UTTLEY’S Top Prospects: The heart and soul of any great defense are its linebackers, these are no exception!

This group of linebackers may not be as deep as last year’s or as big, but they just may be more athletic. Linebacker is probably one of the more difficult positions to play on defense as you are a two-way player who’s responsible for stopping the run, but are also an integral part of all defense coverages.

This is easily my favorite article of the year, only because I played linebacker in university and I truly enjoy watching young linebackers on film. I will examine how well they get off blocks, how well they can scrape, what are their instincts like, do they understand how to drop into coverage and be effective versus the passing game, and how effective they are at blitzing and pass rushing.

The following are in no particular order and they include outside and inside linebackers, one or two thumpers, as well as one or two edge rushers (classic tweeners who look like linebackers, but primary task involves setting the edge and rushing the passer).

*note – we will be featuring Quebec high school seniors in the upcoming CFC100 top prospect list, so you can expect to see more of these athletes on future lists.

Jesse Luketa – 6’3/220 – (Mercyhurst Prep [PA], ON) – Luketa is an elite level athlete who can play in the box, out of the box, and is actually athletic enough to play defensive back if you wanted him to. He was all over the field in his junior film. He’s simply a man playing with boys in his high school career. Jesse does everything extremely well, whether it’s scraping sideline to sideline, or dropping into coverage, playing man-to-man, or blitzing. The only thing that you don’t get to see on film is how well he gets off blocks and that’s only because he is so much more athletic then the other players on the field that he’s usually beating the person assigned to block him with speed or quickness. It’s hard to gage how he will respond when he comes up against elite level blockers, which he no doubt will when he arrives at Penn State next season. Luketa has had over 34+ NCAA offers, mostly from power conferences. Hopefully, Luketa plays in a system where he’s covered up and is allowed to run all over the field and make a ton of plays.

 

 

 

 

Advocating for football prospects one story at a time.

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