Now old Coach Lyon realizes he is probably a lot older than most of you so the terminology of “the freshman fifteen” is probably a term with which many of you are unfamiliar. You see, back in the day, “the freshman fifteen” referred to the fifteen or so pounds a kid, away from home for the first extended period of time, would gain in his first year in college.
The weight gain was attributed to unrestrained and unmonitored eating and consumption of beer in vast quantities. We have no idea whether it is still thusly referenced in modern culture; but, if you doubt us about its use in antiquity, ask your parents or grandparents.
There are football teams which will come out the other side of this dead period, put on the pads, and find out which rising freshman, across Kentucky, are going to add to the roster and maybe even start. These are KPGFootball’s 15 additions to our pantheon of high school, varsity, football stars who we believe will be added to the Friday night roster either immediately or sometime this Fall.
We aren’t saying these are, necessarily, the best freshman football players in Kentucky in the Class of 2023. We will determine that when we pick our KPGFootball Freshman All-State Team at the end of the 2019 season. We are saying we believe these fifteen to be the most necessary to the varsity’s success in 2019.
If we have the information of where a kid is attending HS, we will put that. If we don’t know where the kid will attend, we will provide his hometown. These players will not be listed in any particular order, but by position groups. Today, we will finish up with the final 7…
Ladies and Gentlemen, these are KPGFootball’s Freshman Fifteen…
OFFENSIVE LINEMEN…(cont.)…Yesterday we featured Myers, Ladd, Blythe, and Miller and today we finish the big guys with…
Bracken Castle, 6-2, 270 pounds, offensive center, Knox County Central…d
If you are beginning to glean, from the fact three of our five offensive linemen are centers, that the ability to snap a football is the easiest route to early HS playing time, then you are learning something important about HS football. Center is a position not a single person on the team wants to play.
Centers face the best down lineman on the other team all day long. Centers are generally responsible for the other four lineman regarding run and protection calls. Centers have a NG teeing off on them while the center is trying to deliver the ball to a quarterback who may be focused on catching the snap or may be anxious about the blitz that is showing in one or more of the gaps. I
If a center yaks a snap (snaps it way over the QB’s head) it is a game and momentum changer. Either the QB recovers it and it puts the offense in a near impossible down and distance or the defense recovers it or scoops and scores it, which changes the entire complexion of the game.
We have three centers in Kentucky, including Bracken, who have proven reliable snapping the football and have enough physical prowess to not get run through. Because of that, all three figure to play very early.
Bracken Castle made our inaugural middle school All-State Football Team at offensive center. He then immediately was selected to Kentucky’s elite “Team Kentucky, FBU” national championship contending squad, where he also started at offensive center.
He is a “bone fide,” middle school, star football player. Does this mean he will be a star in high school? Well, truthfully, in about 90% of instances…that’s exactly what that means.
Bracken has been working with “Strength & Conditioning” coach Chaz Martin (Knox Central High School) to push himself to first-team, varsity preparedness. So far, and we post these here for linemen similarly interested in getting Friday night run, he’s bench pressing 250 pounds, squatting 425 pounds, and power cleaning 205 pounds.
Bracken has been gifted by The Almighty with an ideal interior OL frame at 6-2 and 270 pounds. Bracken has also been working on his feet, doing extra agilities, and running the rungs of the rope latter after his weight lifting.
We will be the first to tell you Bracken isn’t where he will end up before it is all said and done. However, he already has the strength and power numbers it takes to play varsity football at a school like Knox Central (10-4, in 2018, Class 4A Semi-finalist). We predict Castle will come into Fall with his bench press around 275 pounds and his squat probably around 450 and a power-clean between 225 and 240 pounds.
Should he arrive as described, with the footwork, agility, and frame he already possesses, it will be nearly impossible for him not to make the O-Line’s “first five.”
Peyton Sayers, 6-2, 290 pounds, OG, Pikeville High School…
We realize many of you believed Peyton and his brother Mason were going to play at Hazard, but alas, the facilities and practically guaranteed State Football Championship opportunity awaiting them in Pikeville was too much of a seduction to pass.
KPGFootball interviewed the Team Kentucky FBU Elite Head Coach one day prior to the teams being announced. Now while the rosters had not been announced, it was pretty clear both Peyton and his brother, Mason, were going to be playing at guard for the team and the team was going to definitely run the football.
