Kentucky football has struggled to recruit high school quarterbacks, but does it matter?
All eyes are on Will Levis for Kentucky football this fall, but how the Wildcats’ star quarterback fares could mean more to the program than the 2022 record.
Levis’s ability to live up to first-round NFL Draft projections could say much about whether Mark Stoops, Rich Scangarello and Vince Marrow can recruit the next great Kentucky quarterback, too.
“There’s a lot of developed quarterbacks that are on other rosters,” Marrow, Kentucky’s recruiting coordinator, recently told the Herald-Leader. “All I’m going to say is this: They saw what we did with Will, they saw what we did with Wan’Dale (Robinson). This is actually a place they want to come to.”
The NCAA’s move to allow all players to transfer once without sitting out a season appears to be a boon to Kentucky’s quarterback recruiting effort.
It is a needed one since the staff’s success rate on recruiting high school quarterbacks remains concerning. Injuries and bad luck have played a role, but no high school signee recruited as a quarterback has been the primary starter for a winning UK team since Morgan Newton in 2009.
Of the six consecutive bowl teams in the Stoops era, five featured quarterbacks who transferred into the program from a junior college or other FBS program. The lone exception was the 2019 Gator Bowl squad that was forced to play wide receiver Lynn Bowden at quarterback after the top two quarterbacks on the roster, both of whom arrived at UK as transfers, were sidelined by injuries.
Kentucky’s current roster features two quarterbacks that signed with the Wildcats out of high school, redshirt freshman Kaiya Sheron and freshman Destin Wade. Sheron is competing with Iowa transfer Deuce Hogan for the primary backup job, and Wade is headed for a redshirt season.
Scangarello, who replaced Liam Coen as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator in the offseason, has praised the long-term potential of Sheron, Hogan and Wade, but the most likely scenario remains that Levis’s replacement next season is currently on a different college roster.
“It’s like free agency,” Marrow said of quarterback recruiting.
Can Cutter Boley end high school QB drought?
Historically, Kentucky’s best quarterbacks have arrived as graduates of Bluegrass State high schools.
That was the case for Tim Couch, Jared Lorenzen and Andre Woodson, the top three quarterbacks in career passing yards in program history. Patrick Towles, Drew Barker and Beau Allen all played for UK as former four-star quarterback recruits from the state during the Stoops era, but all three left the program before their eligibility had ended without leading a winning team. (It should be noted that Barker’s career was derailed by a back injury).
Since Rivals.com began rating football recruits in 2002, Kentucky has signed just one player rated as a four-star high school quarterback from outside the state. Wade was a four-star prospect from Tennessee but was rated by the recruiting sites as an athlete amid skepticism he will stick at quarterback long term in college.
The good news is a much-hyped high school quarterback recruit is now playing just a few miles from Kroger Field.
Class of 2025 quarterback Cutter Boley picked up a UK scholarship offer from former offensive coordinator Liam Coen in December shortly after finishing his sophomore season at LaRue County. Since then he has transferred to LCA and enjoyed a breakout summer on the camp circuit that saw him add scholarship offers from Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Missouri, Virginia Tech, Michigan and Alabama.
“He can make every throw,” LCA Coach Doug Charles said after Boley converted 17 of 25 passes for 367 yards and two touchdowns in a season-opening loss at Madison Central last Friday. “He can make throws from the far hash to the out route on the backside 40 yards on a rope. The kid is just super talented. I think the sky is the limit for him.”
While Boley, whose older sister Erin was the Gatorade National Girls Basketball Player of the Year at Elizabethtown in 2016, is listed as a junior on LCA’s roster, he does not plan to enroll in college until January 2025. That means Kentucky has time to prove Scangarello’s offense can pick up the momentum of where Coen’s scheme left off before he returned to the Los Angeles Rams.
At LaRue County, Boley ran a run-heavy offense that saw him attempt just 165 passes all of last season. LCA’s spread attack should make better use of his arm talent, as evidenced by his touchdown passes of 59 and 63 yards in the opener.
“I’m still definitely talking to (college) coaches because that means a lot to me, but just focused on the season,” Boley said. “If I get all those offers and I don’t go out there and perform, I’m not going to have those offers anymore. I’ve got to go out here and show what I can really do on the highest level.”
If Boley can build on his season-opening performance over the next two years, interest from traditional powers will only grow. Considering his sister elected to play for Oregon rather than staying in Kentucky for college, there is no guarantee he would pick UK over Alabama and others.
The good news for Kentucky is Boley already reports a strong relationship with Scangarello and the other UK coaches. He will undoubtedly be watching how Levis plays and positions himself for the 2023 NFL Draft as well.
“(The offense) is very attractive,” Boley said. “We run a lot of RPO, a lot of play-action stuff here at LCA. I feel like running that pro-style offense really gets me ready for the NFL. If that’s available to me and I can live up to that, then that’s an offense I would definitely want to play in.”
Where Kentucky football’s QB recruiting stands
Pursuing high school quarterback prospects the caliber of Boley is an easy decision for Stoops and his staff, but there is a real debate to be had about whether resources would be better allocated to focusing on transfer quarterbacks than the three-star high school quarterbacks Kentucky has signed for most of Stoops’ tenure.
UK signed eight high school quarterbacks in Stoops’ first eight recruiting classes. None of them finished their college eligibility at Kentucky. The eight quarterbacks combined for five starts at Kentucky, all of which came from Barker.
Meanwhile, Stoops and company have found great success with transfer quarterbacks. Stephen Johnson and Terry Wilson both quarterbacked multiple bowl teams after arriving as junior-college transfers. Levis led UK to 10 wins last season after transferring from Penn State.
If Levis backs up his preseason hype to lock down a first-round draft selection, quarterbacks in the transfer portal this winter will surely notice.
Levis’s teammates are already watching his every step.
“He’s got all the hype around him,” Sheron said. “That’s where I want to be. I want to be a starting quarterback in the SEC. I want to be a starting quarterback.”
Kentucky is not known to be pursuing any uncommitted high school quarterbacks in the class of 2023. Three-star Indianapolis prep quarterback Danny O’Neil appears to be Kentucky’s top target in the 2024 class, but the outlook in the next two classes could change depending on what transfer Kentucky adds this winter and the development of the backups currently on campus.
Levis, a three-star prospect out of high school who spent three years as a backup at Penn State before transferring to Kentucky, is proof there is NFL-level talent to be found outside of the four- and five-star groups of high school quarterbacks. He also offers a case study of how difficult it is to keep developmental players on campus for multiple years in the era of the transfer portal.
Even if the current backups never win the starting job at Kentucky, UK needs them to continue to develop to avoid a situation where an injury to whatever transfer is added for next season derails the team’s hopes. The transfer of Allen this summer shows it will be difficult to keep them at Kentucky if they continue to be recruited over with transfers though.
Regardless of how Kentucky’s quarterback recruiting unfolds over the next year, a stellar season from Levis figures to make it easier.
“That’s not going to be an issue,” Marrow promises. “We’re going to have a good quarterback for the next couple of years.”
This story was originally published August 23, 2022 at 6:35 AM.