Film Room: Landon Youngs senior year
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We're taking a look at Landon Young's senior year highlight film and breaking down what we see as far as development, where he's at and what he can do.
As we've mentioned before, highlight reels emphasize the positive and ignore the negative. Fortunately, in the case of Young, we've got the benefit of countless sources on the ground that share information about Kentucky's Rivals100 offensive tackle commit. And in Young's case there's also plenty of information from media week to week.
You can watch Young's senior year highlights thus far at the bottom of this, and we're breaking it down just as we did with Tobias Gilliam's game against Moeller.
Since Young's highlights are shorter, more succinct, and there are more than there were in the previous edition with Gilliam, we won't break down each play. We'll single a few out and identify them by the time at which they occur in the highlights.
It should be noted that most future SEC players present match up problems with their high school opponents, but in Young's case the contrast is stark. That makes evaluation a bit difficult but his strengths still stand out in several areas.
Early Highlights: From 5 seconds through 30
Young comes off the line with quick, powerful steps that help him establish an advantage over his opponents. That he's so much bigger than defensive ends and still able to get off the ball as quickly as he does makes him nearly impossible to deal with and that helps explain why so many opponents resort to chopping him -- or trying to. There's little these players in high school can do beyond that, because not only are Young's arms very long -- he's got very rare strength for a player with that kind of wing span. He's disciplined in his technique particularly on running blocks and he shows tremendous strength extending his arms, locking in on the defender so they can't break engagement, and driving them backwards and out of the play. Although he's a left tackle he's someone that you can run behind all day long.
30 seconds through one minute
While Young might be mild-mannered and easy-going off the field, on the field he's anything but. He plays with great aggression on the line and he's a player that's done a good job of staying focused and keyed in on most every play in spite of his vast superiority against every opponent.
Young has demonstrated that he could be an effective zone blocker because of his athleticism and quickness, but for a player that's long been lean and needing to gain weight he's able to block in the downhill power running game equally well. If fans have assumed that Young's just a long, nimble pass protector because of his lean 6-foot-7 frame, they're in for a surprise. That's not the kind of player he is. At least that's not all he can do.
One minute forward
Young's development in pass protection is noticeable. He's been well coached and clearly has learned from some past mistakes (there haven't been many) at camps. His development as a pass blocker is the main reason for his meteoric rise in the rankings, aside from his body's development and the added exposure.
For a player as tall as he is Young can get a good bend and he's not stiff at all. He does a good job of keeping a wide stance when the defender is trying to come off the edge. He seems to keep his weight distributed equally and this is something he's improved on. Occasionally in the past -- and this was more evident at camps than in his high school games -- there might have been a tendency to lean a bit on one foot more than the other. This was an emphasis for Young and he's clearly cleaning it up -- or at least his highlights show he can do it in a picture-perfect way.
