Mountain Teams converge on Richmond, Kentucky for EKU’s Passing League Tournament…Here was our take on the Bobcats

Eastern Kentucky University hosted a passing league tournament which boasted some of the Mountain’s better high school football programs. We are going to break down the performance of the Breathitt County Bobcats here on KPGFootball with some bonus commentary on the Pikeville squad.

Let’s take a look at Breathitt County…

If there is anything today told the casual fan about the Bobcat football team, it was certainly plain to anyone looking that Charles Andrew Collins is dad-burn good at playing football. Collins, known as one of the best running-backs in the commonwealth’s Class of 2020, or any other of its eligible graduating classes for that matter, isn’t really thought of as a down-the-field passing target. Today may have changed some folks thinking. For most all of the six contests in which Breathitt played, Collins was money on both offense and defense for the Bobcats.

Time and again, Braxton O’Hara was able to find Collins down-field. Time and again Collins was able to come down with the football regardless of what the defense was doing or in how good of position it was slotted. We also liked what we saw from returning district POY, O’Hara. Now in praising his play today one has to understand Sevens play isn’t really his type of game.

O’Hara threw the ball well and made good decisions with the ball for the most part even though he spent much of the six games working from a drop and pocket set. O’Hara is more of a play-action, run-pass-option (RPO) type guy who sprints out and takes off if the defense lies back in too tight of coverage. Passing league doesn’t permit that type action which doesn’t play to Braxton’s strengths. All of that aside, Braxton’s play was quite good and he was on target much of the afternoon.

We also thought Lane Weddle improved as the day progressed. Lane is a guy who will benefit from more regular practice time and more in-practice targets. Catching a football is more of a learned trait than anything innate.

A guy who also looked pretty impressive was Jacob Noble. Now as the day progressed Noble was having issues with cramping but he showed he was a guy who could be counted on in tough down and distance situations to come up with the football.

LaDanial Whittaker played very well on defense as the Bobcat defense got numerous stops and turnovers on downs, something you don’t see often in passing league games. Another star defensively on the back-end was Jaylen Turner. Turner picked off three balls for the stop-squad and engineered a TD drive when given the reigns to the offense as the 2nd team QB.

Here’s our overall impressions from watching Breathitt today. First we have to say the Bobcats did better than we expected. Teams who run the ball aggressively and effectively as the bulk of their offensive production tend to not be as good at passing league tournaments as the offenses who air it out, as they say. For instance, using two mountain teams as examples, neither Belfry nor Johnson Central are regular Passing League Tournament Champions. However, they are both right good at the Friday-Night variety of football.

We can see how Passing League would be vitally important to certain types of ball clubs. For instance, Pikeville has a roster which contains two of the premier receivers in Kentucky’s 2020 class in Seth Pugh and Jackson Hensley and Kentucky’s top rated drop-back passer in the Class of 2022 in Isaac McNamee. They were fantastic on both offense and defense at today’s tournament and hadn’t yet lost, going a perfect 6-0, through the game in which they knocked the Bobcats out of today’s tournament.

Pikeville looked well-drilled and their play designs were effective and routinely resulted in receivers breaking free where McNamee would generally hit them both in stride and where they could still operate after the catch. Overall, to us, Pikeville solidly looked like the team we have already forecast as Kentucky’s next State Champions in the 1A classification. With Beechwood moving to Class 2A, we can’t imagine who left in 1A can possibly play with the Panthers.

Breathitt County travels to South Laurel this coming Thursday to contest them in 7 on 7 and we expect to have a report from that event too. We are excited about what we saw today because the more effective the Bobcats can become throwing the football makes the down-hill run game we know will be there more potent as the season approaches.

This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!

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About Henry Lyon 1210 Articles
Have coached at the high school and middle school level. Have worked in athletic administration. Conceal my identity to enable my candor on articles published by this magazine. Only members of the editorial board are aware of my true identity.

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