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Three Kentucky Football Takeaways from SEC Media Days

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Mark Stoops representing Kentucky at SEC Media Days 2023
© Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK

College football season is just around the corner and this week national and regional media outlets traveled to SEC Media Days in Nashville to learn about and talk more with each team’s coach and players.

A Sea of Blue was present on Wednesday as Mark Stoops and the Kentucky Wildcats took the stage. Entering his 11th season as the head coach of Kentucky, Stoops is now the second-most tenured coach in the conference behind Nick Saban. In that span, he has coached the Wildcats from one of the worst Power Five teams in the country to a contender in the SEC East.

Outside of learning that Nick Saban’s favorite cake is carrot cake and Arkansas’ Sam Pittman is not a fan of Hamm’s beer, here are three takeaways for Kentucky football.

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Getting Back to “Blue Collar” Roots

The Wildcats have never been the most talented team in the SEC under Stoops, but they have consistently been one of the most physical and fundamentally sound in the conference. That has been echoed by conference opponents for years, but last season, that was not the case.

Stoops knows that “without physicality, you’re not going to win at the highest level.” That is why he emphasized that the staff’s focus is, and has been through the offseason, getting Kentucky football back to their “blue-collar roots”. That starts at the line of scrimmage, where the Wildcats need to once again be “physical” and “consistent”.

“It takes a lot of things to put it together at the highest level, but to me, we can control the physical part of it,’ Stoops said. “So we have to at least be that, and at times last year, it felt like we weren’t successful enough at being who we are.”

Bringing in five offensive linemen from the portal, Kentucky’s priority of playing with more physicality starts up front with the Big Blue Wall.

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Adapting and Embracing

With the addition of the transfer portal and NIL, the collegiate landscape has been “chaotic” thanks to little to no regulation, but as Mark Stoops said at SEC Media Days, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

Kentucky football has been no stranger to change in the last 2-3 seasons. Of course, much of that change is due to NIL and the transfer portal.

In the portal, Kentucky has been a real winner, bringing in considerably more talent than they have lost, including 15 more transfers for this coming season. As for NIL, the program has ventured through and put itself in better standing with organizations such as The 15 Club and Commonwealth Causes.

The change doesn’t stop there at NIL and the portal. As a program, there have been multiple staff changes, especially on offense. Through all the change, it has been about “adapting” and “embracing” according to Mark Stoops.

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Last season, the highlight of the offense was the play of freshmen Barion Brown and Dane Key, but their play was overshadowed by the overall downfalls. When talking to several of the players, they criticized the complexity of Rich Scangarello’s playstyle.

Returning Liam Coen as Offensive Coordinator, that offense has already become more simple as told by the players in the Spring, which is a positive given the amount of new roster personnel.

Flying Under the Radar

Last year, Kentucky appeared in the preseason Top 25 for the first time since 1978. On paper, it was justifiable. The Wildcats returned a top-five quarterback prospect, one of the best running backs in program history, and a stout defense. However, things did not come together and the team didn’t meet the high expectations as injuries occurred, the lack of experience on the offensive line showed, etc.

This season, things are different. The Wildcats are bringing in a new quarterback, running back, and offensive line. While there is an improved standard of expectations, Mark Stoops and Co. will be in a more comfortable “underdog” role.

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At SEC Media Days, Kentucky wasn’t thought of too highly. Following the preseason media voting, the Wildcats were picked to finish fourth in the SEC East, behind Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Also, only one player of the eight candidates was selected to a preseason All-SEC Second Team or higher (Deone Walker, DL).

In the past, Stoops’ best teams have been those that are motivated by the doubt of others, and that is certainly there again.


The goal of the Kentucky football program has been to take the “next step” and win the SEC East. With one of the toughest schedules in the country, which features games against Alabama and Georgia, it will be difficult to do that.

Yet, it is a schedule of opportunity. It is unlikely the Wildcats reach Atlanta, but if they can pull an upset, they can make a statement and prove they are closer to reaching that step.

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Also published on A Sea of Blue.

Football

Jamon Dumas-Johnson: A NFL Draft Steal

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Kentucky Wildcats linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson (2) makes the sign of the cross while taking a knee before the game.
Carter Skaggs | Imagn

Before he transferred to Kentucky, Jamon Dumas-Johnson was an All-American at Georgia, with waves to at least test the NFL draft after winning a National Championship. However, with the decision to play his last collegiate season as a Wildcat, Dumas-Johnson was a cornerstone piece for the Kentucky defense, finishing the season with 7.5 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks during his 11 starts for the team. 

His athleticism spoke volumes at Kentucky football’s NFL pro day, where current NFL draft boards now list the linebacker as one of the best athletes at the position and has earned himself a “top 10” feel ahead of the draft. Before pro day, publications such as Bleacher Report had him listed as No. 13 at his position. 

Dumas-Johnson proved himself with the highest vertical jump (37.5) and the longest broad jump (10.60) out of the Wildcats who competed in said events, and ran an impressive best 4.50 40-yard dash. At 245 pounds, he also managed to press 16 reps of 225, which could technically be “better” compared to NFL standards, but is impressive nonetheless in hindsight.

