Steve and I have been writing about this for a while but it's starting to get real: Markeith Knowlton could very well be a healthy scratch come Friday night.

By Steve Milton

Lots can happen between mid-week practice and game night — and usually does — but it’s looking as if the guy who was chosen the country’s top defensive player just 17 months ago will not be starting in the season opener Friday night.

And you might wonder if he’ll even be dressed. A betting man would probably stack some chips under the word “No.”

Markeith Knowlton, nicknamed Monster for his uncanny ability to find himself around the ball, has not been taking first-team practice reps at the field-side linebacking position he has dominated for the bulk of the past four seasons.

“I’d rather not say anything,” Knowlton told The Hamilton Spectator, preferring not to roil the waters. “It’s a given that I want to do my job. I might not be the one out there, so it’s better for the guys playing to talk.”

Head coach George Cortez isn’t tipping his hand about his game-day roster, saying it will be decided on time (an hour before kickoff, the 46-man roster has to be reduced to 42 for the game), and on Monday defensive co-ordinator Casey Creehan said Knowlton figures in the team’s plans.

But Kevin Eiben, who came over from the Toronto Argonauts, appears to be the starter on the boundary side of the field, which moves Jamall Johnson from there to the field side, Knowlton’s normal precinct.

Eiben’s quick rise through the depth chart of his former arch enemies has been noted in Spectator stories and columns during training camp, and it has not abated.

If Knowlton doesn’t start Friday night, it will be big news right across the Canadian Football League. If he doesn’t dress, it’ll go the CFL’s version of viral.

There are several factors to the reworking of the linebacking that has been the Ticats’ only candidate for best-in-the-league unit over the past three seasons.

The most important was the way Eiben, fitter and faster, arrived in Hamilton like he’d been shot out of a cannon. Which, metaphorically, he was, if you dress the cannon in double blue. He was fitter and faster and more stoked than he had been in some time.

And, because he’s Canadian, Eiben is a ratio breaker and that jibes quite nicely with the way Cortez has been working things during the pre-season. The early evidence is that his application of the import/non-import ratio will be more fluid than we’ve ever seen in this town. He’s looking for a slew of different ways of reaching the minimum seven Canadian starters, and it could change from series to series, so Eiben is a key factor, allowing the Cats to use Americans in other spots where the Canadian talent isn’t quite as buoyant.

And, while he was a league all-star in 2009 and ’10, and the CFL’s most valuable defensive player in 2010, Knowlton’s play fell off for at least the first half of last season. But, as his defensive teammates said at the end of the year, he played hurt much of the season and then-co-ordinator Corey Chamblin’s system wasn’t geared for Knowlton’s unique style, which stems partly from instinct. As beat writer Drew Edwards wrote a couple of years ago, Knowlton had a rare line among CFL defenders, recording good numbers in sacks, interceptions, knock-downs, blocked kicks and tackles. And, he’s the team barber.

Maybe Creehan’s even greater commitment to press and man-to-man defence suits Knowlton even less than Chamblin’s system did, but Knowlton would never say that. And, remember, new coaches come in with new eyes.

It says here that, to win the Grey Cup team officials insist is the only acceptable outcome to the 85th and final year of Ivor Wynne, the Cats will need all of their linebackers, including Knowlton, to take important leading roles at various times during the season.

But it certainly feels as if, for Knowlton, one of those times will not be this Friday night.