Q&A: Learn about Kentucky offensive line commitment Eli Cox
Not long ago Kentucky landed a commitment from West Jessamine (Ky.) offensive lineman Eli Cox.
Cox's announcement broke a drought of more than two years for the Wildcats without an in-state prospect deciding for Kentucky.
Still, not much has been written about the Class of 2019 recruit.
Cats Illustrated caught up with John Cox, the player's father, to get some insight into what kind of player he is, how his game has developed over the years, and how Kentucky recruited him.
Cats Illustrated: So Eli wasn't able to do much at the Rivals 3-Stripe camp he attended recently because he has that broken hand, correct?
John Cox: Right. UK offered earlier than we thought. We thought it was going to be the summer. That scholarship was what he had been waiting for, so getting it has made things a little easier. He really wanted to get to that (Rivals) camp and be able to compete against some of the best in the area, hopefully to get more exposure, but with Kentucky offering earlier than we thought it wasn't as big an ordeal as it would have been.
CI: So the broken hand didn't slow his recruitment or hurt him too much with coaches?
Cox: He told all the coaches that were recruiting him. All of them knew about it as soon as it happened. It wasn't anything he tried to keep secret.
CI: We wanted to get to know what kind of player Eli has been over the years so could you shed some light on his playing history; who he's been, how he's grown, where he's at now?
Cox: He's been playing probably since about the fourth grade. He had a little pee wee football league that started up as basically parks and rec football. He did that for a couple of years and he wasn't some kind of prodigy or anything like that. He wasn't that big, either.
Then in middle school, when sixth grade started, he wanted to play again. He went out and horsed around there. Nobody really gets cut for football there. As long as there are enough uniforms kids can play. He played through middle school. He's always had a good football mind and he's a smart kid who's able to really pick up on things and I think that helped him, being quicker to learn and just his whole attitude of being aggressive. He's never been shy about jumping into a drill. Some guys shy to the back when it's time to volunteer but he's the exact opposite.
In middle school here we have an A and a D team. A is like varsity, D is like JV. In sixth grade he played on the D team but he got some time on the A team, too. Then, in seventh grade, he pretty much moved into a full time player (on the A team). He did really well and got a lot of notice from high school coaches, coming to watch him.
Freshman year, due to some of his skills and ability as well as the numbers (available) he got thrown into being the starting center on varsity. He got to play varsity and JV as a freshman and he did pretty well for his size. Even as a freshman he did really well and he was able to pick up the whole game plan and the blocking scheme and everything else.
He started on the line, varsity, his sophomore year. All four years he has. This year he'll be a four-year starter on the line.
CI: So when would you say he really made a big leap forward in terms of his improvement and development?
Cox: I would say probably his sophomore year, the end of his sophomore into his junior year he really hit a growth spurt. From (freshman to junior) years he went from 5'11 or 6'0 and mid 200's to probably up to 6'3, 6'4 and upper 280's or 290 going into his junior year. Probably the biggest amount of that growth came towards the end of his sophomore year. Going into that summer after his sophomore year is when the big growth spurt came.
It's a smaller town so we don't have the numbers of some of the bigger schools like in Lexington but they've done as well as a team and have won some games. They've done well for their division and he's done well.
CI: What was recruiting like for Eli, especially in reference to Kentucky and how John Schlarman and those guys came after him?
Cox: We didn't really push it as much as far as going to camps or anything like that until this year so we were probably a little late on that. After his sophomore year he went to a camp at UK and we just didn't push it too hard like we should have. We didn't know how it worked from the experience side nor did we have a lot of push from coaching staffs.
I think with Kentucky, the relationship kind of started after his sophomore year. They came out that spring. They watched spring practice and took some film of him and another player and I think that started the relationship. There was some follow up. Then the camp that we went to, he did okay but he didn't have some of the quickness and footwork they were looking for at that level of play.
We thought they were waiting for camps this summer to see how he's improved and if he's gotten a little quicker off the ball. I think there was some hesitation from them just because they hadn't seen some of that at the camp the previous year. They weren't overly impressed with his footwork but they knew he was still young and wanted to see a lot of improvement in that footwork.
There was a lot of talk early in the spring this year. They were going to come out and he went to the spring game at UK. He had some talks with Coach Schlarman and some of the other coaches. And it was like, 'Here's what needs to happen and what you need to do to better your choices,' as far as getting an offer from UK. Improving the footwork and things like that.
So he started doing some training on the side outside of high school training and workouts with guys, just working on footwork and quickness with a plan of hitting a lot of camps this summer. He was going to go to places like UK, Louisville and some of the other schools around here. The hope was that would lead to scholarship offers from some of those schools.
I think UK was able to see improvements from some of that training. He had the hand injury and if it weren't for that I think it would have come down to camps in the summer. With the hand injury, some schools that had already offered said they were OK with it. They were saying nothing changed. Western Michigan, Cincinnati, schools like that. The injury didn't really deter them and that was nice. He was real nervous about that, the potential of losing some offers.
It made us wonder if the UK offer would come at all. Kind of the understanding was, 'You're going to have to earn it at the camps, come show us what you've learned.'
Drake Jackson, who is a current player on UK's roster, he's the kid who trains with him. He started training with Drake and another starting tackle at UK (George Asafo-Adjei) in Nicholasville with Drake's dad and there's a lot of conditioning, skills and some of that even before the hand injury. (UK's coaches) were hearing about some improvements but I think there was probably a lot of help from Drake and Drake's dad, selling Coach Schlarman on it, telling him, 'Let's pick him up.' I think that had a lot of influence on it. I think the individual training outside of normal football with Drake is probably what earned him that scholarship.
CI: Is Eli going to work out at Kentucky at camp next month?
Cox: He still won't be 100-percent cleared and he's not going to risk injury anyways with him being already committed to UK. He's not going to do anything that's going to potentially injure his hand but he'll participate in drills and the conditioning pieces of it.