Two more Kentucky WRs transferred this week. Why should fans expect more turnover?
The transfer portal delivered some significant building blocks for the Kentucky football team in the offseason. It also continues to see Wildcats jump into it during spring practice.
Two wide receivers — Allen Dailey Jr. and Bryce Oliver — announced that they were submitting their names into the portal this week. They joined Akeem Hayes, another former UK pass-catcher who announced his departure in February, as well as five other scholarship players seeking new homes.
A revamp of the offense seemed to present an opportunity for UK’s current receivers, by far the most maligned group on the roster, to bloom into the kind of contributors they felt like they could be when they signed out of high school. The three departures, instead, leave Josh Ali as the only wide receiver on UK’s roster who has caught a touchdown as a Wildcat in any of the last three seasons (he has five in his career).
Head coach Mark Stoops, following the team’s first practice with pads of the spring session on Saturday, said the staff wishes those players well but did not seem dismayed at how the situation at receiver is playing out.
“We’re deep,” Stoops said. “We’ve still got 11, 12 guys out there getting reps right now.”
Kentucky added Wan’Dale Robinson, a surefire starter at receiver, from the transfer portal this offseason and got Ali back via the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Isaiah Epps, who played toward the end of last season after missing all of 2019 due to a foot injury, is still dealing with lingering effects of that injury but was with the No. 1 unit through the first week of spring camp. If he can stay healthy, Stoops said that’s as good a “front line” of receivers that the Wildcats have had in some time.
DeMarcus Harris, who tied Dailey for the second-most receptions among receivers last fall, is back, as are a litany of other young receivers with little game experience but of whom the staff has spoken highly. That doesn’t include the four receivers UK signed as part of the 2021 high school class (Georgia prep standout Chauncey Magwood is the only one on campus) or Tre’Von Morgan, a Michigan State transfer enrolling ahead of September.
“We have some guys coming in the fall that have some juice, that have some speed that we greatly need,” Stoops said.
Whether it comes from the wide receiver group or elsewhere, Stoops expects more departures due to the size of the roster. Not counting its returning seniors — whose scholarships don’t count against the NCAA scholarship limit of 85 — UK has about 70 scholarship players on its spring roster. Its remaining freshman signees and incoming transfers (Morgan and quarterback Will Levis) would take that number into the 80s. Kentucky has 12 regular seniors who all could choose to return for an additional year under the COVID-19 waiver in 2022; the potential for that occurrence makes the already complicated matter of Division I football roster management even tougher to navigate over the next few years.
“I appreciate all the guys and what they’ve done,” Stoops said. “Turnover’s gonna happen. There’s gonna be more. We have to, actually. We’ve got to turn this roster over a little bit. So we’ll continue to compete.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2021 at 3:59 PM.
