OL Coach
You talk about a surname which denotes the ability to play the game of football, and especially upfront offensively, what about the Binghams? You may or may not remember this but present superstar Grant Bingham has a big-brother the Thundering Herd plucked out of the Bluegrass a couple of years ago named Ethan. We featured Ethan back in the day. Well, it appears to be “little brother’s” turn at the wheel.
The Binghams, figuratively as a football family, have gone to the well again and have, once again, drawn water. Grant Bingham, who is a KPGFootball All-Stater, who also made the FBU Freshman All-American Team, and who (almost forgot) helped lead his team to this past season’s Class 4A Kentucky Football State Championship, has come to the forefront of the superstar Bingham category. This 6-4, 270-pound, offensive lineman version of a “long-tall-drink of water” has just recently been tabbed Kentucky’s second best offensive lineman, all-Classes, preseason 2020. This is high praise indeed for a young lineman just coming off his sophomore season.
Of course, Bingham wasn’t alone on the list published to Bluegrass Rivals from the Johnson Central front five. Fellow 2022 class member, and superstar in his own right, Owen LeMaster also made the list. When we give you what the State Champion Johnson Central Eagles did on the ground last year, perhaps you will see why.
In 2019, running behind a front wall anchored by both Grant Bingham and LeMaster, the Eagles gained 4,526-rushing yards in 523-rushing attempts with 68-rushing TDs in their march to a perfect 15-0 Championship season. The Championship win over Boyle County (21-20) was the only ballgame the team was in all season. The closest margin other than that was beating the Capital team from W.Va. by 15. Oh well, that game was played in Charleston, W.Va.
Broken down in a per game average for you, the Eagles ran football, in a garden variety football game, 35-times, gaining 301.7 yards per outing, and scoring 4.5 TDs rushing every time they took the field. Assuming you can convert a PAT, Johnson Central in 2019 was guaranteed over 30-points an outing whether it elected to throw a forward pass or not.
Just so we’re clear here, this is Johnson Central High School. Everyone in Kentucky knows what they are getting when playing the Eagles just like Nebraska opponents, back in the Tom Osbourne days, knew what was coming. Might as well stroll up to the line of scrimmage and point out the hole.
Knowing what’s coming doesn’t really get you any closer to stopping it. You still have to do something about the 5-7 Brahma Bulls charging downhill at you upon the ball’s being snapped.
It’s not like they can’t throw it at all. Riley Preece, in 2019, completed 50 of his 70-passing attempts for 1,223-yards through the air and 18 passing TDs against only 2 interceptions. Those statistics don’t belong to a QB in a darned awful hurry, if you catch my drift. Put those stats through the old QB-rating formula and see what comes out the other end!
As we enter another Fall, once again Kentucky boasts some prime offensive line talent. Like many years, much of it will come from the mountains including hulking offensive-linemen up in the hills who haven’t yet drawn appreciable notice. That won’t detract from the King of the Mountain linemen, Grant Bingham, who just happens to hail from the first-family of mountain, offensive line play.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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