What if I told you UK’s QB situation is in the best shape of the Stoops era?
On Saturday, after Kentucky football had completed the first of what will be two preseason, intrasquad scrimmages, Mark Stoops proclaimed himself pleased with UK’s quarterback play.
“Zach and Cutter got the bulk of the reps,” Stoops said of Kentucky’s top two QBs, Zach Calzada and Cutter Boley. “They both played very good. They took care of the football. I think conversion on some critical third downs was an improvement.”
While Kentucky was obviously in a stronger position at starting quarterback when it had Will Levis returning for 2022 off a 10-win season in 2021, UK’s overall standing at the QB position — what it has currently on the roster and what it has committed from the high school ranks — looks stronger right now than it has ever been in the Stoops coaching era.
A seventh-year player with 10 SEC starts on his resume in 2021 at Texas A&M, Calzada was brought to Kentucky to apply his ample game experience as the UK starter.
Calzada gave an interesting answer Saturday when asked what his focus was as he goes through his first (and what will be his only) preseason camp with Kentucky.
“For me, it’s just, being a ‘game manager,’ and it’s just keeping my team ahead of the (first down) sticks,” the 6-foot-4, 230-pound product of Buford, Georgia, said. “You know, when Coach calls ‘shot plays,’ if it’s not there, not forcing anything. Taking my check downs, handing the ball off on RPOs, when I (am) supposed to, just managing the game.
“There’s big plays (that) will come, but if you’re searching for (them), you can get behind the sticks quickly. So making sure that I keep us in third-and-short situations and taking yards when we do (have them).”
If you are a Kentucky football backer, you should hear echoes of the approach Stephen Johnson took in 2016 when he was forced into action as the Cats’ starting QB in place of an injured Drew Barker. Johnson led Kentucky to the first winning season of the Stoops era, one that launched UK on an eight-year bowl streak.
As Kentucky looks to bounce back from the 4-8 slog last year that snapped that postseason streak, I think Stoops and Co. would be more than pleased if the 2025 UK offense can look like the one from 2016.
Entering his redshirt freshman season, Boley, the former Lexington Christian Academy star, appears to have made the developmental progress the UK brain trust would have wished to see from the Wildcats’ presumptive “quarterback of the future.”
At UK media day, Boley said he has added 20 pounds of muscle to his 6-foot-5 frame.
“I’m sitting on 222 right now,” Boley said of his weight. “Still trying to put a little bit more weight on. But, yeah, I feel better in everything I’m doing. Way better as a runner in the pocket, how I move around. I feel so much faster, so much more explosive.”
Kentucky’s first four games of the 2025 season — Toledo, Mississippi, Eastern Michigan and at South Carolina — are crucial to the fate of the Wildcats’ season.
Against a stacked schedule that includes six teams in the preseason AP Top 25, it is hard to get UK to bowl eligibility if the Cats don’t win at least three of those first four.
The Wildcats need the experience Calzada gained starting games both for Texas A&M and, over the previous two seasons, for Incarnate Word, to supply a boost in those early games.
Kentucky has two true freshman QBs, Stone Saunders and Brennen Ward, on its 2025 roster. It is too soon to evaluate what the future is for either in Lexington.
Adding to UK’s strong positioning at quarterback are the two promising high school QBs who are presently committed to the Wildcats.
Class of 2026 quarterback Matt Ponatoski of Cincinnati’s Moeller High School turned down offers from Alabama and Oregon, among many others, to commit to UK.
The 6-1, 195-pound Ponatoski is the reigning Ohio Gatorade High School Player of the Year in both football and baseball — and plans to play both sports at Kentucky.
UK backers will have to sweat out the 2026 MLB draft, in which Ponatoski is considered a potential early-round pick, before they can feel secure in adding the composite four-star QB to the Cats’ roster.
Class of 2027 QB D.J. Hunter committed to Kentucky on April 7. That did not stop Lane Kiffin and Mississippi from recently offering the 6-1, 190-pound Hunter a scholarship.
A dual threat, Hunter is transferring from Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Buford High School in Georgia for his junior season.
There is, obviously, a whole lot of time before either Ponatoski or Hunter will enter college — and a lot can change in recruiting.
As things stand now, however, Kentucky seems in as good a shape at quarterback as it has been in eons.