Peyton Sayers, at 6-0, 290 pounds and already deadlifting over 500 pounds, is a meat moving, road-grating machine who is, pretty much, the stereotype of what a coach would be dreaming of to align at any of the interior offensive line spots.
Peyton is always getting featured jointly with his brother, Mason, which we are sure gets old, but it is hard to separate them. If just one of them were headed to your varsity roster you would be giddy with excitement. Imagine the excitement in Pikeville where they will help anchor the front for the next four years.
Peyton is extraordinary strong for his level of development and wears his 290 pounds very well. What we mean by that, at KPGFootball, is there is nothing soft or sloppy about Peyton Sayers. Sayers is hard, muscled up, and mammoth without looking the least bit like he is fat.
Peyton is a flat-back, short-neck kid with a barrel chest and broad shoulders who gets down hill, drive blocking, with ferocity and effectively. Peyton has made every FBU All-American Team and Top Gun Combine in existence and has played for every Team Kentucky from FBU Elite to Future Stars (though only in 7th grade as he and his brother skipped this year), making him one of the more decorated players to come through the middle school ranks.
Neither of the Sayers brothers is really a freshman. When one of you reading this, assuming you’re a high schooler, lines up across from them in a few months, you will discover this.
Mason Sayers, 6-2, 290 pounds, OG, Pikeville High School…
Obviously the Sayers twins are identical twins, something KPGFootball first learned covering the Future Stars Classic when it was played at Georgetown College over a year ago. As one would easily imagine, the Sayers twins both played for the 7th grade, Kentucky Future Stars’ team.
We remember interviewing Mason Sayers, before the game, and remarking we really couldn’t tell the Sayers twins apart. Mason had a helpful hint. According to Mason Sayers, he’s the good looking one.
As someone who, prior to writing for KPGFootball, was an offensive line coach by trade, KPGFootball would maintain both of these mammoth offensive guards are pretty good looking, at least to us. Everything we said about Payton is true of his brother Mason.
Mason has made every FBU, All-American team and Top Gun Combine presently in existence. Mason has also played for both Team Kentucky FBU Elite and Team Kentucky Future Stars (though, with his brother, he skipped this year’s future stars game).
Mason’s omission from any list of players destined to be day-one starters on a high school roster as a freshman would completely undermine the legitimacy of that list. That is exactly why he is on this list.
Mason is a down hill, road grater with both a flat back and a short neck. He is also barrel chested with broad shoulders and good reach for a 6 footer.
Mason wears his weight very well, playing both ferociously and effectively, especially in the run game and, like his brother, is among the more decorated players to come through Kentucky’s middle school ranks ever. Mason packs a devastating punch and is able to use his extraordinary strength to gain extension and separation from a defensive lineman.
Mason constantly moves defensive linemen somewhere that guy never intended on going. Absolutely no one can seriously question Mason Sayers’ inclusion on any list of players likely or destined to start as a freshman in high school on a varsity team. Both of the Sayers twins start along the interior of the offensive front for ANY HIGH SCHOOL TEAM, AT ANY LEVEL playing high school football in any of Kentucky’s six classifications, period.
DEFENSIVE LINEMEN…
Kaden Briggs, 6-2, 230 pounds, DE, Butler Traditional High School…
Kaden is a guy who may be the very best football player in his class. Briggs plays DE and we have chosen to put him at DE for the purposes of this article. He could have been listed as an OLB and a RB too all of which he played in middle school. Kaden is a Kentucky Future Star who will be attending Butler Traditional next season and says he wants to help lead his team to a State Championship.
Now, not a lot of kids entering high school tell reporters they are going to lead a team anywhere, much less to a championship. However, to be fair, there aren’t a lot of entering high school football players even close to Kaden Briggs, as the pictures of him provided by Bluegrass Sports Nation, certainly denote.
We first wrote about Kaden on June 19, 2018. After identifying him as one to watch in that article, we went on to select him to our middle school all-state football team on October 31st and then defended his selection in an article published November 1st, both in 2018.
He has been a fixture on Teams Kentucky from FBU to Future Stars and was one of the defensive stars for Team Kentucky in its win over Tennessee a year ago, 31-28, in overtime at Georgetown College and starred again this year though Kentucky came up short this time, losing 7-0 to Tennessee.
We came out with a top-20 football players for the Class of 2023 on August 1, 2018 and ranked him the third best player in the entire commonwealth of Kentucky in his graduating class. Like we said today, he may be even better than that.
