However controversial the late Micheal Jackson was, and he certainly was, he was a brilliant musician and songwriter and as talented a performer as the world has ever known. He wrote a song from which I would like to (sort of) borrow in my article about Team Kentucky Future Stars-8th grade offensive center, Matt Alex Ladd.
The lyrics to Man in the Mirror, which was written by Jackson, goes…
A summer disregard, a broken bottle top
And a one man soul
They follow each other on the wind ya’ know
‘Cause they got nowhere to go
That’s why I want you to know I’m starting with the man in the mirror…
Sure, the song is discussing the need for society’s, particularly well-healed society’s, need for introspective discernment about how to allocate personal resources visa vie the less fortunate. That certainly isn’t an appropriate equivalency to a summer, middle school football classic. If there is any ability to relate the two, however much of a stretch it may require, we believe it is encapsulated in the following paragraph.
Linemen tend to follow each other in the wind on game days. Without a strong player, in the middle of the line, linemen really have nowhere to go. That’s why KPGFootball wants you to know, should we ever be tasked with selecting a Kentucky Future Stars team, particularly an offensive line of scrimmage, we may not start with the Man in the MIrror, but we are starting with the Man in the Middle. We would select Matt Alex Ladd first among the Class of 2023 bigs.
What we particularly like about Matt is he has always played at offensive center. His snap is wrote muscle memory and as constant as a sun’s setting or rising. It’s money.
We saw his ability to deliver in last summer’s game where he took the majority of snaps at center in the Kentucky-Tennessee Future Stars 7th grade game which fell to Kentucky 31-28 in overtime. Ladd has what we would call an offensive center’s build. He’s around 5-11 inches tall with long enough arms to pull off being an inch or so undersized. He weighs in the 255-265 range.
Now in the advent of the Spread offense, which commonly employs a shotgun formation and requires a five to seven yard delivery, accomplished centers are a real commodity. The reason is defenses tend to focus a lot of pressure up the middle.
For one, the offensive center tends to be one of the smaller up-front players. Secondly, the quickest path to a QB dropping to throw the ball or even to had the ball to a RB is the straight line right up the gut. So centers have to win the leverage battle while being able to dig in and powerfully explode, low to high, on any A-gap heat headed toward the backfield to wreck the play. Centers have to be powerful, explosive, strong.
Matt Alex Ladd checks all three boxes. Now we cover powerlifting as many football players we cover compete. We got to see Matt compete both at the Border Brawl in Paducah, Kentucky and at the Kentucky Powerlifting Championships.
We are unsure of what his present lifting figures are as we publish this article today. However, we were at the Border Brawl when he bench-pressed 245-pounds at that competition nearly two months ago. We have heard he is power cleaning 225-pounds at present while dead-lifting and back-squatting four plates (405-pounds) plus. Those are crazy figures for a kid at his stage of development.
For the just because he can lift doesn’t make him a football player crowd, whom we know are out there (and generally the parents of players as weak as puppy-pee), we have the following to relate. Ladd made last year’s Future Stars team, KPGFootball’s All-State MS team, was ranked in the top-10 of Kentucky’s Class of 2023 football players, made this year’s Future Stars team, and is projected to start for Trigg County High School this Fall as a freshman. He can play a little.
We have often told you, on this site, that 8th grade Future Stars players are practically high school varsity depth chart guys. By depth chart we mean in the two deep, many of whom are already first team by the time the game kicks-off. All good offensive fronts start with having a cornerstone at offensive center. One has to have a “Man in the Middle.” Kentucky has its man…and so does Trigg County High School.
This is F.W. Long (#Brotherhood) reporting for KPGFootball reminding you to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE!
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