The Coaches’ All-State Football Team had some HM’s we felt were undervalued and some other players completely not recognized whom we believe should have been included…
Well, the Coaches’ annual all-state football team was released yesterday in the Louisville Courier-Journal, its yearly home. Weeks from now it will be the media’s turn to release its team. The newspaper which publishes the media (AP) team is The Lexington Herald-Leader.
Chat boards are lighting up across Kentucky with people pleased with the team. There are also plenty numbered among the legion of the disgruntled.
Every team we have ever published, or on which we have voted, gets met upon its release with the same level of simultaneous applause and vitriol. Which one is based on the perspective of the viewer.
We never have been involved with an All-State, All-American, or All-Star selection which didn’t have undervalued members or even players we failed to recognize who should have been. No team, no selector, no process is perfect. No team gets them all.
There are lots of reasons for this. Sometimes players play on teams which don’t fare well, with none of the fault being their’s. Sometimes the coaches don’t do very much to promote their players. Some coaches would like to promote their players and just don’t happen to be very good at it. Hey, give them a break, they went into football coaching, not PR or advertising.
Marketing isn’t for everyone. If you will notice, big-time college football programs both staff and pay personnel, separate from its coaching staff, to do it.
McDonalds spends millions upon millions of dollars to hire agencies to sell you hamburgers. They don’t just buy an add which says “by our hamburger, we’re McDonalds.” They show you a picture of its most desirable hamburger, posed as deliciously and seductively as possible.
The hamburger is described as being comprised of grain-fed beef, which is (of course) both thick and juicy and veritably bursting with “big, beefy, bliss.” Their hamburger is capped off with garden fresh, crisp vegetables and served together with fresh and delicious fries made from only the finest Idaho potatoes.
McDonalds knows if the advertising read, “buy our hamburger,” you wouldn’t. They promote and market the product in a way which makes you believe you MUST have the McDonalds’ hamburger over every other hamburger on the market.
Why would promoting players for an All-State team differ? Maybe the coaches in your district have watched your favorite players either live or on film and can make an assessment as to that player’s game-play. For that reason, barring politics and personal agendas impossible to predict, All-District teams and POYs are pretty spot-on.
An All-State team requires support of coaches who have neither seen the player nor watched his film. The promotor has to give those guys a reason to pick this unknown for inclusion on the team. The promoter is asking for votes from voters who don’t really know much about the player for whom they are being asked to cast their vote.
Two types of coaches were among the voters who selected the Coaches’ All-State Football team. There were coaches who both knew and admired the prospect. There were many more who had never heard of the prospect nor had they seen him play either live or on film.
If you want a player to make the team, you have to give those coaches a reason to vote for your player. If you don’t, they will not, even if that player is both really good and deserving.
The following 3 players are players we believe were way better than just being “Honorably Mentioned,” though being honorably mentioned is certainly an honor of which to be proud. The final five players are players who were completely omitted and whose omission KPGFootball believes to be in error.
This list is far from exhaustive. There are many more examples of this, way more than the few we have selected to here highlight. Regardless, we propose the following promotions or additions as “friendly amendments” to the previously published Coaches’ All-State Football team.
The Under-appreciated…
Darion Dearinger. Anderson County. We’re sorry, and we don’t mean to offend anyone; but, in our opinion, this is Kentucky’s premier DE. In only 10-games of work over his junior year, as his team struggled, and with opponents running away from him (wisely), Dearinger had 70 total tackles, 57 of which were solos, 13 of which were assists, with 32-TFLs, and 11 QB-sacks. This kid holds numerous FBS-level offers though only a junior for a reason. Watch his Hudl Film, it is like watching a grown man play tackle football with third-graders. He played 5A football in both 2017 and 2018 before his high-school got reclassified into the 4A division in the same district with Boyle County and Lexington Catholic. The guys attempting to block him aren’t exactly “Joe-Slappies.”
Mason Lovely. Magoffin County. Lovely at LB for a 3-7 team, recorded 88-solos, 112-assists, for 200-total tackles with 14-TFLs, 5-QB-sacks, 1 FF, and 2FRs. At TE, the versatile athlete and one-man-band of production, caught 20-passes for 187-yards. We hear he is fantastic at both baseball and basketball, just saying.
Charles Andrew “Geeny” Collins. Breathitt County. He played in 14 games (13-1) and had 137-carries, 1,863-yards from scrimmage, 37-rushing TDs. On defense, at LB, he had 51-solos, 23-assists, 74-total tackles, 7-TFLs, 2-QB sacks. Collins scored 242-points in 2019 for the Bobcats.
Over the last three seasons, playing one season at 5A MoCo, one season at 5A (at the time) Anderson County, and one at 2A Breathitt, Collins gained 2,004-yards in 194 carries with 29 TDs on the ground for 10-3 MoCo, gained 1,474-yards, 131-carries, with 21-rushing TDs, for 10-1 Anderson County, and then did what he did this year, above detailed, for 13-1 Breathitt. This running back was the featured back for three teams, over three years, winning 33 of its 38-games played. Over those three years, Collins gained 5,341-yards rushing, in 462-carries, and scored 87-rushing TDs. He averaged 11.56-yards a carry over the last 3 years, two of which were in Kentucky’s second highest classification, and made exactly zero Coaches’ teams, above his being “Honorably Mentioned” three straight years.
