Magnificent 7: QB Johns ready to compete

Living just 10 minutes away from the Pennsylvania house that Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan grew up in, few would have been shocked had Matt Johns elected to follow that path to Boston College to play football.

During the initial visit to the Ryan’s alma mater, the three-star quarterback was even leaning in that direction and his senior season at Central Bucks South High was months away.

Everything changed, however, after one simple request from his parents en route to a waterfront vacation in Duck, N.C.

“When I went to Boston College I was like, ‘this is it,’” Johns said. “My parents said, ‘let’s go visit Virginia.’ We actually went down and spent a day with the coaches and got to talk with them and then I had a little sit down with Coach [Mike] London.

“After that point, there was no No. 2 school.”

On Wednesday, Johns will make it official as he sends in his National Letter of Intent to play college football for London at Virginia. The Cavaliers’ recruiting class for 2012 is currently ranked No. 15 nationally by 247sports.com, No. 24 by Scout.com and No. 26 by Rivals.com and all three services have the 26-player crop ranked among the top five in the ACC.

Johns and fellow quarterback recruit Greyson Lambert (Wayne County High/Jesup, Ga.), who has already signed and enrolled earlier this month at Virginia, are a large reason for the lofty rankings for the Cavaliers.

While signing in a class with another quarterback would scare off many, Johns welcomes the competition and understands it makes Virginia a deeper program at a vital position that has rising juniors Michael Rocco and Ross Metheny and rising sophomore David Watford on the depth chart.

“No matter what program you are at, no matter what school you are at, no matter what level you are at — Division I, Division I-AA, Division II, Division III — you have to compete. The is no, ‘Oh, you are coming here and you have the job.’

“I have never expected that at any point playing football, so every practice you have to go out there and compete and that’s what I want. I don’t want something that is going to be handed to you. You have to earn that level of respect from the players and coaches.”

Johns, listed at 6-foot-5 and 210 pounds, was in the same spot during his sophomore season at CB South High behind an acclaimed quarterback that was eyeing college scholarships.

Johns admits at that point that he “wanted to play college basketball.”

Fate provided a different path to college.

“The first couple of games my sophomore season he didn’t play as well as he should have at quarterback and I got a shot to play and the first time that I went in I threw a touchdown pass and from that point on I started,” said Johns, who passed for 2,098 yards and 18 touchdowns and rushed for seven scores this season.

Life on the football field changed for Johns prior to his junior season and with four semesters left in school he still envisioned playing basketball at some level following graduation.

With a vacancy at head coach, CB South High hired 10-year Princeton offensive coordinator Dave Rackovan to lead its program.

“Once he came in, he was teaching me things that I had never thought of before when stepped onto the football field,” Johns admitted. “Just the intensity that he brought, the first practice of my junior season I knew I wanted to play college football. That day I knew this is what I want to do.

“I kind of kept that in the back of my mind and had a fun season.”

It was fun for Johns’ pass-catching options, too, as he threw for 1,856 yards and completed 128 of his 244 passes (52.5 percent).

“At the end of the season it kind of became reality when schools came and started talking to me and from that point on I just pursued it a lot and worked a lot on my game,” the signal caller said. “It think it paid off my senior season.”

CB South went 8-4 and advanced to the second round in the playoffs without consistent results from its defense.

The team advanced as far as it did in the tradition-rich state of Pennsylvania, known for developing quarterbacks, because of Johns.

“Matt conducts himself better than most quarterbacks on the field and off the field,” said CB South senior tailback Dan Brown, who recently committed to Lehigh. “He does everything you could ask of any football player. He puts in all the extra time in the weight room and he is always the last one in there. He is always the first one in the team meetings.

“When you are on the field, he is just a perfectionist and will not leave the practice field until we get everything right. The winning spirit just rubs off on you.”

Johns is excited to get the next chapter of his life started at Virginia and got a better feel for what that will entail this past weekend. With a host of commitments joining him, Johns finally took his official visit.

“Every time I came to Virginia I liked it more and more, no doubt, but I think this is the first time that I spent the whole weekend there and I was with some of the players,” Johns said. “It started to feel like home. It was weird how that feeling started to settle in because it was not something I felt before. It was definitely exciting.