Kentucky Football Selects 7 Captains for 2023 Season

The Kentucky football team has spoken. Seven Wildcats have been selected by their peers as captains for the 2023 team.

QB Devin Leary, IOL Kenneth Horsey, IOL Eli Cox, DL Deone Walker, LB Trevin Wallace, EDGE JJ Weaver and DB Zion Childress will wear the letter ‘C’ on their Kentucky football jerseys this fall. Horsey and Weaver will be captains for a second straight season. In another sign of the change in times, three of the seven have been on campus for fewer than two years.

Leary joins Zion Childress as one of two captains that arrived from the transfer portal. The latter transferred from Texas State and emerged as a starter at No. 1 Georgia. The task was not too daunting as Childress tallied a season-high nine tackles and earned the respect of his teammates and coaches. Leary was a captain at NC State before transferring to Kentucky for his final season of college football.

In 2021 Leary broke Phillip Rivers’ NC State record for passing touchdowns in a single season, throwing for 35 scores to only five interceptions at a 65.7% completion rate. For that, he was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Preseason Player of the Year. Over four seasons at NC State, Leary completed 568-of-944 passes for 62 touchdowns and 6,807 career passing yards.

Not only do JJ Weaver and Kenneth Horsey share a distinction as returning captains, they each have been honored as the Mayo Clinic Comeback Player of the Year. Horsey has 33 starting assignments in his career, but this fall Eli Cox was tabbed preseason All-SEC, alongside Weaver and Walker. Big Deone from Detroit was one of only three true freshman to earn All-SEC honors from the AP in 2022.

It’s not a competition, but none of the predecessors have a moment at Kroger Field that can compare to Trevin Wallace’s introduction to the Big Blue Nation. The crowd pop is incomparable and may give you the urge to run through a brick wall.

The seven Kentucky football captains will lead the Wildcats onto the field for the first time tomorrow at Noon. It’s almost Football Time in the Bluegrass.

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