The late college football sportscaster Keith Jackson called them the “Big Uglies.”
Highlands football coach Bob Sphire calls his flock of Bluebird offensive linemen “beautiful.”
Whatever monikers you choose, nothing happens without the players you don’t notice until something goes wrong.
“(Linemen) might not run as far as the receivers do, but they are engaging in hand-to-hand combat every play,” first-year Bishop Brossart coach Adam Kozerski said.
Kozerski certainly appreciates linemen, and not just because he’s the son of Cincinnati Bengals and former Holy Cross head coach Bruce Kozerski. He said skill sets – footwork, hand placement and others – have been refined as teams have transitioned from run-dominated offenses of the 1970s to today’s run-pass option spread schemes; he said you don’t have to be the biggest kid on the field to block the biggest defender.
“It’s not really been a tremendous evolution, just more fine-tuning than anything,” Kozerski said. “Good linemen have good strength (and) good fundamentals.”
Impeding the path
Kozerski said former Bengals offensive line coach Jim McNally believed he couldn’t be an effective coach unless he knew at least five different ways to block a certain play and was able to teach professional players from different backgrounds.
“That’s really the same idea in high school,” Kozerski said. “Especially, as an educator, I see that these kids learn in so many different ways. We need to describe these concepts a multitude of different ways.
“ … The more that you can do to impede your opponent’s path, get in his way, make it hard for him to find the ball or get to the ball, all the little details really come together to form the technique that you have to have to be effective.”
Lloyd Memorial coach Kyle Niederman said a lineman has to practice hard and be able to do two things well.
“We like to be able to block down and then ideally be able to get upfield and block linebackers,” Niederman said. “We don’t really prefer the real big, big style; we like to have guys that can move a little bit.”
‘Not donkeys’
Size matters to Sphire. When he came to Fort Thomas four years ago, he noticed only one lineman weighed over 250 pounds.
“And now, our 255-pound center’s a runt on the offensive line,” Sphire said. “What I like is, we’re big and physical, and they’re not donkeys – they can move.”
Sphire believes proper post-workout nutrition is on the checklist with film study and weightlifting. Highlands’ partnership with Mimi’s Macros, a Newport business, provides meals players can eat after the 6:30 a.m. workouts and film study in the afternoons.
“They’re high-protein, high-carb, quality fat, fresh fruit involved with it,’ Sphire said.
Sphire cringes when people ask him about “strength and conditioning” programs. He said folks confuse Highlands’ emphasis on football-specific exercises with training for a marathon.
“We want explosive athletes that can have bursts of speed and can change direction, which is really key,” Sphire said. “We want to enhance their vertical jump, which is a great measurement in terms of how explosive they are. We do our NFL-style combine testing every June.”
Highlands junior Max Merz, Lloyd senior KyRon Carter and Conner senior Dylan Stewart are among Northern Kentucky’s finest o-linemen. Merz has committed to play at Louisville.
“He kind of fits that mold of a guy that came into our program as a freshman and has worked and developed,” Sphire said. “He’s a 310-pound, 6-foot-4 lineman.”
Niederman said Carter excels at “going sideways” – in the Juggernauts’ defense.
Conner Coach David Trosper said what you notice about the 6-5, 290-pound Stewart’s is the work ethic and “bend-ability,” a skill set college coaches look for.
“He’s so flexible, it’s not even funny,” Trosper said. “ … He can sit on the floor and put his head on the ground and spread his legs out when he stretches.”
Kozerski said linemen and quarterbacks might be the smartest on the field.
“I think that the quarterbacks and the offensive linemen, they’re the PhD students,” Kozerski said. “They have to know things at a significantly higher level because they both have a tremendous amount more involvement on every given play.”