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At 23 years old, this linebacker exploits explosiveness, agility and can hawk down any playmaker on the field. Out the 31 NFL teams that attended the event (a Cleveland Browns representative did not attend), one will be getting a prize steal of the draft with Dumas-Johnson. 

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Alex Raynor: A Rare Gem In This Year’s NFL Draft

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Kentucky Wildcats place kicker Alex Raynor (16) lines up a kick.
Jordan Prather | Imagn

Alex Raynor had an illustrious season for Kentucky last year, being named to First-Team All-SEC, as a finalist for the Lou Groza award and as SEC Special Teams Player of the Year.

As the record holder for the longest field goal in program history, and arguably one of, if not the, most consistent kickers to ever be a Wildcat, Raynor now looks to the NFL Draft in the next chapter of his book. 

Recently, at Kentucky football’s NFL Pro Day on Tuesday, March 11, Raynor kicked off the event with his workout. 

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Although he would miss a routine kick for him inside of the 45, he would continue to move back, nailing a 55-yard kick and nearly making a 60-yard kick. 

The best moments of his workout came when Raynor would line up behind the UK logo inside of Nutter Field House and would nail a 65-yard field goal.

That, although it’s an indoor kick and is not faced with the NFL pressure, would be one of the longest field goals in NFL history. 

Historically, it’s extremely rare for kickers to be drafted any higher than the 6th, more commonly going in the late rounds on the third day. 

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However, Raynor would hold as one of the rare occasions to go higher than projected, due to his historic year as a Wildcat.

Wherever the young man from Georgia ends up in the pros, don’t be surprised if you hear his name every reoccurring Sunday.

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The State of Kentucky Football

Following their worst season in nearly a decade, Kentucky Football faces a steep rebuild and rising expectations.

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Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops has been linked to the Texas A&M job.
Chet White | UK Athletics

After charting a 4-8 record in the 2023-24 season, including a 1-7, second-to-last finish in the SEC, Kentucky Football looks lost for the first time in a long time.

It can be argued that the program never really broke through to the “higher echelon” of college football in the first place, but even then, they’ve been consistently better than they were historically known to be. Until now.

With that aforementioned .333 record, the Cats weren’t able to earn a bowl game. That marks the first time since the 2015 season that Kentucky Football won’t appear in postseason competition, and, excluding the 2020 season (for COVID-related reasons,) it’s also the only time the Wildcats have finished under .500 since then.

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What about the last time the team had less than five wins? 2013, in Stoops’ first season. The deeper you dig, the worse it appears.

Losing to Louisville in blowout fashion at the end of last month felt like the straw that broke the Cats’ back. It was clear that whatever would happen next wouldn’t be simply transitional, and thus far, the early offseason has evidenced that.

The Big Move

It began with an exodus. Star wideout Barion Brown elected to transfer to LSU for his senior season. His receiver running mate, Dane Key, left for Nebraska. In addition to the team’s two primary deep threats, Chip Trayanum, the promising back and former Buckeye who spent much of this year battling injuries, took his talents to Toledo.

In total, the Cats have lost nearly two dozen players to the transfer portal, and that’s not even counting the guys headed to the NFL draft (like Deone Walker and Maxwell Hairston,) as well as the graduates.

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To put it bluntly, next year’s team will share little more with the players from this past season than the blue and white on their jerseys. It’s a brutal overhaul, though one Coach Stoops and his staff are trying to get the jump on, to their credit.

Fresh Faces

Among a growing list of incoming transfers, a few names in particular stand out. Chief among them is Zach Calzada, a quarterback whose upcoming season at Kentucky will mark his fifth year playing football in his third different jersey.

The journeyman spent this past season at Incarnate Word, where he threw for 35 touchdowns and only nine interceptions. He completed 344 passes on the year, almost doubling that of his previous two. 

Before his two-year stint at IW, Calzada spent the beginnings of his college career at Texas A&M where, among a mixture of steadily improving statistics, he led the Aggies to an impressive home win over the still Saban-led Alabama Crimson Tide. Whether or not his recent success in the Southland Conference will translate back to the SEC is yet to be seen, but, at least on paper, this pickup makes sense for Kentucky following a year of unsparing QB play across the board.

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Along with Calzada, the Cats have hauled in J.J. Hester, a 6 ‘4 senior receiver from Oklahoma, Dante Dowdell, a power back coming off a 12-touchdown season for Nebraska, and Sam Greene, a defensive end transferring in from USC, among a handful of others. We’ll have a team. 

Though, even considering the roster turnover, that wasn’t the question. That still remains, “what will that team do?”

Potential vs. Progress

Kentucky is 18-25 in their last three seasons of football; a steady decline that has been made worse by the fact that the program’s outlier 10-3 finish in the 2021 season has since been disqualified by the NCAA due to a rule violation. All in all, the last half-decade has been, at best, barely getting by.

How long will this trend continue? The only thing we know for sure is that nobody is sure. Answering that question requires the analysis and knowing of many moving parts, not all of which are at widespread disposal.

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But this much is clear: the longtime variable nature of Kentucky Football came to a head this year, and the product we’re about to see is going to have to be radically different from the one we’ve just seen in order to right this ship.

For better or worse, the 2024-25 season will likely go down as the most important yet in the Stoops era at UK.

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