Did the 2025 NFL draft symbolize the end of an era in UK football recruiting?
Although the Buffalo Bills made Maxwell Hairston the No. 30 pick in the 2025 NFL draft, in one sense it is hard not to regard the former Kentucky cornerback as the draft’s overall winner.
Invited to the draft in Green Bay by the NFL, Hairston’s demonstrable excitement in the green room for the players who were chosen before him drew vast, positive attention.
“My favorite moment of the draft so far has been watching Maxwell Hairston beaming and hugging every guy who walks past him to go to the stage,” the SEC Network’s Alyssa Lang wrote on the social media platform X. “Just a bundle of absolute joy.”
From the perspective of the UK football program, the 2025 NFL draft proved notable on three fronts.
1.) Both of the Wildcats players who were chosen, Hairston and defensive tackle Deone Waker (fourth round, overall pick No. 109), were selected by Buffalo.
With those two joining former UK running back Ray Davis with the Bills, it seems likely Buffalo has now become — at the least — “the second-favorite NFL team” for the entire Big Blue Nation.
However, the total of two Wildcats players drafted in 2025 was the lowest number of ex-Cats chosen in an NFL draft since 2020, when Kentucky also had only two.
2.) For the first time since 2018, Louisville had the outright lead among Kentucky universities in total number of players taken in an NFL draft.
Jeff Brohm’s Cardinals saw quarterback Tyler Shough (second round, No. 40 overall, to New Orleans); defensive end Ashton Gillotte (third round, No. 66 overall, to Kansas City); and cornerback Quincy Riley (fourth round, No. 131 overall, to New Orleans) all chosen.
The commonwealth’s third FBS football program, Western Kentucky, had one player drafted. Defensive back Upton Stout went in the third round, pick No. 100, to San Francisco.
The Hilltoppers are now the only non-power conference program to have at least one player taken within the first three rounds in each of the past four NFL drafts.
3.) Both UK players chosen in the draft, Hairston (West Bloomfield, Michigan) and Walker (Detroit) hail from metropolitan Detroit.
Their selection in the same draft represents the high point of the “Detroit recruiting pipeline” that proved such a boon to Kentucky football in the middle years of the Mark Stoops coaching regime.
It also might have represented that pipeline’s symbolic closing.
Starting with linebacker DeAndre Square in 2018 through tight end Khamari Anderson in 2023, Kentucky signed eight football players from metro Detroit.
Of those eight, six went on to become UK starters, all eight were contributors — and three would become NFL draft picks.
Square (Cass Tech High School) was a multi-year staple of the Kentucky defensive front seven who played on UK’s 10-win teams in 2018 and 2021 (the latter of which was subsequently vacated by the NCAA due to rules violations).
Nose guards Marquan McCall (Oak Park) and Justin Rogers (Oak Park) and offensive tackle Jeremy Flax (Robichaud) all became starters in the trenches for Kentucky.
Offensive tackle Deondre Buford (Martin Luther King) and tight end Anderson (Cass Tech) were both contributors at Kentucky before seeking larger roles at other schools via the transfer portal.
Rogers, too, finished his college career elsewhere. After playing his final college season at Auburn, Rogers was chosen in the seventh round of the 2024 NFL draft (No. 244 overall) by the Dallas Cowboys
After departing the Motor City, Hairston (West Bloomfield) and Walker (Cass Tech) both became star-level players in Lexington.
The speedy Hairston left UK with six career interceptions, three of which he returned for touchdowns. Walker, an agile 6-foot-6, 330-pound giant, had 10 quarterback sacks and 23 tackles for loss during his three-year Kentucky career.
Former Wildcats assistant Steve Clinkscale is generally credited with “opening up Detroit” for Kentucky recruiting. Once the Michigan Wolverines lured Clinckscale away, Cats aides Eric Wolford and Vince Marrow were able to keep the Motor City pipeline open for a time.
UK’s football reality is that it competes in a brutal conference as the flagship university of a smallish state that does not consistently produce a bounty of SEC-caliber football players. That is why consistent access to, roughly, one quality player a year from Detroit was such a benefit to Stoops.
Alas, after Kentucky inked those eight combined products of Detroit high schools from 2018 through 2023, no one from the Motor City has signed on in the past two recruiting classes to travel south down I-75 to play football for UK.
Among Kentucky’s combined 2024 and 2025 recruiting classes, the only Michigan presence is incoming freshman Darrin Strey — and the 6-7, 305-pound offensive tackle hails from Paw Paw, Michigan, some 159 miles to the west of Motown.
This fall, unless something changes, there will be no player from Detroit on the Kentucky football roster for the first time since 2017.
So while Hairston and Walker hearing their names called in the same NFL draft was the apex for UK football’s “Detroit pipeline,” it also felt a good bit like its ending.
This story was originally published April 28, 2025 at 5:19 PM.
