Marrow: 14 underclassmen on the NFL's radar and how UK got here

While Kentucky Football’s eleven NFL draft prospects began their Pro Day workouts Friday morning, Kentucky’s NFL liaison, Vince Marrow, took a seat beside Christi Thomas and Jeff Piecoro on the UKAthletics.com internet stream.

As you can imagine, Marrow was the best version of himself bragging about how far the program has climbed since he and Mark Stoops arrived on campus, to the point that all 32 teams showed up for today’s Pro Day. Marrow recalled the early days when Pro Day was a non-event on Kentucky’s campus.

“I remember when we first got here, Pro Day wasn’t all this,” Marrow said. “It was more, a couple of scouts would come in and they’d do measurements and then they’d be on their way to Ohio State, or at the time, Louisville was having a lot of guys. So it’s come full circle, just recruit and develop.”

Not just about this year’s draft class of Wildcats, Marrow also shined a light on the next crop of talent who still have a season or two of college football in Lexington. The Big Dog revealed NFL personnel already inquired about over a dozen current players on Kentucky’s roster for next year’s draft and beyond.

“We just had our underclassmen test,” Marrow said. “Believe it or not, there was 14 dudes that they asked for, for our underclassmen for next year’s draft. Again, this year we have about seven (NFL draft picks). I feel good about seven. Next year, it will be about seven or eight.”

Marrow also ran through all of the reasons for Kentucky’s turning point, ranging from a patient fan base, expanding recruiting to Ohio, important coaching hires, and finally getting over the hump against Steve Spurrier at South Carolina and then the Florida streak in 2018.

In 2018, there was a pretty important NFL draft prospect who almost left for the league one year earlier. Looking back, Marrow explained what went into Allen’s decision to return for Kentucky’s historic season.

“When I talk to these guys about the NFL, I go back to Josh Allen,” Marrow explained. “Josh was coming out (in 2017) and I would never tell a kid, stay or go, I just give them pros and cons. I asked Josh, what do you want to do? He was like, Coach, if I stay, you all have to bring somebody else in that’s going to help my game go to the next level, and that was Brad White.

“He could’ve been a second or third-rounder coming out in ’17, but I said, look dude, you got a chance to come back and be a top-10 pick. I thought he should’ve been the first pick in the draft, I really do, and he changed his family by staying.”

Marrow reiterated that he’ll never tell a recruit to come back for Kentucky’s purposes, but he will challenge them to return to improve their game and, in turn, their draft stock. Like the conversation with Allen, Marrow made a similar proposal to Darian Kinnard following the 2020 season and we will soon see Kinnard’s comeback was best for his long-term future.

Brad White chimed in on the matter during the Pro Day internet broadcast, too. White said, “If you can just go one more year to mature, look what it can do–leaps and bounds. (Josh Allen) set a precedent for us… Why not just come back, become a better football player, get bigger, faster, stronger, develop your football IQ… All in all, it’s a good system of development here.”

We’ll have plenty more from that system and UK’s Pro Day throughout the day as the action continues over at Kentucky’s training facility.