Quarterback Stone Saunders had many reasons to bail on UK. Here’s why he stayed true blue
Last week, when the Kentucky football program made its new players for 2025 available to the media for the first time, true freshman quarterback Stone Saunders was the guy for whom I went looking.
One of the most decorated high school football quarterbacks UK has ever signed, the Pennsylvania product kept his commitment to Kentucky under circumstances that would have caused many others to bail.
“I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some doubt after Liam (Coen) left,” Saunders said last Tuesday at UK’s Nutter Field House. “Just because you don’t know what is going to happen.”
When the class of 2025 QB committed to play for UK on Aug. 4, 2023, these were the facts underlying his decision:
Rising coaching star Liam Coen was running the Wildcats offense.
Saunders had known Coen for most of his life because the coach is a friend of the quarterback’s father, ex-Baltimore Ravens strength and conditioning coach Steve Saunders.
Based on the success now-Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis had enjoyed playing for Coen at Kentucky in 2021, coming to Lexington seemed a prime path that an ambitious QB could take to the NFL.
At the time Saunders committed, the Kentucky football program was also seven years into what would become an eight-year streak of consecutive bowl games.
Alas, long before Saunders could officially sign with UK on Dec. 4, 2024, the circumstances that had helped lead to his commitment to Mark Stoops’ Wildcats had changed fundamentally.
After the 2023 season, Coen left UK, joining the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers to serve as OC for the Buccaneers in 2024.
With Coen — now the newly named head man of the Jacksonville Jaguars — gone in 2024, the Kentucky passing attack looked like anything but a quarterback’s route to pro football.
Out of 133 FBS teams, UK finished 112th in passing yards a game last season, throwing for only 184.8 yards a contest.
If that weren’t enough, Kentucky also endured a competitive collapse last fall, seeing its bowl string snapped after the Wildcats managed only a 4-8 overall mark, 1-7 in SEC play.
Yet Saunders, who had 20 scholarship offers from power conference schools and turned down Georgia, Miami (Fla.) and Michigan, among others, to pick Kentucky stayed true to the blue.
Not long after Coen made his exit, Saunders said he got a phone call from Stoops.
“He was like, ‘Stay committed to me. You are our highest priority,’” Saunders said. “(Stoops) wanted me and, deep down, I still wanted to be here. From the first day, I felt like I was part of the family here, even on my first recruiting visit.”
When Stoops chose then-Boise State OC Bush Hamdan to replace Coen in running the Cats’ offense, Saunders had some familiarity with the new man. Saunders trains with 3DQB, a Huntington, California, based firm devoted to quarterback development. Hamdan was well connected to the 3DQB staff, Saunders said.
“(Hamdan) came and visited me after he got the job. He was a super-straight shooter. Family guy,” Saunders said. “He brought me into his family right away. And I just felt at home with it right away.”
The quarterback that Kentucky held onto is a Pennsylvania high school legend.
Pennsylvania has produced NFL QB legends Joe Montana (Monongahela), Johnny Unitas (Pittsburgh), Dan Marino (Pittsburgh), Jim Kelly (East Brady) and Joe Namath (Beaver Falls) — not to mention University of Kentucky quarterback icons George Blanda (Youngwood) and Babe Parilli (Rochester).
Yet it is Stone Saunders (Harrisburg) who is the Keystone State’s all-time high school leader in passing yards (13,719), passing touchdowns (204) and pass completions (781).
Yet Saunders says the Pennsylvania individual records he set are less meaningful to him than the state championships he directed Bishop McDevitt High School to in 2022 and 2024.
“The state championships are the things, I look back and watch the videos and it makes me happy,” Saunders said.
In this fall’s UK quarterback room, Incarnate Word transfer Zach Calzada — a former SEC QB at both Texas A&M and Auburn — and ex-Lexington Christian Academy star Cutter Boley are expected to start atop the depth chart.
The 6-4, 230-pound Calzada, whose college career began in 2019, threw for 3,791 yards last season at Incarnate Word.
Boley, a 6-5, 214-pound redshirt freshman, logged time in four games for Kentucky last season as a true frosh. He showed considerable promise in second-half duty vs. Murray State and at Texas, while looking like a true freshman after starting in UK’s season-ending loss to Louisville.
Whether Saunders can work his way into a QB competition with those two as a true freshman is, obviously, still to be determined.
“I’ve got a handle on the weight room,” Saunders says of his transition into college football. “I’m starting to get a handle on the playbook. Obviously, it will take time.”
Ultimately, Saunders says he kept his commitment to Kentucky even after his initial connection to UK football, Liam Coen, departed, because he came to believe he was meant to be a Wildcat.
“I really never thought about going anywhere else, even with coach Coen leaving,” he said. “I think (Coen) opened the door, just so I could see everything good that happened here. ... I think God really had a plan for me to come here.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2025 at 7:18 PM.
