Wide Receiver Competition is Wide Open at Midway Point of Kentucky Football Fall Camp

The Kentucky football team has been practicing for two weeks. There are still a little more than two weeks until the Wildcats lace ’em up against Toledo.

These are the dog days of fall camp. It’s hot. The physical grind is wearing on their bodies. For some, it’s incomparable to the mental fatigue they’re fighting through on a daily basis. So, how do the coaches keep the players engaged? By reminding them that jobs are up for grabs.

“Competition, it always starts there. We’re certainly trying to create it at a ton of different positions,” said offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan.

That incentive has lit a fire under some players. Hamdan likes what he’s seen from the quarterbacks and the running backs. “If some guys are competing, they’re going to be playing. But how many targets are they going to get?”

That’s where things are interesting. What’s going on in the wide receiver room? Mark Stoops and Zach Calzada weren’t exactly eager to single out individuals following Saturday’s scrimmage. It’s been described as a “group effort.” Hamdan wants to see more in that wide receiver competition.

“I think the receiver room is the most competitive room right now. We’re really not sure where those guys are at,” said Hamdan.

“There’s probably seven or eight guys you see in practice where the consistency is up and down. The better players are less consistent and so on and so forth. For us, these guys know what’s on the line. We’ve really tried to evaluate and address where they’re at on Aug. 11, so they can respond to that and be ready to go early in the year.”

Where do the vets stand? That’s hard to tell. One thing has been made abundantly clear. Cameron Miller and Montavin Quisenberry are ball players. A few days after QB1 gave them a shout out, Josh Kattus shared a similar sentiment, commending them for making difficult, contested catches.

“You gotta be extremely talented to be able to play as a freshman… It speaks a lot to their work ethic and their talent to be able to do that,” said Kattus. “They just gotta keep building that trust. It’s not easy to play a freshman, but they’re doing a really good job of earning Coach Hamdan’s trust and giving themselves a shot to be out there week one.”

The freshmen are checking the right boxes, but Kentucky cannot rely on true freshmen to be Calzada’s primary pass-catchers. The Wildcats have a hodgepodge group of transfers who have experience at the collegiate level, just not as the guy. They don’t need them to turn into Wan’Dale Robinson, but Calzada needs players he can trust to catch the football.

Hamdan has issued a challenge to the wide receivers. They’ve got 2.5 weeks to prove themselves.

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