CATHOLIC DUO: Griffin, Thomas plan to play football at Mississippi State
Catholic’s Kylon Griffin and Jourdan Thomas plan to be teammates again at Mississippi State. (Dennis Victory)
By TIM GAYLE
When Kylon Griffin committed to play college football at Mississippi State, Catholic head coach Kirk Johnson knew where Jourdan Thomas was attending college even before he made it official last week.
Griffin and Thomas, it seems, are almost inseparable.
“Their parents are best friends so they’ve just known each other, known each other, known each other,” Johnson said. “They played on some of the same city league teams. They got to middle school and Jourdan went to Bellingrath and Kylon went to Goodwyn. Then they both came to Catholic. Kylon had cousins here so he was coming and Jourdan kind of latched on. I was telling everybody, they’re probably going to go to the same school. They never leave each other.”
To no one’s surprise, Thomas committed to Mississippi State last week. But it wasn’t a foregone conclusion, he insists.
“I didn’t choose it just for him, I chose it personally for me,” Thomas said. “Him going is just an add-on. I had to choose what was right for me. I chose Mississippi State because of the relationships. For me, it’s all about relationships and they communicated with me the most of every school. When they recruited me, they recruited not only me but my family and my family loved it.”
While both are among the most recruited players in the state, both have flown a little under the radar. With much of the attention focused on linebacker TJ Dudley, few people realized that Griffin, a player who bounced around at several positions for the Knights, entertained 23 scholarship offers and Thomas, who started his career at quarterback, quietly picked up 25 offers.
“It’s been fun,” Griffin said of the recruiting process. “You never knew when Coach J was going to call and say I had an offer. I always looked at it as a blessing instead of like, ‘Man, who am I going to go to?’”
Both players said the reason they chose the Bulldogs was safeties coach Jason Washington, the former recruiting coordinator at Texas who has coached secondary players for the last 15 years and has a reputation as one of the best recruiters in the business.
“My freshman year, people started showing interest, I guess because of my size,” Griffin said. “When I started playing (at cornerback), then they started wanting to see film. Overall, I’ve got 23 offers. I went to the Under Armour All-American camp and I sent videos to all the coaches. Coach Washington started coaching me up through the videos. I started thinking if he was coaching me up through the video, imagine what he could do in person. I really wanted to be a part of that.”
Johnson called the 6-foot-1, 186-pound Griffin a “do-it-all guy for us” that excels as a return specialist and at cornerback, but may spend more time this season at receiver as the Knights search for replacements for DJ Carter and Myles Butler.
“He’s played linebacker, he’s played corner, he’s played safety, he’s even played receiver and he’s going to play receiver,” Johnson said. “He actually helped with the transition of Jourdan to defense. He’s one of the smartest kids on the football team. When you lose two 1,000-yard receivers, you’ve got to fill the void with something. He and LJ (Green) will help us out in that area. If he can develop into a Myles Butler, that makes us four games better in our eyes.”
Thomas, Johnson said, had to be talked into playing safety for the Knights and the 6-foot-2, 203-pound senior may transition into an outside linebacker in college.
“He wanted to play quarterback when he first got here but he was on the sideline because we had a senior, Christian Ivey,” Johnson recalled. “About midway through the season, we sat down as a staff and said collectively that Jourdan needs to find a home. We started playing him at safety. He didn’t really want to play it, but he fell in love with it. He spent the back end of his sophomore season trying to figure out how do I do this, can I do this, do I even want to do this? By the end of the season, he really bought into it.”
Thomas had few offers heading into the 2020 season, but his highlight tape evidently turned some heads.
“I came to DB in the second game and when I got over there I started making plays,” Thomas said. “Coach J started sending out my film to everybody and I started getting attention from folks. I was an athlete and a pretty good one, so they had to get me on the field somewhere.”
After a journeyman career as a younger player ended with a home at cornerback, Griffin doesn’t sound as if he is sold on the idea of playing receiver this fall.
“This spring I’ll be at receiver,” he said. “I don’t know about the summer and the fall. I don’t really stress to the coaches, ‘give me the ball, give me the ball,’ because I know the players around me on the team are just as talented. I know I can do something with the ball when I get it but I’m not too worried about it if I don’t get it, because I love making plays on defense.”
Griffin and Thomas have spent most of their lives on the same teams growing up. The idea of continuing their football careers together in Starkville at the same position (safety) appeals to both.
“We’ve been close my whole life,” Thomas said. “We played ball together since we were little, went to camps together -- every camp, like Rivals. Whenever we’re doing drills, he’s there by my side. We try to make each other better. We critique each other. We just hold each other accountable. It’s going to be exciting to play with him, both of us in the secondary.”
“It’s going to be a noisy dorm room, a lot of fussing and arguing,” Griffin said, “but I still love him at the end of the day.”
Both are just as eager for the start of spring practice on May 3. Most of the starters are returning on both sides of the ball after reaching the 3A finals last season for the first time in school history, but the team sports a new head coach (Johnson) and a pair of new coordinators.
“I think it’s going to be the same,” Thomas said. “Our standard doesn’t change. We made it to the state championship game last year and we don’t expect anything less this year. We expect to beat every team and make it back to state. I know the coaches are going to do whatever it takes to do that as well as the players.”