College football 2016: Jayhawk favorite Butler counts on Maize safeties to help its defense rebuild

Jeremiah Fettke and and Elijah West enjoyed the freedom of special teams, the short bursts of hard-hitting action and relative anonymity.

Those are good roles for freshmen. As sophomores at No. 5 Butler Community College, it is time for more responsibility. Defensive backs know their mistakes are committed in areas of the field where everybody notices.

“You’re the last line of defense and you have to be perfect on everything,” Fettke said. “If you’re not perfect, it’s touchdown.”

Fettke, from Maize South, and West, from Maize High, played middle-school football together. They played video games, went to movies and hung out as youngsters. They went separate ways for high school — Maize South won the lone meeting 28-27 in 2014 — before reuniting at Butler. They will start at safety this season for the Jayhawk Conference favorite and provide experience for a defense that returns two starters.

“Leadership and maturity and understanding how to do things the Grizzly way,” Butler coach Tim Schaffner said. “They’re understanding it’s a four-quarter, 60-minute football game. It is hard as a freshman to maintain focus for that long.”

Schaffner doesn’t expect perfect from Fettke (6-foot-3, 204 pounds) and West (5-8, 181). Fettke, in particular, started his career as a perfectionist who didn’t forget mistakes quickly enough.

“Sometimes he needs to get out of his own head and just trust his abilities and know that mistakes are a part of the game,” Schaffner said. “He’s really grown into a much more confident player. The spring was great for him and so far this fall he’s having a very good camp.”

Last season, Schaffner saw the bad body language — head down, shoulders slumped — after a mistake by Fettke.

“We can read him now,” Schaffner said. “I can tell when something doesn’t go right … he almost knows it before we do. He knows he’s got to get over it because we’ve got another play coming.”

Fettke, who said New Mexico offered him a scholarship, spent his freshman season learning on special teams and conquering a rookie’s natural hesitancy to expose uncertainty.

“He’s always willing to learn more about the coverage and get everything right before we all go out there,” West said. “When we’re in film room, he always asks questions and wants to make sure he knows the coverage.”

West is waiting on scholarship offers and will spend the season trying to prove that his size doesn’t keep him from making plays.

“He’s got a high motor and he’s very aggressive when it comes to tackling larger people,” Fettke said.

Schaffner calls West a “no-list” player. He’s not on the bad grades list. He’s not on the late-to-practice list. He is on the list of players Schaffner considers ones who can play aggressively without making mistakes, a trait his size requires.

“He’s extremely reliable,” Schaffner said. “He is cerebral. He is more action than talk.”

When Schaffner spoke against a proposal — voted down — to increase roster limits for out-of-state players, Fettke and West are prime examples to support his position.

“Both of them were guys that were high targets for us,” Schaffner said. “They’re the latest in a long line of Kansas safeties we’ve had here. It’s no accident. We’ve been able to identify good kids and good players.”

Butler, 9-2 last season, tied for first in the Jayhawk with Dodge City Community College. Two losses in the final three games — to Garden City Community College and Ellsworth (Iowa) Community College — kept it out of a bowl game for the second straight season. The Grizzlies last missed bowls in consecutive seasons in 1994 and 1995.

This story was originally published August 22, 2016 at 5:28 PM with the headline "College football 2016: Jayhawk favorite Butler counts on Maize safeties to help its defense rebuild."