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NLI DAY: BOMBERS IN ARMS

NICK SEVERS, OL/DL Macomb High signs with Iowa State

1st Team All State Selection

1st Team All Do or Die Selection

Rationale: Iowa State commit lived up to the advanced billing with an All State Campaign for the Bombers. Fronted for a pair of 1000 yard rushers in Jarrod Rockhold and Eli Cousins and an offense that tallied 2951 total rushing yards on the year. Credit brute force up front. Put on 30 pounds of quality size in the off-season and actually improved his footwork over last season once he got healthy, which is a pretty difficult trick to pull off. Moves High School Defensive Linemen around like a Bulldozer. Played with lots of bounce and enthusiasm. Top notch finisher. Fascinated to see what he looks like after completing his red shirt season in Ames in terms of the amount of added weight the Iowa State folks put on his frame. Extremely athletic prospect for the position who will go down as a Top 10, maybe even Top 5 high school blocker I've seen in my local tenure here. My one regret is that I never really got to see Severs challenged as a Pass Blocker off the edge by an upper echelon Defensive End since Macomb didn't throw much and there weren't many of those type kids on the Bomber Schedule. Certainly has the tools to be a good one at the next level, provided he continues to add mass. Pretty special kid to watch in isolation.

BRETT TAYLOR, LB, Macomb High signs with Western Illinois

1st Team All State Selection

2012 KHQA DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR

2012 KHQA Illinois Defensive MVP

BRETT TAYLOR, LB, Macomb　

Rationale: You would probably have a hard time selling Macomb opponents of this concept....but there was in fact less of Brett Taylor on the field for the Bombers this season. Nearly 30 pounds less, to be exact, thanks to a rigorous off-season conditioning program that helped imbue the standout linebacker with more stamina and more sideline to sideline mobility. Which I think says a lot about Brett Taylor himself. That a kid who might well have been the best linebacker in this half of the state as junior, would work so on his own craft, coming off a ridiculous 170 tackle season...

And yet pay off...it did. Brett Taylor went from superstar to darn neared Super Hero-esque production. To the tune of 40 more total tackles than he had a season ago. That's a mind numbing 210 stops in all or a rate of 19 tackles per game. To put Taylor's senior season into perspective, he had more solo stops (195) than any other area player had total tackles. And along the way he shattered every career and single season mark in school history...not to mention one unfortunate opponents ear drum from the sheer force of one of his hits. By every statistical and observable measure, Brett Taylor was nothing short of an implement of Offensive Destruction...going so as far one play, no immortalized on You Tube, to hurdle and opposing Offensive Line to make a tackle for loss.

And speaking off Offensive Lines, while it bears no real relevance to this award, it does bare mentioning that Taylor proved his worth as a blocker on the other side of the football as a standout as well, fronting for a rushing attack that generated 2951 ground yards and a pair of thousand yard rushers in Jarrod Rockhold and Eli Cousins. Considering his work rate on the other side of the football, you wonder how he found the energy...

In short, Brett Taylor proved himself every bit the All Stater and finished 2012 as the runner-up for overall Player of the Year award. But as pure defensive resumes go, I'd argue no one in Tri State Football, on either side of the river, comes remotely close...

There have been many a February Football Signing Day here in the Tri-States that has flown by with little fanfare...

Today was a welcomed exception to the rule...

Three Division One Scholarship Signings today qualifies as a bumper crop and made our area a virtual hot bed of recruiting interest...

Nowhere more so than Macomb...where Linebacker Brett Taylor, now a Leatherneck, and Lineman Nick Severs, now an Iowa State Cyclone, took different paths to finding college homes...but both end up with impressive ends to their high school legacies.