You don’t know this Kentucky starter’s name, and he hopes you’ll never hear it

You don’t know the name of one of Kentucky’s most essential players. If he’s doing his job at the level expected, you won’t ever hear it on a broadcast.

Cade Degraw, a sophomore, will make his debut as UK’s starting long snapper when the Wildcats take the field at Auburn on Sept. 26. He succeeds Blake Best, a four-year starter on field goals and point-after-touchdown attempts who also snapped on punts last season.

“He just told me to be calm in pressure situations and to just get there and snap the ball,” Degraw told the Herald-Leader. “It’s all you can do.”

Easy for him to say; Best didn’t botch a single snap in 52 career games. No pressure.

Degraw doesn’t come into the picture completely green. He worked with the second-team place-kickers and was the scout team’s snapper on punts throughout last fall. He’s also got a reputation to live up to: he was an All-State specialist his final two years at Lake Cormorant High School (Miss.) and was rated as a 4.5-star prospect by Rubio Long Snapping. He also played some defensive end for the Gators his senior year, affording him a little more football cred than is often given to players at his position.

“It was weird at first because for my first three years of high school I only snapped, but my head coach needed somebody to be kind of an edge guy so I guess he saw me as the best fit for it,” Degraw said. “It wasn’t bad, just a little different. It went pretty well.”

Degraw started “messing around” with long snapping in the eighth grade, just playing yard games with his brother. He was a varsity team member for Lake Cormorant as a freshman but didn’t dedicate himself more fully to the craft until the end of his sophomore year, when he realized there could be a spot in college.

He started working at some of Chris Rubio’s camps — the “Rubio” in Rubio Long Snapping — to better his form and started attending college events to get his name out there. It was UK offensive line coach John Schlarman who discovered Degraw while recruiting in Mississippi.

“My head coach had told Coach Schlarman who we had on the team he would like for him to look at and I think I was one of those guys,” Degraw said. “So after a spring practice, I talked to Coach Schlarman and he talked to me about long snapping and asked me to come to their summer camp. That was 2018. I came up here and got the offer at the camp.”

Snapping to a high school punter is one thing; snapping to a former professional athlete like Max Duffy is another. When your leg is as powerful as that of the reigning Ray Guy Award winner, and you’re a little more patient with your release than most punters, it changes the dynamic a bit when you’re snapping.

“You’re probably running twice the distance you were in high school,” Degraw said. “My first day out here I think he punted a 50-yard bomb and I’m running and sitting there wondering, ‘Where’s this ball at?’”

Degraw expects UK to have a strong 2020 season, specialists included. He’s determined to do his part.

“I just want to stay out of the spotlight,” he said. “If nobody knows my name, I’m fine with that. That means I’m doing my job, and that’s the only goal.”

Scouting the Cats

This is the eighth of nine stories looking at the 2020 Kentucky football team position-by-position.

Outlook: Special teams

Leading man: Max Duffy, the reigning Ray Guy Award winner, was a consensus All-America selection in 2019 and has been named to multiple preseason lists for that same honor. He’s the Wildcats’ biggest special teams weapon and, arguably, one of their top assets across all positions. He’s said throughout the fall that he should have ran for first downs a couple more times than his lone conversion last year, too, so keep an eye on his feet beyond just the kicking game.

Supporting cast: Mark Stoops has said Matt Ruffolo, who finished last year as the Wildcats’ starting place-kicker, is the No. 1 guy for field goals and PATs heading into 2020. The walk-on senior was 4-for-5 on field-goal attempts last season, 18 of 20 on PATs and has kicked 10 consecutive extra points coming into the year. Chance Poore, a sophomore kicker who’s on scholarship and who Ruffolo succeeded at place-kicker last season, will handle kickoffs to open the season. Sophomore Cade Degraw takes over long-snapping duties from Blake Best, a four-year starter. Josh Ali is the lead option on returns, but there are a number of athletes who could emerge in that space.

Synopsis: Kentucky hopes to avoid the minor turmoil it had with its kicking game last season, and will lean on a new long snapper as it marches forward. It doesn’t have a dedicated special teams coach this year, either, symbolic of the overall sense of change year-over-year across the unit outside of Duffy, the group’s de facto coordinator.

This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 10:52 AM.

Josh Moore

Lexington Herald-Leader

Josh Moore covers the University of Kentucky football team for the Lexington Herald-Leader, where he’s been employed since 2009. Moore, a Martin County native, graduated from UK with a B.A. in Integrated Strategic Communication and English in 2013. He’s a fan of the NBA, Power Rangers and Pokémon. Support my work with a digital subscription