Don’t know how many of you out there remember Canadian rocker Bryan Adams? In the day, he was one of my favorite singers. He had a song about being cheated on entitled “Cuts like a knife.”
We thought of the song when sitting down to discuss today’s feature about Hosea Knife-ley. You know, Knifely cuts like a knife, through opposing edge protection schemes. His production feels so right too, at least if you are a coach or player for the Butler Traditional Bears football team.
Well the same guy who put together the top 30 OL list and published it to Bluegrass Rivals put out his DL list yesterday. He had Hosea Knifeley at No. 5 in Kentucky. Some people have hailed the list and others have been pretty vocal about some omission or another.
We, for our money, thought Murray High School’s Sebastian Lawrence, who is our second highest regarded DE in the Kentucky class of 2021, behind only Darion Dearinger, should have made the list. We also would have included Hopkinsville’s Eric Grubbs who we have firmly in Kentucky’s top-5 DE’s in the Class of 2020. We weren’t consulted.
Knifeley’s being included wasn’t at all contested. The boys from the Derby City thought he should have been No. 1. Pretty hard to argue against Octavious Oxendine from North Hardin or Darion Dearinger from Anderson County at the top two spots. We might have slid Knifeley into the 3rd position and kept Wilson Kelly at four and moved Austin Collins down to 5 but we are splitting hairs now.
The argument proffered on social media, that Knifeley is playing 6A football in Louisville, doesn’t hold a lot of water with us as some sort of ipso facto reason he should occupy the top spot. We realize Louisville can point to three of the 6 Classes being won by Louisville schools, CAL, Central, and Male, but shouldn’t that be the case? After all, the entire commonwealth of Kentucky only has a population in the neighborhood of 4.4 million and nearly one-third of the entire Kentucky population lives either around or within the metropolitan-Louisville area.
However, Oxendine is playing 6A football in Radcliff, Kentucky (which is basically E-Town) and Dearinger is ringing bells in 5A, a league which we thought was better than Class 6A last year.
We know this is blasphemy, but would any of you really have taken Male (6A Champion) over South Warren (5A Champion) had you been betting money in 2018? We wouldn’t have, sorry Male. Would any of you have bet on Scott County (6A finalist) to beat Covington Catholic (5A finalist)? C’mon, man, you know better than that. No way!
What can’t be disputed is the fact Hosea Knifeley is getting offered all over the place by Division I schools to continue his playing career and rightfully. Knifeley, a Class of 2020 prospect, played both MLB and DE for Butler on defense and even played some RB on offense just to give you an idea about the kind of athlete he is. He had 55 tackles, 11 TFL, 4 QB sacks, and forced a fumble in 2018 with teams running away from him just as quickly as they could.
Hosea has proto-typical frame for big-time football especially where we see him being mostly deployed at the next level which is DE. Knifeley is 6-3, weighs 246-pounds, with long arms and excellent bend and quick-twitch explosion.
Is he the real No. 1 defensive lineman in Kentucky? We don’t know and wouldn’t have argued had he been slotted there. Regardless, one thing is for certain, and this he has in common with many of the top-20 list, he sure looks good getting off the bus.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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