By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Kentucky high school football teams can begin practicing in full gear today and Ryle junior linebacker Jacob Savage is anxious to participate in contract drills for the first time in nine months.
“There’s no other physical contact sport like football,” he said. “It’s definitely exciting and I’m definitely looking forward to it.”
Savage led the Raiders in total tackles the last two seasons with 93 as a freshman and 163 as a sophomore. After attending a series of college camps this summer, he has received scholarship offers from five NCAA Division I teams.
But the hard-hitting linebacker isn’t the only reason Ryle coach Mike Engler has high expectations for the 2024 season. The Raiders have varsity veterans returning in nine positions on defense and eight on offense who want to improve on last year’s 8-5 campaign that ended in the third round of the Class 6A playoffs.
“It’s always nice to have experience,” Engler said, “When you start practice rather than going back and teaching from the very beginning these guys have all been through it. It just makes things so much easier and you move ahead at a faster rate.”
Other defensive players who started in five for more games for Ryle last season are Beau Faul and Dillon Smith up front, Kai Workman and LJ Warner at linebacker and Dylan Lee, Drake Meadows, Gavin Lyons and Nathan Verax in the secondary.
Smith, a 6-foot-4, 250-pound two-year starter at defensive end, has already made a commitment with Louisville. Faul is a versatile player who made the transition from linebacker to defensive tackle last season.
“This year, he’s going to kind of be a hybrid,” Engler said of Faul. “He’s going to play some D-line, he’s going to play some defensive end, he’s going to play some linebacker. He’s going do it all.”
None of the Raiders’ returning defensive players came close to matching Savage’s 163 tackles in 13 games as an inside linebacker last year. In the final statistics, his 12.3 tackles per game average ranked first among Class 6A players and 13th in the state overall.
The 6-foot-2, 220-pound junior, who has a 4.0 grade-point average, said mental preparation is a big part of his success on the football field.
“Every game is different and being able to game plan, watching film and finding tendencies and what not, has definitely helped me put myself in better position to make the most amount of tackles as I can,” he said.
Savage has received scholarship offers from Louisville, Indiana, Eastern Kentucky, Miami of Ohio and Ohio University. He worked on improving his speed and agility early in the off-season and picked up five offers while attending summer camps.
The work he did to impress college recruiters should also make him a better defensive player for the Raiders, who allowed 28 points per game last season with mostly underclassmen in the lineup. In all five of their losses, each opponent scored 34 points or more.
“We run a 4-2-5 (formation), so the linebacker position is very important to our defense,” Savage said. “It gives us a lot of responsibility and also a lot of freedom so we can go around and make plays. It definitely suits us well.”
Savage is also one of his team’s returning starters on offense. As a running back, he had 380 yards rushing, 232 yards receiving and scored seven touchdowns last season.
The list of returning offensive starters also includes four linemen — center Kyle Beatty, guards Jack Gatlin and Eli Reynolds and tackle Eli Caldwell — along with Landon Lorms and Lee at wide receiver and Lyons at running back.
Lorms set a Northern Kentucky record with 91 pass receptions last season, but three-year starting quarterback Logan Verax graduated last spring. He’s being replaced by his younger brother, Nathan, who completed 12 of 25 passes for 158 yards in a back-up role.
“Lack of experience at quarterback could be a weakness early in the season,” said coach Engler. “However, Nathan Verax should and will become one of the top quarterbacks in Northern Kentucky and the state.”
Savage agrees with the coach’s assessment. He said the junior quarterback’s running ability is “really going to shock lot of teams or catch them off-guard.”
The Raiders have three weeks to get ready for their season opening game against Covington Catholic, the Class 4A state runner-up last season. Ryle also has Class 3A state champion Christian Academy Louisville and Class 5A state runner-up Cooper on its early season schedule.
“You want to play some tough early teams not only to get you ready, but to see where you are,” Engler said. “You know, teams that are really good and coached really well are going to show you what your weaknesses are. You can learn so much more from those teams than you can going out and beating a team by a running clock.”
RYLE RAIDERS
2023 SEASON: 8-5 record, lost in third round of Class 6A playoffs.
STARTERS RETURNING: 8 offense, 9 defense.
DISTRICT: Class 6A, District 6 with Campbell County, Great Crossing, Simon Kenton.
HEAD COACH: Mike Engler (71-48 in 10 seasons at Ryle).
2024 SCHEDULE
Aug. 23 – COVINGTON CATHOLIC, 7 p.m.
Aug. 30 – at Conner, 7 p.m.
Sept. 6 – at Cooper, 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 13 – HIGHLANDS, 7 p.m.
Sept. 20 – at Christian Academy Louisville, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 4 – at Louisville St. Xavier, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 11 – CAMPBELL COUNTY, 7 p.m.
Oct. 18 – GREAT CROSSING, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 25 – at Simon Kenton, 7 p.m.
Nov. 1 – DIXIE HEIGHTS, 7 p.m.