.

Jordan Loving, a 6-foot-3 junior, and Jared Butler, a 6-foot-2 junior, will be working together this season to bring the Rebels continued success.

Butler is, essentially, the returning starter from last year’s team. After recovering from his sore elbow, he jumped back into the lineup, first as a receiver, then as a passer.  He threw three touchdowns in his return against Newman and finished the season with 903 yards and nine scores.

Loving was supposed to be the starter last year.

A pro-style, drop back type quarterback, Loving replaced Wallace and passed for 40 touchdowns as a freshman.  Stubbs was inking his name in the 2015 lineup until a nagging pain in his back turned out to be three fractured vertebrae.

“I was just stupid,” Loving said. “I never gave myself time to heal.”

Now “100 percent healthy,” Loving wants to reclaim his starting spot but he’s also willing to share it.

“Whatever we have to do,” Loving said.

Said Butler: “Both of our styles make us good. Whatever we have to do to help the team, we’ll do.”

Both bring a different dynamic to the playing field, Stubbs said, but both are outstanding.

“You put these kids at any other school in the state and they’d start at about 95 percent of them,” Stubbs said.

“Jordan is a big, strong kid. He’s smart. He throws the ball extremely well. He’s a film nut, always studying defenses and working to get better. He’s gotten stronger. He’s gotten quicker.

“Jared is just a playmaker. You can put him in at quarterback and he can just make things happen, but he also can do that as a receiver. He can make a lot of different things happen wherever you put him.”

One thing they have in common is the disappointment of losing last year’s state championship game to Notre Dame. The Rebels were the No. 1 seed entering the playoffs.

“It was a good year but, based on our expectations, it wasn’t good enough,” Loving said. “We have to work hard to get rid of that taste in our mouth.”