There are three phases to the game of football. We say this because one of the three phases generally gets overlooked by the majority of coaching staffs.
Being good in football’s third phase, special teams, is the difference between good football teams and championship football teams. All the great coaches in the game of football, throughout the games history, have known this, believed this, and preached this.
Sawyer Ford is the best player in the ’23 class in Kentucky at either place-kicker or punter. That is a fact. He is a four-star rated punter. He is a four-star rated kicker.
He has camped at Louisville. He has camped at Vanderbilt. Louisville’s fan-site called him a “Power 5-level talent” at both slots. How many football players in Kentucky can claim being considered Power-5 level talents at two different positions.
Ford has the school record at Woodford County for longest punt. It was a 72-yard cannon-shot launched from standing in his own end zone. Do you think Dennis Johnson at Woodford County was stoked about that flip of the field? I guarantee you he was.
Ford hit 83% of his PATs in ’20 over 7-games. He was 10-12 on the year. Ford also had one of the better yards per punt and net yards per punt averages in the 5A classification.
There is one solitary fact which we believe differentiates Sawyer Ford from your “Run of the Mill” specialist. He’s a star athlete.
Sure, he is diminutive in stature at 5-9 and 150-pounds. However, in addition to holding down the punting and placekicking duties for Woodford County, he also competes on the Track team running the 400 and 800-meters.
We don’t have current PRs for him. We can tell you Ford ran 29.23-seconds in the 200-meters and 57.57-seconds in the 400-meters in middle school. He ran a 2:13.73 in the 800-meters at that same juncture.
This kid here is a difference maker on the football field. He changes around football games by owning the third phase for any team lucky enough to deploy him. There is no reason to expect he will do anything less once he reaches college
We agree with the UofL fan site that Ford is a Power-5 potential player. With his grades and scores (3.94 GPA /25 ACT) he is a take all the way up to Ivy/Ivy-Index level of academia.
He is in the cat-bird seat. He just needs to keep working on his craft, getting seen, and wait on the cornucopia of offers soon to be flooding his way.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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