Kani Walker goes Cards: What it means for the 2021 class

Kani Walker is six-foot-two, 195-pounds and can play safety, corner, or even grow into an outside linebacker. Louisville has put an emphasis on prospects with length, growth potential, and position versatility. This style of recruiting wreaks havoc on recruiting analysts trying to figure out what to tell fans what position these athletes will play when they take the field for the Cards in 2021 and beyond. Hopefully, for these same fans, this type of player versatility will wreak havoc on offensive coordinators trying to figure out Louisville's personnel groupings.

Walker joins the likes of Ryheem Craig, Ashton Gillotte, Ben Perry, and Jaraye Williams in the 2021 Louisville recruiting class. These five prospects who committed to Lousiville this year can play multiple positions in defensive coordinator Bryan Brown's nebulous scheme. In the Art of War Sun Tzu said:

“Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.”

Formlessness is key to victory when facing a superior force. In guerilla warfare, when a weaker army needs to subdue a more powerful army, the guerilla must operate in the shadows and survive until it can accumulate enough firepower to fend off its superior foe. In the ACC the Clemson Tigers are the superior force. Scott Satterfield has made no qualms about his mission as the Head Coach of the Louisville Cardinals football team. In his introductory meeting with his new players he told them this:

"You guys didn't pick me, OK I understand that, but, but I picked you guys. And I picked this program. Because I believe in it. And I believe it can be the best in the country. And that's what your minds gotta be thinking right now. Alright, what's it gonna take to get there? And you do it day by day and then the next day and the next day. And you keep it small and you got small goals, day by day. And those are gonna accumulate to wins, a lot of wins."

Now Satterfield is picking his guys and they are tasked with overthrowing the Clemson Tigers atop the ACC hierarchy. Day by day, small goal after small goal, the guerilla force that is the Louisville Cardinals grows more potent. Kani Walker is the newest multi-faceted player to join Louisville's ranks. The plan is to groom him as a long boundary corner. But if the situation warrants, he can slide to the outside linebacker slot to blitz or slide back to safety to put the lid on the offense with his range. He's a versatile weapon whose form can adapt to the situation.

In order to ascend the ACC hierarchy, the Cardinals will have to win battles with a cunning strategy against the brute force and superior weaponry that Clemson brings to the field. Louisville is amassing the type of versatile weapons, day by day, to adapt and overcome a superior opponent with commitments like Kani Walker.

It's been widely understood that Louisville would take three safeties and three corners in this class. Walker was brought in to play corner but a discerning pair of eyes can see him playing multiple positions in the future. Louisville already has one corner in this class in Rance Conner. Walker will make the second and within minutes from the time of this publication Louisville is expected to add a third. Perhaps with all the position versatility being recruited in this class fans should relax their rigid thinking of fixed position numbers. It appears that the staff is stockpiling versatile weapons to be deploy based upon their opponents' strengths and weaknesses.

This entire article was just a long-winded way of me saying I don't know how Walker's commitment will affect the numbers on the defensive side of the ball in the 2021 class but thanks for reading this far.