The Glaring Omissions…
JJ Richardson. Meade County. JJ is a junior who played on a team which routinely plays against the best football teams in Kentucky largely owing to its being located just on the outskirts of the Derby City and playing in Kentucky’s largest classification. We are not taking issue with anyone selected. However, if you compare many of the “first-team” DBs, their numbers literally pale in comparison with what Richardson did this year.
Richardson had 45-tackles playing in the defensive back-four and also had 5-interceptions patrolling the 3rd level for “The Green Wave.” JJ caught 28-passes on offense this year and we don’t think of him as an offensive player. One of the best overall athletes in Kentucky’s 2021-class.
William L. Long, II. He played every meaningful snap on both sides of the football over 14 games at both offensive center and NG. At NG, he got doubled and even triple-teamed all year long. A long time assistant on the Breathitt staff told KPGFootball William Long may be the best NG Breathitt County has ever deployed along its interior defensive front since starting its football program nearly 50-years ago. That is high praise indeed.
In 2019, the first year he has played any substantial snaps on defense (William was a one-way, offensive lineman for Class 4A, Hopkinsville High School over his 25-starts there) William had 52- solos, 38-assists, 90-total tackles, 21-TFLs, 1-QB sack, 3 FFs, and 1 FR.
Offensively, the junior has started 39-consecutive games along an offensive front at either 4A Hopkinsville or 2A Breathitt. Long, an AP Football All-State first-teamer at OL in 2018, has made the protection calls in the passing game and called run-blocking assignments over his 39 consecutive football starts. The kid has never watched a varsity football game from the sideline since entering the 9th-grade.
In 14-games this year, Breathitt ran 308-running plays and gained 3,097-yards rushing with 67 rushing TDs. The offensive “air-force” at Breathitt completed 63 of 108 passing attempts for 1,560 yards passing with 21 aerial TDs versus 4 interceptions. As one of Kentucky’s highest scoring offenses, Breathitt ran 416-plays, gaining 4,657-yards, and averaged 11.19-yards per play over a 14 game season. Breathitt’s 2019 offense scored 88-TDs, or a TD every 4.74 plays.
Finding an instance Long missed the QB’s chest on the pistol-snap is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, literally. Long has won the Kentucky Powerlifting High School Championship as both a freshman (2018) and sophomore (2019). He is expected to win another title this year with the State Championships upcoming this March of 2020. Long may be the finest powerlifter in Kentucky high school history in the 250-pound weight class.
Jaylin “the Boss” Bross. How in he world is this guy not at the very least honorably mentioned? Seriously! Bross, playing for one of Kentucky’s premier programs in its largest classification of football, registered 226-carries, 1,658-yards rushing, 23-rushing TDs, and scored 144-points. He did all of this while playing against defensive personnel akin to small-college level athletes on a weekly basis.
Isaac Dixon. We cover Belfry among the schools we regularly report on through the season. We feel we are in a good position to say the following. Isaac Dixon, Class of 2021, may be the best football player on the entire Belfry roster full of outstanding players. How in the world this guy didn’t merit an honorable mention, much less inclusion on one of the three-strings, is beyond our comprehension.
Dixon, in 2019, had 96-carries, 1,191-yards rushing, in 11 games (missing three with injury). Dixon had 13-rushing TDs, caught 7-passes (out of 25 Belfry receptions all year) for 184-yards, and 3-TD receptions. Dixon scored 110-points.
Most importantly, when the team needed him most; Dixon, in the State Championship game in Lexington, Kentucky, carried the football 15-times for 224-yards with 3 rushing TDs. He led this team to the Class 3A, Kentucky Football Championship, earning the Championship Game’s “MVP” in the doing. This kid could care less whether he is on this or any All-State team. Dixon earned the trophies and recognition he was seeking in winning the championship for Belfry High School. Pretty glaring omission in our opinion.
Preston Spurlock. Leslie County’s two-way star player, has actual statistics way better than his recorded statistics as registered with the KHSAA’s website. The KHSAA statistics are input onto its web page by HCs or ADs from the respective schools. Some coaches and ADs make the accurate and timely reporting of those statistics a priority, while others don’t.
Leslie County is a team which doesn’t enter defensive stats for the whole year, or at least they haven’t the past three years. No sweat, as KPGfootball has watched, either live or on game film (and not highlights for reasons below annotated), Spurlock’s entire 2019 season. We cover more than one district 7 team in the 2A classification in 2019.
We had Spurlock, in 2019, with 125-tackles, 31-TFLs, and 1 interception. His being missed by an All-State team is hardly the fault of that team’s selectors. You would have to have played Leslie, or coached a team playing someone Leslie played, and watched the game film, to know of him. We still feel Spurlock is an All-State-caliber, high-school player. Spurlock doesn’t appear to have film entered on his Hudl page.
In Conclusion…
Like we said, no team is perfect and no team gets them all. There are lots of outstanding players across the commonwealth of Kentucky and many of them are unknown to us and we study this topic right thoroughly.
The above players are players who we believe were either under-valued or missed. There are other teams yet to be released. Many of the above players may well be included on those soon-to-be released teams, or they won’t. Those teams, like the Coaches’ team, will have the same problem with under-valuing some players while omitting others.
The system is not perfect, human beings aren’t perfect, and we tend to vote for those guys we know while discounting the ones we don’t. It certainly stimulates quite a bit of discussion and interest in a sport we all love and enjoy following. In the end, isn’t that the real purpose for all these teams?
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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