HARRISONBURG — Not everyone in Harrisonburg knows who Knox Kadum is yet.
But the Rome High School quarterback and James Madison football commit grew a reputation in his home state of Georgia.
“It’s got to be awesome for James Madison to get a Georgia legend,” Rome coach John Reid said over the phone Monday, just one day after Kadum pledged to join the Dukes’ 2019 recruiting class.
“We’ve got a magazine in town that does a 40 Under 40 with the most influential people under 40 years old, and he was in it last year,” Reid said. “Football is big in our state and he’s a legend. He’s the only kid in the state of Georgia to beat [nationally ranked] Buford twice, and he’s just had some fantastic games.”
Beginning as a freshman, Kadum started 55 times for Reid and offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Chris Boden at Rome.
Kadum went 49-6 as the starter and engineered a 40-game winning streak that included back-to-back state titles.
“I’ve coached football 28 years and a lot of it is at the smaller college level,” said Boden who had previous stints at Central Michigan, Urbana and Valdosta State among others, “so I’ve coached a lot of good ones, but he has the calmest demeanor under duress of anyone that I’ve seen. When the bombs are going off and it’s just crazy on a Friday night, or it’ll be a Saturday for you guys, but he’s as calm as he can be, handles his business, does his job and makes football plays.”
Neither Reid nor Boden needed to rattle off stats when they discussed their signal-caller, but there are moments in Kadum’s prep career that his coaches can’t help but point out as the foundation for a confident quarterback that threw for 7,400 yards, rushed for 2,414 yards and scored 118 total touchdowns as a high schooler.
And it all started as Reid was taking the reigns of the Rome program and Kadum was a rising freshman.
“We said 'Listen, we’re going to have to bring this kid up from freshman practice to varsity and see what he can do,’” Reid recalled. “And he just kept coming along.
“I had a lot of things to do coming into a program because when you take over a program like we do, they’re usually not very good, so I had so many things to do — build a coaching staff, change facilities, all those things. So that first year [Kadum] was in Boden’s hands. So then Boden said, ‘Hey, we may have to start this freshman quarterback,’ and I thought, ‘Oh boy.’”
Boden said: “Though he was young, he did well. We rotated quarterbacks, I think, it was the first three games, but Knox started two of them. And in the first game ever Knox takes us down the field and scores. We rotate and keep going, and then it’s time for a 2-minute drive to win the first game since our staff took over. I put the freshman in and he takes us on a 2-minute drive, throws a fade for a touchdown and we win the game. That’s Knox’s first start.”
There are games that ended similarly for Kadum during his time with the Wolves, like when they beat top-seeded Stephenson in the state playoffs later in his freshman season. Kadum threw a touchdown with less than 30 seasons left to win it, according to Boden.
As a junior, Kadum led Rome to a 33-21 victory over Harrison High School, which was quarterbacked by Justin Fields, a senior and the No. 2-rated recruit nationally in the class of 2018 by Rivals.com. Kadum threw two second-half touchdown passes to push his team ahead and separate from Fields’ squad. Fields signed to play at Georgia, but transferred to Ohio State earlier this month.
Those experiences and the others Kadum gained with Rome gives him the confidence necessary to succeed at JMU, his coaches said.
The Dukes have made the playoffs in five straight seasons and reached the FCS national championship game in two of the last three years.
“He’ll go arm-and-arm with that,” Reid said.
When Kadum arrives in Harrisonburg, he will join three veteran quarterbacks — senior Ben DiNucci, redshirt junior Cole Johnson and redshirt sophomore Gage Moloney — who all played in games this past season. DiNucci was the Dukes’ 2018 starter and Johnson has served as the primary backup for each of the past three seasons.
“He’s a competitor and he’s never sat on the bench,” Boden said of Kadum. “He will do his darnedest to get on the field in any which way that he can.
“If you saw him just in a t-shirt, you’re like, ‘He’s not very big.’ But he’s super strong and he’s just a winner. He’s going to compete at everything as hard as he can. I think he’ll go in with thinking, ‘I’m going to win that job,’ and that’s just because he’s a competitor.”
First-year JMU coach Curt Cignetti isn’t afraid to play a true freshmen either.
When Cignetti took over at Elon in 2017, he played Davis Cheek at the position in his first year on campus. Cheek was the Colonial Athletic Association Rookie of the Year that season and then threw a game-winning touchdown with less than 90 seconds left to beat JMU at Bridgeforth Stadium as a sophomore this past fall.
Reid said Kadum’s skill set that gave him an edge against high school competition should aid him in college.
“A lot of people throw the term around, ‘dual-threat,’” Reid said. “But you’re only a dual-threat if you can really do both. If they can stop you from doing one, you’re not really much of a dual-threat, but he is a dual-threat. He can be running the game plan, throwing the ball here and handing it off there, and then all of a sudden he’ll break a 60-yard run on you. When you play against him, you have to have a balanced defense, at least in high school, because he can beat you with the run, pass or as a manager of the game.”
Kadum held 15 total scholarship offers including one Power Five offer from Rutgers, and the ones from Charlotte and Florida Atlantic he said he considered most before committing to JMU.