What a coach is getting in Kaden Briggs, and why he plays for Butler probably from its first Friday night snap, is a freakishly explosive, fast, and powerful DE who already possesses the frame, power, explosion, and speed to be an immediate Friday-night football star. Kaden has registered 40-yard sprint times in the extremely low 5’s, already bench presses 225-pounds, already back-squats four plates (405-pounds).
Kaden uses his hands well to shed defenders and scrapes down the line and makes plays with upper-level ability. He has the speed to both play flat and get to the bubble and slip screens and to run the sweep into the boundary or just close-out and tackle it in the offensive backfield before it can reach the corner.
Kaden is flexible and has really good “bend” enabling him to dip his shoulder underneath a tackle’s hands and get upfield to rush QBs. This puts young QBs in quite a quandary as they find themselves left with the unenviable position of either being flushed from the safety of the pocket or just getting sacked or drilled while attempting to release the ball.
There are damn few things in this business we KNOW. However, if there is only one prospect in this series who will start immediately, we know it will be Kaden Briggs.
Josh Johnson, 6-0, 220 pounds, DE, duPont Manual HS…
If Kaden Briggs isn’t Kentucky’s best DE in the 2023 class, then certainly that has to go to Louisville’s Josh Johnson. We have heard Johnson is slated to attend duPont Manual High School in Louisville. We don’t believe he will spend anytime on either the freshman or JV teams once there, even though they play 6A football.
Johnson, at 6-0 and 220 pounds, would have won the Defensive MVP of the Tennessee-Kentucky Future Stars classic this past summer had it not been for the incredible effort, and on-field production, of Hopkinsville’s Oscar “JT” Adams. He was a candidate again this year but was beaten out by another incredible performance out of defensive back by Jeremiah Monroe. If you have ever heard the lament about someone’s seeming to always finish second, Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, then this is one bridesmaid whose time at the alter is shortly forthcoming.
Josh is a 6-0, 220 pound defensive end with considerable bend, speed, and quickness and Kaden Briggs and he are the best two DEs in the 2023 class, commonwealth-wide, or so we believe.
His candidacy for being included on this list can be summed up from something we saw over a year ago. When playing the Tennessee Future Stars, Tennessee had a superstar QB named Jadyn Davis who was killing KY and whom KY’s defense just couldn’t stop.
Davis tried to come back down the field and take victory from Kentucky, late in the 4th quarter, when this happened…
Tennessee still had Davis and Davis had the type of arm, which he had shown us all day, to cover virtually miles in 36 seconds, if he wished. On the second play of his attempted heroics, Davis was under a heavy rush and running for his life, when he got slammed into the turf, by Westport’s Josh Johnson, at Toyota Stadium and, sadly, suffered a broken wrist. Now the game went into overtime but Tennessee would be without its star QB for the game’s pivotal possession. From, …And a little child shall lead them, June 17, 2018. The net result, Kentucky goes to overtime, Colin Fratus nails a field goal, Kentucky wins.
Josh Johnson has tremendous upside, which is scary because he is damn good right now. Johnson is also a versatile athlete with a versatile skill set.
Josh competed on his middle school’s Track & Field team, in addition to football, and ran both the 100 and 200 meter sprints, threw the javelin, threw the shot put, and threw the discus. Josh is one of the best athletes, his age, in Kentucky and he will start early in his Freshman season on Friday night for the Crimsons.
RUNNING-BACK…
Deangelo Patterson, 5-9, 160 pounds, RB, Warren Central High School…
This is one of the hardest positions, along with QB, for any freshman to start at any time over the course of his freshman season. In many years, we could see there be no players from either position make an article like this. If Warren Central wasn’t riding a 35-straight-game losing streak who knows whether it would be looking at a freshman carrying the mail in 2019.
Let us caution you about a few things. First of all, there is a new cowboy in Bowling Green, riding the dragons, and we believe Warren Central has the chance to be very good next season so the 35-game thing can get tossed right out the window. Secondly, Deangelo Patterson won the offensive MVP of Team Kentucky-8th Future Stars at the Kentucky-Tennessee Future Stars classic and he has already thrived running the football against a defensive front seven better than what he will see this coming season save the games scheduled against BGHS and South Warren. To be fair, his offensive line was pretty good too.
A Team Kentucky 8th grade team member, or rising 9th grader, is an incoming kid who will challenge for an immediate starting spot on his varsity team and will be on the opening, Friday night depth chart. Team Kentucky players are the best of the best, nothing ordinary about them. Team Kentucky Offensive MVPs generally are 9th grade starters on varsity and not freshman teams.
