Film Room: Carrington Valentine

Today Kentucky played add on to their 2020 recruiting class by reeling in mid three-star corner Carrington Valentine out of Cincinnati. The impressive looking prospect was a contributor to Moeller High School’s state championship hoops squad this past season in addition to the work he does on the football field.

The six-foot corner had interest from a ton of Big Ten schools, notably Michigan State. Cincinnati, the hometown program, was also heavily in the mix joining Pittsburgh, Boston College, and Louisville in the recruitment. In the end, Valentine chose to play at Kentucky for corners coach Steve Clinkscale who helped out Vince Marrow with this recruitment.

The very fast defensive back becomes the 14th member in the class of 2020 and joins Andru Phillips in becoming the second corner to join the fold. Now it’s time to step into the KSR Film Room to show you what kind of player the Wildcats will be adding to Brad White’s defense in 2020.

Well, this should excite you.

Carrington Valentine quickly diagnosis the play and gets down hill in a hurry. He screams right past the receiver assigned to block him and blows up the quick game the opposing offense was trying to get going. You would like to see Valentine make a more sound tackle by brining his hips and wrapping up, but he does show some physicality. That’s exactly what you want to see from a college corner.

You want ball skills? Carrington Valentine has some ball skills.

The outside corner reads the quarterback’s eyes and makes a break on the football. Not only does he create a pass break-up from behind, he flashes some quality hand-eye coordination to reel in the interception. It’s then off to the races and Carrington Valentine flashes that top notch speed. He has a ton of athleticism.

Despite that major athleticism advantage, quite often Moeller will call for Carrington Valentine to make some plays in zone coverage. For a lot of young corners, this can be a hard concept to grasp but Valentine shows some ability in this regard.

On this play in the red zone, we see Valentine read his keys and stay disciplined with the quarterback breaking out of the pocket. That disciplined combined with a nifty drop due to feeling the receiver sneaking by him allows him the chance to create a huge turnover for his team. The young corner shows a feel for the game and it’s pretty easy to tell he has been well coached in the prep ranks.

Kentucky enters 2019 with some major questions to answer at outside corner and we won’t know a lot of answers until the team takes the field this fall. Carrington Valentine won’t be there to help this season, but it’s clear he has skills that the coaching staff will covet. The high school prospect excels in some of the IQ parts of the game. He reads and reacts very quickly in addition to being able to play fast in both man and zone coverage. Those are some solid skills to possess this early in his development.

The biggest thing Carrington Valentine will be bringing to Lexington is his athleticism. The high school basketball player is a burner with very good top end speed who seems to have the athletic ability to excel at outside corner in the power five ranks. Very solid pickup for the Kentucky staff.

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