Uncovered Gems: KLAA East Defense #2

Diving deeper into the KLAA! I love writing this style of article because it gives me an opportunity to highlight players not yet in the Prep Redzone rankings system. So, let's take a look at five more defensive prospects who could earn college offers as soon as this spring!    Active, active, active hands. Shaun has a good number of highlights against great competition. So, so many of these highlights are earned from, like I said, super active hands.   At 0:34, Shaun fires off the ball, quickly bounces off the block, keeps swinging those hands, and eventually earns a tackle for no gain. At 0:09, another quick, active hands play.   Good size, good hands, good getoff. It's a little hard to get a super well-rounded eval because of the playback speed, but I can still tell he's a high-effort player who knows what he's doing out there. May be a GLIAC prospect this Spring.      Belleville just keeps churning out great defensive backs. His first highlight showcases a very good PBU in deep zone coverage, followed by an extremely explosive blitz and QB sack. The rest of his tape shows off consistently great athletic ability, especially on the explosiveness front. Khalil does a great job of changing direction and exploding in any direction, though he could improve his all-around footwork. Improve the footwork and show a little more run-stopping highlights, and Khalil has the potential to be a D2 or D1 prospect.      Ali has some solid tape and has an opportunity to get recruited this offseason! As an off-ball Mike Linebacker, Ali has a handful of great inside run stops, plus a few well-timed blitzes. 1:19 shows a good ability to read the play, move laterally, and then hit a hole- completely wrecking the zone run. Really, the entire tape shows good run stops against inside zone—also, consistently good pursuit angles.   I do have a few questions about Ali's game that could end up determining college upside. First, how athletic is he? On tape, he looks around average, and there aren't many sideline-to-sideline highlights. Second, how is his pass coverage? During college camps, he'll need to prove competency playing man coverage.      I've watched several Fordson defensive linemen over the past week and a half, both on tape and in person. One thing I've learned about Fordson D-Linemen is they all have great, active hands. At 2:04, Hadi has a quick first step, swipes the opposing lineman's hands away, then earns the stop. At 1:25, Hadi pulls the tackle away from him then gets in on the gang tackle.   All in all, I see several promising aspects of Hadi's tape. He gets off the ball quickly and has good enough hands to shed the blocks of less-physical offensive linemen. I see Hadi's momentum slowing down when trying to shed blocks, so he needs to work on using his hands while still moving forward.      Chris has quite a few good highlights! His tape begins with a good backside run stop, followed by a quick QB hit. Throughout the tape, Chris has quite a few plays where he avoids a block, earns a clean lane, then converts a tackle. That said, Chris does a good job of completely avoiding blocks when doable. Though there aren't many instances of Chris being engaged in a block then shedding that block. All in all, Chris looks like a high-effort player with above-average size and speed. His size is probably a tad too short for D2 offers, but if he proves he can rush the QB at camps, Chris could be a D3 prospect.

Diving deeper into the KLAA! I love writing this style of article because it gives me an opportunity to highlight players not yet in the Prep Redzone rankings system. So, let's take a look at five more defensive prospects who could earn college offers as soon as this spring!