He’s a very hardworking kid. He’s going to be a really good player at BYU, if not this year, the next. If he’s not a three-year starter, it will shock the hell out of me basically. – Former BYU linebacker Jordan Pendleton
The fertile football fields of August are ripe territory for the hype machine.
We’ve collected such news from practices at camps across the state. The media has peeked at Utah’s talented jitterbug freshman slot receiver Britain Covey and gushed.
Today, we’ll examine BYU’s freshman outside linebacker Scott Huntsman.
Gotta love these August nuggets of summer football lore.
Huntsman is a 6-foot-4, 225-pound basketball player turned tight end/linebacker. Coaches at Texas 6A Coppell High School turned him into a sack machine, playing him as a four technique lineman in a 3-4 defense. Huntsman's been clocked at 4.51 seconds for 40 yards and when he arrived in August, BYU coaches made him an outside linebacker. He quickly worked his way to second string on a team with a million linebackers.
Why? Huntsman makes plays.
“He’s just an animal,” said BYU safety Grant Jones. “He’s the hardest worker that I’ve ever seen, especially as a freshman.”
Last week, BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall compared Huntsman to one of the most physically talented, but often injured, linebackers BYU has had in decades, Jordan Pendleton. Huntsman chases down running backs and receivers. He caught Taysom Hill from behind and knocked the ball from his hands in one of the first practices, drawing ire from offensive players and some coaches.
What does it mean to be compared to Pendleton? “It means he’s a stud,” laughed Pendleton. “It means he’s a physical specimen.”
In college, Pendleton was 6-3, 240 pounds. He ran a 4.49 in the 40, his maximum bench press was 430, he lifted 225 pounds 33 times and his vertical leap was 37.5 inches. He was best known for his crushing hit on Utah QB Jordan Wynn in 2012.
Huntsman, meanwhile, has posted a shuttle run of 4.12 seconds and has a vertical jump of 36.5 inches.
At Coppell High, BYU recruited and offered scholarships to Huntsman’s teammates Charles West and Brandon Rice. Due to a lack of scholarships available for linebackers, BYU invited Huntsman, an honorable mention 6A all-stater, to come as a preferred walk-on and spurn offers from Texas A&M, Purdue, Houston, Air Force, New Mexico and Louisiana-Monroe.
He obliged.
He and his father Kirk have spent hundreds of hours over the years living out the BYU dream by reenacting BYU highlights such as the 2006 John Beck to Jonny Harline touchdown pass to beat Utah. His dad was always some famous BYU quarterback and Scott would be the receiver (Harline, Austin Collie or Dennis Pitta).
At Coppell, Huntsman was the second-fastest on the team behind West. At a University of Arkansas Elite summer camp after his junior year, he was the fastest linebacker/tight end in Fayetteville.
“What he does is make plays,” said his position coach at Coppell High, Braxton Sherrill, son of former Texas A&M coach Jackie Sherrill. “You break down game film and you start seeing what he does and when you add it up, he just fills up the stat sheet.
“We needed him to play as a defensive lineman but his natural position is outside linebacker. He has incredible lateral speed. He can engage at the line, get off a block, turn, and in two strides he gets to his 4.5 speed.”
Sherrill, whose father coached with BYU receivers coach Guy Holliday at Mississippi State, said when Holliday went hard after West and Rice, he kept telling Holliday, “You gotta look at Huntsman, you have to take him.”
Said Sherrill, “BYU is lucky they did, and that he has deep Mormon roots and his family (are) loyal Cougar (fans) and to have him walk on. He could have easily been on scholarship elsewhere.”
University of Houston head coach Tom Herman, former Ohio State offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer, told Huntsman his staff had film on the top 50 high school tight ends in the country and in his option, Huntsman graded out No. 1. “He said he already placed four kids with similar skills and body types in the NFL and he thought he could do the same with him,” said Kirk Huntsman.
Since January, Huntsman hired two separate professional trainers to prepare him for this month, Bernard Daniel in Denton, Texas and Pendleton in Utah.
“Man, you’ve got a great character guy with raw athletic ability for his size,” said Daniel, who trained Huntsman for six and a half months. “I think he could be a huge contributor at BYU early. He ran a 4.6 with me twice and that was official. That is very impressive for a guy his size.”
Daniel’s other clients include Texas freshman offensive lineman Connor Williams and Stanford defensive end Solomon Thomas. “I think he (Huntsman) could come in and be a starter by the end of the season or by next year. He should be playing outside linebacker in college. I think his athleticism ties in perfectly with the position he’s in now. He’s a stand up outside linebacker, not a defensive end.”
Huntsman came to Provo from Texas the first of July — a month early — to train with Pendleton, who is a professional trainer hired by Kirk Huntsman.
“I basically spent every day with Scott," said Pendelton. "We were with each other twice a day. We would lift in the morning and in the afternoon I taught him the intricacies of playing the outside linebacker position at the Division I level.
“The first thing I thought when I met him is this dude is a freak. He’s big, he's strong and athletic and fast. I told him it didn’t matter how athletic and fast you are, you are not going to play if you don’t know the defense.”
Pendleton related to Huntsman because of his own career. Talented and skilled as a freshman, Pendleton struggled to display his abilities because he didn’t know what he was doing. He had to redshirt his first year. If he’d known more, he could have made use of his gifts because he had more natural talent than others playing in BYU’s secondary, specifically at safety.
So, Pendleton tried to save Huntsman a lot of frustration by giving him a running start mentally at understanding BYU’s defense. “The goal was when he got to BYU he would be able to display his athletic abilities and make plays, go out and run around and show what he could do, unlike me at that age when I was confused and afraid to make a mistake.”
Within days of BYU fall camp, Huntsman began making his move. Quickly, he made the second-string, drawing praise from Mendenhall and his position coach Kelly Poppinga after the first week.
Explained Jones, “He comes in and tries super hard, which is really good. He still has a lot to learn as far as his assignments go. But if you need a workhorse, then he’s the guy.”
“He’s a very hardworking kid,” said Pendleton. “He’s going to be a really good player at BYU, if not this year, the next. If he’s not a three-year starter, it will shock the hell out of me basically. He’s hard, he’s tough, he loves to hit, he’s physical and loves football and wants to play.”
And so there it is, a dose of August hype.
Take it for what it’s worth.
But the kid has witnesses lining up.
Dick Harmon, Deseret News sports columnist, can be found on Twitter as Harmonwrites and can be contacted at dharmon@desnews.com.