There are two things a high school team has got to do to play football at a championship level in Kentucky. These two things never change. No team incapable of doing one or the other will ever win it all. Those two things are 1. run the football, and 2. play defense.
If you have to throw the football to get out of the shadow of your own goal line, or on late down, short distances, you will never win a high school football championship in the commonwealth of Kentucky. Period.
If you can’t stop teams in late down, short yardage distances from converting first-downs, running right down your throat; you will never win a high school football championship in the commonwealth of Kentucky. Period.
These two things are as certain as the sun’s coming up tomorrow. How certain is that? Well, to quote little orphan Annie, “You can bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun.”
So what exactly is “championship level defensive play?” In this article we will take a brief look at the 6 newly crowned Kentucky Football champions and particularly the amount of points surrendered this year in the amount of games played by each. You will find all 6 of these teams will have one rather apparent similarity, particularly on defense.
In the 1A classification, we just crowned Pikeville High School the champion. Pikeville had one of the more balanced offensive attacks in Kentucky and were largely known for having two of the best receivers in Kentucky with one of the Class of 2022’s top-rated QBs. How were they on defense? Well, Pikeville’s defense surrendered only 154-points in 15 games. Rounding either up or down to the second decimal place, Pikeville allowed its 14 opponents to score a puny 11-points per ball game.
I am going to tell you something you will find curious. According to our study, Somerset, the 2A classification’s football king, is the most porous defense among the 6 champions. That statistic is deceptive as they played LCA twice and Breathitt County, 2A’s top offense, in the semi-finals. Still, Somerset had 251-points scored on them this year in 15 games, going 14-1. That is 16.73-points per contest.
Belfry, who had the hardest path to the championship, playing the very top ranked teams in the 3A classification in route to the trophy, was good on defense. Belfry surrendered 198 points in 14 games for 14.14-points per ball game. This number is somewhat inflated as Belfry played 4A’s State Champion in the regular season and surrendered 53-points to the Eagles’ ground based attack.
Johnson Central won the trophy in Class 4A. Talk about your model of a team able to run the football and play defense. Johnson Central, who gained over 4,500-yards rushing this season, surrendered 155-points in 15-games. That comes out to 10.33-points per game.
Covington Catholic , pictured to the left of this paragraph, won the Class 5A, Kentucky football championship. They were considered Kentucky’s very best team by many pundits this year, notwithstanding Louisville Male’s being ranked as high as 11th in the USA Today‘s, Super National HS 25. Catholic’s defense, in 2019, was just ridiculous. Basically, once they scored a TD and converted the PAT, you were beaten. Catholic allowed 92-points to be scored on them all year long in its 15 games. That is 6.13 per contest. That is just filthy. If you play defense at that level you are winning it all. Period. Write that down!
Louisville Trinity was almost as good on defense as Covington Catholic, but not quite. The team which plays a national schedule routinely considered the toughest played by any Kentucky high school football team, allowed its 15 opponents to sore 138-points for the season. The is a scoring average of 9.20 points per. Now, that’s how one wins a Class 6A Kentucky Football Championship trophy.
We look at these figures at the end of every season and store them in our great reservoir of information you know as the KPG database. This isn’t the first year we have made note of this as we have been talking about “championship level defense” since coming online. Here’s the point…if your team is out there surrendering 20-25 points a night, you will never win a Kentucky Championship in high school football. Never! It is that simple.
Teams who have November/December success in Kentucky lean on the defense to get stops. They don’t run out on the field expecting their offense to win the championship for them. Maybe you don’t think your offense is performing very well and perhaps it isn’t. If you aren’t getting out of the first two weekends in Kentucky High School football, KPG would suggest to you the answer is on the defensive side of the ball.
Reporting for KPGFootball, this is HB Lyon reminding all our subscribers that WE’RE JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
Leave a Reply