Ducks nab commitment from Kingston Lopa, and you're thinking about this all wrong

Back in the Stone Age of Oregon Football, Defensive Coordinator Emeritus Nick Aliotti used to love to recruit guys who could run and hit, particularly from his old stomping grounds in Northern California.

One of his favorite strategies on the recruiting trail was to look at a player and see what he could become. My father-in-law Stew Thomson was an old track coach. He'd see a kid coming out of English class and say, "You look like a quarter-miler."

Great coaches think like that. They don't see limitations, they see potential. And Aliotti was a coach for a program on the rise with recruiting limitations. He had to find two, three and 4-star kids who had something, teach them how to be resilient and make big plays. Those "bend but don't break" defenses used to drive Duck fans crazy, but they won a lot of games. It's a long list: John Boyett, Keith Lewis, T.J. Ward, Jairus Byrd, Walter Thurmond, Cliff Harris, Dion Jordan, Kenny Rowe, Troy Dye, Kiko Alonso, Tyson Coleman, Walter Thurmond, Erick Dargan, Avery Patterson, Ifo, Terrance Mitchell, Derrick Malone, Eddie Pleasant, Spencer Paysinger, Marvin Johnson, Talmadge Jackson, J.D. Nelson, Patrick Chung, Brent Haberly, Anthony Trucks, Blair Phillips, Wesly Mallard, Rashad Bauman, Steve Smith, Kevin Mitchell, Chad Cota, Alex Molden, Kenny Wheaton, Jeremy Asher, Rich Ruhl--dozens more. They were all ballers who played with tremendous heart.

In the current generation the assignment is a little different. As of this morning Oregon has a top seven recruiting class. Dan Lanning, Tosh Lupoi and Demetrice Martin are trying to build an SEC defense, one that doesn't merely bend and not break, but create overwhelming havoc and stifle opponents altogether.

That takes guys who can run and hit, play violently, with exceptional ball skills, pursuit and instincts. It takes guys with hybrid skills so that the defense can morph and disguise its intentions. A quarterback can't tell who's blitzing, who's dropping, who's simulating pressure. 

To do that, a coach looks for high school guys who have something, a quality of desire and instinct that makes them destructive terrors on the football field. You take that and mold it, train and develop it, teach the player how to recognize what the offense wants to do, and by his redshirt sophomore year you have 11 heat-seeking monsters.

Kingston Lopa is a 4-star safety from Grant Union High School in Sacramento, California, currently 6-5 and 190 pounds.

Imagine Kingston Lopa as a 6-5, 225 outside linebacker. Great ball skills, terrific hitter, relentless pursuit, exceptional instincts. https://t.co/RlU4RQnz19

— Dale Bliss (@DSH_Newton) June 19, 2023

Aliotti used to love to find high school safeties and make them linebackers. Long wingspans and athletic, like vultures who are losing patience, looking to kill something. Dye, Coleman, Malone, Pleasant and Paysinger all fell in that category.

At Grant Union, Kingston is a safety and wide receiver. On defense he had 29 tackles and one interception, which makes you wonder how many snaps he played over there. On offense, however, he grabbed 47 passes for 973 yards and 17 touchdowns as a wide receiver. He racked up 1,169 all-purpose yards.

Seventeen touchdowns in 47 passes. That's a playmaker with ball skills. At the college level with a year or two of training table, sophisticated performance lab and weight room, he'll be a playmaker on defense. 

And a bunch of those marvelous old warriors of the Aliotti years will be giving each other high fives in the stands.