MA-CATHOLIC: Knights' Butler blossoming as all-purpose receiver

Catholic wide receiver Myles Butler has become a major cog in the Knights’ offense, leading the team in receiving. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Myles Butler was one of the top players on a Catholic basketball team that was one of the most successful in school history, but that didn’t stop him from squeezing in time to work on football. Every day during the winter and even when coronavirus shut down school in March, you could always find the senior working on shaving another tenth of a second off his 40-yard dash time.

“He would go to basketball practice in the morning and in the afternoon he would go to Parisi Speed School or he go over to the Shakespeare Festival (trails) or he was out here – every single day – running sprints,” Catholic coach Aubrey Blackwell said. “The work he’s put in has been incredible. Watching how hard he’s worked and the reward (from college recruiters) he’s gotten so far is discouraging.”

That’s because the coronavirus pandemic shut down all aspects of college recruiting this year. Summer football camps were shut down and recruiting visits from college coaches to high schools in August were at a standstill. While some activities were stalled, however, Butler took the time to work on improving his ability as one of the area’s most impressive receivers. 

“I had to,” he said. “I knew me just sitting around here, because we’re in a pandemic, wasn’t going to get me anywhere so I had to go out there and train a lot. I worked a lot on my speed, worked on my routes, worked on my hands. There was a lot of stuff I worked on during the pandemic.”

Butler will be a big part in the Knights’ goal to advance to the AHSAA Class 3A championship game with a win over Montgomery Academy on Friday at McLemore Field. Kickoff is 7 p.m.

Butler’s story is a bit unusual. Because of the pandemic, college recruiters who last saw him in 2019 remember a talented 6-foot receiver who ran the 40-yard dash in a fast but not blazing 4.7 seconds. He’s not the same player but college recruiters wouldn’t know it.

“There are a lot of kids in a similar situation,” said Catholic assistant coach Kirk Johnson, who coordinates the Knights’ recruiting contacts with college coaches. “Myles, as a freshman, was 5-foot-4, 130 pounds. His sophomore year, he was 5-9, 145 pounds. His junior year, he’s 6-feet, 170 pounds and as a senior, he’s 6-3, 190. But coaches haven’t seen him since he was 6-foot, 170 pounds and he doesn’t really have the over-the-top speed. Nobody really wants a Division I-A receiver that’s barely 6-foot and runs a 4.7 but when you’re 6-3, 190, and you run a low 4.7, high 4.6, that’s totally different.

“He’s suffering from the fact that no one has been out here since last January and he couldn’t go to camps (this past summer) to showcase what he could do live. Everybody’s being recruited off their junior films, which is good for some kids, but it’s bad for others. 

“Is he going to sign somewhere? Yes. Where is it going to be is about the craziest thing ever.”

Butler, like a lot of high school seniors, wanted to use the time between the end of his junior football season and the start of his senior year to make an impression on college recruiters. 

“There are a lot of people trying to reach out to me, but they can’t physically come see me because of COVID-19,” he said. “I know I’ve got people looking at me but at the same time they don’t know how I look in person. They want to come see me in person but COVID is holding them back.

“It is very frustrating. I know (over the summer) we would have gone to a lot of seven-on-seven camps and gotten me out there – I was going to an Alabama camp this summer – but all of that has gone down the drain because of COVID.”

Butler and fellow receiver DJ Carter (an Air Force commitment) are a major reason for the Knights’ offensive success this season, particularly freshman quarterback Caleb McCreary. 

“The biggest thing with him this year has been his leadership for Caleb,” Blackwell said. “The after-practice stuff where they’re running routes and working on timing or when Caleb makes a bad decision in a game and he comes to him and says shake it off, let’s go to the next play. That’s been his biggest attribute, how he’s helped bring Caleb along, but Caleb has 100 percent confidence that if he’s one-on-one in a matchup, Myles has got a good chance to catch that ball no matter where Caleb puts it.”

That started during the spring, Butler said, when he first met the freshman who transferred from St. James.

“It really started when I found out he was coming, during the pandemic,” Butler said. “We couldn’t really do anything as a team, but I’d get with him, one on one, so we could understand each other and he would be able to trust me. We’d go somewhere and work out, where we could understand each other, what he could throw, what he couldn’t throw, so there was a lot of trust. 

“It carried over. I wasn’t thinking he could throw the ball the way he threw it because he was a freshman, but he is an above-average freshman quarterback.”

Butler caught 35 passes for 599 yards and six touchdowns last season, but his numbers are even more impressive in 2020. He is averaging 22.1 yards every time he touches the ball, gaining 35 rushing yards on a pair of carries, 191 yards on punt returns and catching 55 passes for 1,215 yards and 12 touchdowns.

As defenses concentrate more and more on denying him the ball, Blackwell gets more and more frustrated that he couldn’t showcase his star in summer seven-on-seven camps for college recruiters.

“You can’t get to know him, you don’t see how he carries himself on the field, you don’t see his presence and his confidence in what he does, you don’t see how well he moves to the football,” Blackwell said. “It’s tough in high school football to throw a ball to one kid 25 times a game. The last two football games, Pike County and Montgomery Academy have left two people on him regardless of what else is going on so we’ve tried to become more creative to get him open and get him more one-on-one matchups.”

Blackwell remembers the time when Butler was an undersized running back, receiver and defensive back in pee-wee ball, when Butler’s mother spoke of her concerns for her son when he was a freshman on the varsity, asking Blackwell if Butler could spend the season as a manager instead. 

“He still hasn’t plateaued in height or in speed,” Blackwell noted. “He’s still getting faster as he goes, he’s still getting lean and tall.”

Butler admits recruiting concerns are in the back of his mind, but right now he’s more concerned with helping the Knights become a championship contender, starting with tonight’s region matchup with Childersburg.

“We’ve got great athletes, we just have to be more disciplined in what we do and know all the little things,” he said. “We can make the big plays but we’ve got to fix the little things.”

Butler knows a little about big plays and correcting little mistakes. He worked hard on improving his speed this offseason and says working on the little things has paid off for him in a big way.

“When I catch the ball and breakaway, I know I’ve worked on my speed and have gotten faster,” Butler said. “When I scored my first touchdown against Pike Road, I caught the screen (and outran everyone to the end zone) and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve gotten faster.’ It really paid off.”