Ask Lexington Christian Academy (Class 2A). LCA is a team in a rebuilding year (it figured going into 2018) which had to rely on 9 freshmen starters in the Fall of 2018. How’d they do? Well, LCA went 9-4 and finished the year on the opponent’s one yard line just shy of winning the Regional Championship Game and advancing to the semi-finals.
No team in the area is set to more richly benefit from an influx of Team Kentucky players than the new-look Warren Central Dragons. Warren Central had three players who suited up for Team Kentucky, all three of whom probably should have made this list.
Patterson was the premier RB in the rising 9th grade anywhere in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Patterson is a 5-9, 160-pound running back who has excellent vision and change of direction speed. His quick-twitch reflexes and ability to gain maximum speed in a matter of a few steps makes him a very difficult player for any defender to tackle.
Patterson has been described to us, and at the Future Stars Classic we saw first-hand, Patterson was like a ghost. What we mean is right there; then in a flash, he’s gone.
Patterson ran his 40-yard dash at the combine in the 4.8 range and this was a kid who hadn’t done a single weighted squat. Patterson, also a first rate basketball player, has the vertical explosion to indicate his break away speed won’t be any problem, even next year playing against varsity, Class 4A defenses.
KPGFootball is certain Warren Central is excited about the other two Kentucky Future Stars plus the RB its getting. One might even say it has considerably brightened an ever-improving outlook for the Dragon program.
Running backs like Patterson will certainly put a little fire in the belly of any lineup or roster. When Warren Central takes the field against Owensboro Apollo to begin the 2019 season, we believe Deangelo will be aligned to either the right or left of the starting QB.
QUARTER-BACK…
Max Gibbs, 5-10, 150 pounds, QB, Fulton County HS…
If you think starting in HS, as a freshman, is a tall order for a running-back, imagine trying to do it as a QB. Now Coach James Bridges appears to be loaded with talent at Class 1A Fulton County. While we believe the Pilots to be the class of the Class on the western end of Kentucky, we also still believe Max Gibbs will end up the starting QB, if not game one, then sometime during the 2019 season.
Fulton County has a superstar running back returning in Caleb Kimble for his senior year. Fulton County also has one of the rising, Class of 2021, stars returning in 6-3, 200 pound WR/DE/TE, Broc Bridges. Fulton County also has a stud running-back entering the 9th grade this Fall, in Class of 2023, Jashon Jones, who might have made this list but for Kimble.
All of the above aside, nothing serves as a tonic for a high school football coach any more potent than being gifted a star QB to serve as the future straw which will stir the offense’s drink. That’s exactly what Coach Bridges has coming up from the “Jr. Pilot” program in arriving freshman, Max Gibbs (2023).
Now, not many people know what we are about to relate, but, after all, we are the quintessential source for middle-school football information. The Fulton County Middle School Jr. Pilots only lost one game in 2018 while winning its other 6. They were T-O-U-G-H, tough. At the fore, forming the core of that ball-club, was its 5-10, 150 pound, dual-threat QB, Max Gibbs.
Gibbs, highlights linked here, has a rocket for a right-arm and the poise, athleticism, speed, and quickness to get outside the pocket and break-down a defense with his feet. Gibbs is the kind of QB-prospect who would have likely been Team Kentucky’s starter in the Future Stars game had he only auditioned for the role.
Max Gibbs, equally a star on the baseball diamond, was invited to participate in one of the most prestigious QB-challenge events in the country. We hear he performed very well there and turned quite a few heads.
Max Gibbs is firmly on the KPGFootball watch-list going forward for the freshman All-State team. You don’t make our freshman or sophomore all-state teams for superior JV or freshman team play. If we have you on our freshman all-state team watch-list, we expect you will play varsity football.
Now Gibbs lives in one of Kentucky’s least populated and remotest areas and for Kentucky, that is really saying quite a bit. However, as you can tell, living in one of the more remote areas of the Commonwealth hasn’t kept the word from getting out on this young hot-shot. We predict a lot more people are going to learn of this guy before the 2020 season arrives.
There you go fans, there are the next seven of our Freshman Fifteen and the final part of this two-part series. We are sure we missed some and we are equally sure many of you will inform us of our every regrettable omission. Regardless, these fifteen players, we predict, will all be varsity lettermen at 2019 season’s conclusion, barring injury.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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