Mike Hull had 19 tackles this past weekend.
If you aren’t particularly familiar with football, that’s a lot of tackles for one person in a game. He has 83 total tackles, good enough for sixth in the nation.
But yet, after a half season of top notch performances Hull still finds himself out of the picture for the likes of the Butkus Award, giving to the nation’s top linebacker each year. Even as Hull racks up more tackles than a few of the recently announced semi finalists. In some cases they have even played more games than Hull and still rank behind him in sacks, tackles for a loss and solo tackles.
“Mike Hull is as good as I’ve ever been around,” James Franklin said on Tuesday. “With coaches, fans, NFL scouts with selection committees for awards and things like that, we all get way too caught up in the eyeball test. With the guy that walks through the door, he’s 6‑3, 250 pounds, just looks what you imagine in your mind and don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Mike is little, he’s 6‑foot, 235 pounds but how productive he is. I meet with the freshmen typically once a week, and they’re probably sick of hearing me talk about Mike Hull because it’s not just his physical traits, it’s everything.”
“I don’t know if I could find something that I would say in terms of his preparation and his demeanor that I would want more from. How he is in meetings, how he is out at practice, you know, his focus, his attention to detail, his work ethic, how coachable he is. From day one he’s embraced everything we’ve asked him to do as a team, as a leader, in the defensive scheme, in the defensive techniques, which isn’t always easy to do as a senior. I mean, he’s a model.”
But even Franklin and his staff had to learn what Hull was made of when they came to Penn State. The roster was a list of unknowns, something that Hull changed fairly quickly into the Franklin era.
“I remember during the spring I saw the whole offense, all their faces drop,” Franklin said. “We faked an inside zone and handed a reverse and he was there to make the tackle on the inside zone, and it looked like it was going to be a big play on a reverse, and next thing you know, the same guy that stopped the inside zone was making the tackle on the sideline on the reverse and this was Mike Hull and at that moment all the coaches knew we had a special guy.”
The good news for fans hoping to see Hull’s outstanding efforts recognized by the rest of the nation, a day after being left off the list of semifinalists for the Butkus Award, Hull was added to the watch list for the Bednarik Award – which is presented to the best defensive player in the country.
Best defender but not the best linebacker? Go figure.
But in the end Hull would trade it all in for a win this weekend. And that kind of mentality might be why he’s so good.
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