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Countless times this season the post-game handshake line has turned into Michael Brooks’ own personal receiving line.

Brooks, Collins’ senior linebacker-running back, has taken more pats on the back, and received more kind words, than a groom on his wedding day.

“They just say I’m a talented player and to keep up the hard work,” Brooks said. “They say I’m doing great, and tell me not to let my head wander.”

Nearly every coach (especially his own) has had something good to say about this 6-foot, 215-pound heat-seeking tackle machine who is enjoying a sensational season that continues at 7 EST tonight, when the Titans (11-2) take on Franklin-Simpson (12-1) in the Class 4A state semifinals in Franklin.

“Michael Brooks is the best defensive player I've ever been around,” Collins Coach Jerry Lucas said. “I have coached twenty years and played high school, and college, football. I have seen bigger, I've seen faster, but I'm not sure I've seen a better tackler, and I know I haven't seen one who has a better nose for the football.”

You could brush off those kinds of superlatives as simply coach-speak if they weren’t echoed by so many. Here’s a just a sample of some of the love Brooks has gotten from the coaches who have faced him this season.

“He’s the best linebacker I’ve seen,” North Oldham Coach Billy Martin said.

“Michael was one of the most impressive players that I saw this year,” Eastern Coach Ken Whalen said. “The biggest compliment that I could give him is that he was the only player on our schedule that we actually game-planned for…I recommended him to Coach [Jeff] Brohm at Illinois and voted for him on my all-state ballot.”

“One of the best defensive athletes we faced this year,” Mercer County Coach Paul Rains said. “It doesn’t matter where the ball is at, or going, he will be there quickly and aggressively.”

“He is a very exciting football player to watch,” Moore Coach Ravon Patterson said. “Wherever the ball is you will find him. He plays with a lot of passion, that’s what I like about him.”

“He is extremely athletic, and the one compliment I will give him is that he plays to his speed,” Spencer County Coach Mike Marksbury said. “There are a lot of kids that can run, but when the lights come on and the ball is snapped, you can't get them to play to their speed. Michael plays fast and violently. Those are two traits of a fantastic linebacker.”

Even one coach who hasn’t faced him, yet, is quick to throw praise Brooks’ way.

“Michael Brooks is one of the best football players I have seen this year. He is the complete package,” Franklin-Simpson Coach Tim Schlosser said.

It’s hard to argue, especially with the statistics that Brooks has compiled this season. In 13 games he has 194 tackles (14.9 per game), including 90 solo stops and 27 tackles for loss. Of his 104 assisted tackles Brooks had the first hit 53 times, which means he was the first Titan to the football an astounding 143 out of 194 times. Additionally he had four interceptions, five forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries and four defensive touchdowns.

“Those are incredible numbers,” Lucas said.

And he has made the incredible look possible.

In the first half of the Titans’ first game this season he had two fumble recoveries, one of which he returned for a touchdown, against Meade County.

He had 14 tackles in Collins’ 20-7 victory over 5A Oldham County, then followed that up with a ridiculous 27-tackle performance in the Titans’ loss to 6A Eastern. In the latter game he also had a 65-yard interception return for a touchdown.

“I was very impressed by his level of play,” Whalen said. “He had a tremendous ability to diagnose plays and make tackles. He is fundamentally sound, and I liked how he played off blockers in order to make tackles. I also noticed that he had a tremendous motor. He doesn't take plays off.”

Brooks followed up that enormous game against the Eagles with a 25-tackle, 2-fumble-recovery performance in the Titans’ 21-0 shutout – the first in program history – over Spencer County.

“This was my first year in this district, and he is as good as advertised,” Marksbury said. “He is a player that you have to include in your scouting reports, you have to know where he is. You have to account for him on every play. You watch the films and try and get an edge on him, try and confuse him or give him bad reads but he always sniffs it out.”

Brooks had eight tackles and a tipped pass that led to an interception, although he did even bigger damage on offense, in Collins’ 39-0 victory over cross-town rival Shelby County before he recorded 22 tackles, including 13 solos and seven for loss, in the Titans’ 24-22 triumph over North Oldham.

“Our offense is not easy to stop, by any means, but if he took a couple steps wrong, and he’d still get back into the play, from angles you shouldn’t be able to make against us,” Martin said. “He’d go through blockers, or around blocker, usually a player will do one or the other, but he did both.

“One time he got rolled up on, and I said, ‘There’s no way he’s coming back in,’ but then he comes out on the next kickoff going a hundred miles an hour.…I said, ‘Throw some damn Kryptonite on this kid, he’s Superman.”

For his part, however, Brooks (who loves to say, “I just go out and play”) admits that his super season wouldn’t exist without help.

“Without my teammates I wouldn’t have my a hundred and ninety-something tackles,” he said. “I’m thankful for all of them.”

Often overshadowed by his defensive accomplishments, Brooks’ offensive output has been very good this season, too. He has rushed 83 times for 496 yards (6 yards per carry) and 10 touchdowns.

He rushed for 113 yards and one touchdown in the Titans’ regular-season game against Spencer County, then followed that up the next week with a 136-yard, 3-TD performance against the Rockets. Then there’s his two receiving touchdowns and his one passing TD.

“He's done a great job for us on the offensive side of the ball as well,” Lucas said. “We haven't really featured Michael on offense because of what he has meant to our football team on defense, but if we did, I have no doubt he would have great numbers on offense as well. We still have used him quite a bit on offense and what he does in our ‘heavy’ [short-yardage] package is amazing.

”Everybody we face must first figure out what they are going to do to stop number eleven in our Power I. We give him the football straight up the middle, and he has been almost impossible to stop in that set for us.

“When we put him behind our offensive linemen and roll straight forward, letting Michael make cuts off them, I believe it alters everything the opposition wants to do.”

One thing Brooks wants to do next year is play college football. He has interest from a number of small-college schools, but nothing much yet from Football Bowl Subdivision schools (formerly known as Division I-A).

“I am very surprised that some bigger schools have not offered Michael a scholarship, but he's not focused on that right now,” Lucas said. “That will all work out for him in the end. He knows that he just has to keep playing at a high level, keep working in the classroom and all of that will work out for the best.

“Some have suggested that Michael is not quite big enough and not quite fast enough to play linebacker at the Division I level. All I know is he's the best linebacker I've ever been around and certainly has to be one of the top linebackers in the state of Kentucky.”

Brooks hopes to get an opportunity to prove that next Saturday in the state championship game.

“I think after I show ’em what I can do at state, they should be falling in,” he said.

And maybe then coaches will be lining up all over again for Brooks.

http://www.sentinelnews.com/content/mich...n%E2%80%99

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