These players’ decisions could determine whether Mark Stoops, UK can bounce back in 2025

Mark Stoops planned to use part of Kentucky football’s bye week to meet with players about their plans after the season.

With nine starters (center Eli Cox, left tackle Marques Cox, right tackle Gerald Mincey, running back Demie Sumo-Karngbaye, defensive lineman Tre’vonn Rybka, linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson, outside linebacker J.J. Weaver, safety Zion Childress and kicker Alex Raynor) and two more key backups (defensive lineman Octavious Oxendine and safety Kristian Story) exhausting their eligibility at the end of the season, a significant overhaul is already guaranteed. But the size of the rebuilding project Stoops and his staff — assuming Stoops decides to stay at UK for another year — will need to undergo will depend on how the decisions Stoops began discussing this week play out.

Those decisions fall into three groups: super seniors, the NFL draft and possible transfers. There are viable scenarios where Kentucky loses another 10-plus players on the two-deep depth chart due to those decisions.

The expected advent of revenue sharing between athletic departments and athletes will surely be a fact players consider in making those decisions, but the importance of NIL collectives to both retain top talent and attract new high school recruits and transfers is expected to remain. Stoops must also gauge how a disappointing season that appears almost certain to end without a bowl game will affect NIL fundraising efforts and recruiting pitches.

Because more information is needed and the final three games could affect players’ thinking, the conversations this week will be only a piece of the information-gathering process that has been ongoing throughout the season. Here’s a closer look at some of the players under the spotlight.

Possible super seniors

The designation of players who elect to use the waiver granted everyone who was on a roster in 2020 to spend an additional year in college has only grown more complicated over time because schools have not adopted a universal rule for listing years of eligibility remaining on rosters. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll refer to those players as “super seniors,” though that term has at times been used to describe different things.

While the pandemic waiver has frequently been described as an extra season of eligibility, an NCAA spokeswoman recently stressed to the Herald-Leader that is an inaccurate description when asked to clarify which players still have additional eligibility remaining. The easiest way to understand the waiver is to simply eliminate 2020 from players’ eligibility clock. Then they have five years to play four seasons as normal.

For class of 2020 high school recruits, that means anyone who used a redshirt season at some point from 2021 to 2024 can return in 2025. The only way anyone who enrolled in college before 2020 can still be on a roster next season would be to receive a waiver for an additional year of eligibility due to an injury.

There are seven scholarship players on the roster who graduated from high school in 2020 who could return for the 2025 season if they choose to do so: running back Chip Trayanum, wide receiver Ja’Mori Maclin, offensive tackle Courtland Ford, defensive linemen Josaih Hayes and Darrion Henry-Young and linebackers D’Eryk Jackson and Daveren Rayner. Fourth-string quarterback Beau Allen would also fall into this group, but he is now a walk-on.

Some of those players will have to decide whether to enter the draft or not. Others will decide if they are simply ready to move on to life after football. Some might want to return to college but use their final year of eligibility at another school.

NFL draft

While defensive lineman Deone Walker may not have had the statistical impact this season fans hoped for when he was hyped as a likely first-round draft pick entering the season, there is no reason to expect he will turn down the draft to return.

The more intriguing decisions will come from borderline draft picks with eligibility remaining. Kentucky has a mixed track record with players in this group in recent years, losing multiple players with eligibility remaining who were not picked until day three of the draft or not selected at all.

Cornerback Maxwell Hairston and wide receivers Barion Brown and Dane Key lead the group of underclassmen with draft decisions to make. Hairston looked like a lock to go pro entering the season when The Athletic ranked him as a top-50 prospect for the 2025 draft, but after missing most of the season due to an undisclosed health issue it is possible he could consider a return to solidify his stock. Key has enjoyed a breakout 2024 season but still might be overshadowed by other receivers in the class. Brown has done little to prove he is ready for the NFL as anything other than a return specialist, but there has been a general assumption around the program he would leave after three years.

It’s difficult to see a scenario where any other underclassmen are drafted, but the possibility exists that someone else from the 2021 or 2022 high school classes with remaining eligibility declares for the draft anyway.

Transfer portal

Since the NCAA moved to allow all players to transfer once without sitting out a year, Kentucky has mostly seen its outgoing transfers come from a group of players buried on the depth chart looking for larger roles at other schools. Of the 21 scholarship players who left via the transfer portal last offseason, none are contributing regularly for a Power Four program.

There will surely be more departures like that from the current UK roster. The question for Stoops this week is if any players he is counting on to contribute in 2025 are considering entering the portal. Any borderline NFL draft prospects who elect to return to college could receive transfer portal interest from powerhouse programs.

Stoops’ vision for the future of the offense could be particularly important for this group. In the same way Stoops decided to fire coordinator Eddie Gran after the 2020 season because the offense had become too one-dimensional, he must weigh the ability to retain his most promising young playmakers and recruit better offensive skill players with the desire to build continuity that has been missing on his offensive staff for years.

The obvious position to watch for transfer movement is quarterback.

Starter Brock Vandagriff has one season of eligibility remaining. After being benched for the second half of the Auburn game, he retained his starting role against Tennessee but suffered a head injury that forced him from the game. If the injury causes him to miss more time after the bye, it will be even harder for him to cement his status as UK’s 2025 starter.

Backup Gavin Wimsatt also has one season of eligibility remaining, but unless he dramatically improves his passing accuracy while Vandagriff is sidelined he will probably need to look elsewhere if he wants to start in his final season. Freshman Cutter Boley, a former four-star recruit, has been described as the quarterback of the future but has only played in garbage time of one game. He could play in each of the remaining three games and retain his redshirt.

The final three games will be essential for Stoops and offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan to determine whether they can build around Vandagriff in 2025 or hand the reins of the offense to Boley. If neither quarterback seizes the job, the staff may have no other option but to pursue another transfer quarterback this winter.

Next game

Murray State at Kentucky

When: Saturday, Nov. 16, 1:30 p.m.

TV: SEC Network+

Records: Murray State 1-8 (0-6 MVC); Kentucky 3-6 (1-6 SEC)

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Series: Kentucky leads 2-0

Last meeting: Kentucky won 48-10 on Sept. 15, 2018, in Lexington

This story was originally published November 7, 2024 at 7:00 AM.

Jon Hale

Lexington Herald-Leader

(859) 414-6776

Jon Hale is the University of Kentucky football beat writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the Herald-Leader in 2022 but has covered UK athletics for more than 10 years. Hale was named the 2021 Kentucky Sportswriter of the Year. Support my work with a digital subscription