He has the chiseled features described, in football circles, as being somewhere between the Titan, Atlas, and the Greek god, Adonis. His tackle statistics are similar to what one might expect from some mythical hero the likes of either Hercules or Beowulf. His name is Austin Gough and his stock is rocketing this camp/combine season.
Why shouldn’t he be gaining notice? After all, he is only the newly minted, single-season, all-time tackle leader for one of the commonwealth’s winningest programs, Owensboro Senior High. Just imagine what he may accomplish in his last two seasons.
We have been high on Gough since he was in middle school. The former Team Kentucky Future Star and Team Kentucky FBU fixture is a 6-1.5, 215-pound, second-level missile. Austin attended the Appalachia Prep Combine and gained for himself a No. 6 overall preseason rating among linebackers in the entire Appalachia region.
The Class of twenty-twenty-oner is consistently timed in the 4.6’s in the 40-yard dash, broad-jumps over 9 feet, has a vertical of 35-inches, short-shuttles in the low 4’s, and runs the L-cone in around six and a half seconds. Gough had 131 tackles, 7 TFL, and 2 sacks as a sophomore after registering 82 tackles his freshman season. Not many sophomore LBs, anywhere in America, can boast of making 213 tackles over their freshman and sophomore varsity seasons.
Gough, after attending the APC, attended by invitation the prospect camps at WKU, Austin Peay, University of Kentucky, and Purdue University. He was identified by all four schools as being among the very top linebackers evaluated on the days in question.
Now for those wondering why he doesn’t have any offers yet, we are wondering the same thing. However, we should point out that LB isn’t one of those positions where players get offered early.
The only present LB in Kentucky, in the Class of 2021, with an offer is Pulaski’s Tristan Cox. While Cox is a fantastic player, we don’t have him as highly ranked at LB as Gough. To further illustrate our point, Tristan has the frame to move out and play DE (6-3, 235 pounds) where a lot of schools are actually recruiting him as opposed to Austin who is a true linebacker and figures to play there in college too.
While Austin may not have an offer yet, we talk to college recruiters virtually every day at KPGFootball and he is very high on the board of the schools where he has been, both in his class and at his position. There is an old saying about there being fire where one sees smoke and it is appropriate here.
It is getting hot on the recruiting trail for Gough and there is smoke smoldering all over the place. That could only mean there is fire burning all over the area among Division I football programs looking for 2021 linebackers to stockpile on its future football rosters. When they get ready to start offering 2021 linebackers, you’ll find out just how hot the fire really has grown for linebacker prospects with Gough’s abilities and skills.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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