Vicky Graff Photo
After Kentucky lost to Louisville receiver Ja’Mori Maclin was brutally honest about the UK football program.
“It’s a collective thing,” he said when asked what went wrong during UK’s 4-8 season. “You can say the receivers, you can say the running backs, you can say the O-line — it’s all of us. It’s stuff we know we could’ve worked on and done better. I feel like we’re still a great team, just made a few mistakes. You just have to look back on the season and learn and grow.”
He said the leadership in the locker room is an issue.
“It can be all around — players, coaches, whatever it is,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re still a team. It’s not one specific player or one specific group. All around, we need better leadership.”
Combine that with his limited opportunities until late in the season and it seemed he was headed for the transfer portal. However, receivers Dane Key, Barion Brown and Anthony Brown-Stephens all announced they were transferring, Maclin announced he would be back for his final season and figures to be UK’s No. 1 receiver going into the 2025 season.
Maclin had 13 receptions for 313 yards and a team-leading four touchdowns in 2024 but when he was given a chance, he made big-time plays and big-yardage plays.
He started his college football career at Missouri but transferred after having just one catch for five yards. He went to North Texas and in two seasons caught 73 passes for 1,384 yards and 13 scores. He had 57 catches for 1,004 yards and 11 touchdowns in 2023 before entering the transfer portal. He had 39 catches in 2023 that went for first downs
Getting him back gives offensive coordinator and potential starting quarterback Cutter Boley a clear No. 1 receiver.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys,” Maclin said after the Louisville gae. “We’ve got Cutter , we’ve got (receiver) Hardley (Gilmore) — a bunch of young guys that can step up and be really good for this program. It’s all about getting those guys ready for next season.”
This is a complete list of players who have indicated they will enter the transfer portal when it officially opens:
Barion Brown – WR
Dane Key – WR
Anthony Brown-Stephens – WR
Jordan Dingle – TE
Avery Stuart – DB
Keeshawn Silver – DL
Jayvant Brown – LB
Cortland Ford – OL
Khamari Anderson – TE
Tanner Lemaster – TE
Tommy Ziesmer – DL
Ben Christman – OL
Tyreese Fearbry – OLB
Noah Matthews – OLB
Walker Himebauch – LS
Jarard Mosely – DB
6 Responses
NIL and the portal have forever ruined college sports. It has become worse than professional sports. Everybody is a free agent every year. Trying to field a competitive program in any sport now is a complete crap shoot. A school cannot have a weak link in their coaching staffs period.
I don’t know if ruined is the right word or not Barry but sure has changed
Honestly I wouldn’t care if every player hit the portal. There was something terribly wrong with this team beyond coaching. Coaches don’t line up and get countless penalties. That falls on the players. We were one of the most penalized teams in the SEC. Let me give you all some more info. Boise state is in the playoffs. Last year they were terrible. So should we have hired the Boise state offensive coordinator from this year or last year? Same team but the offensive philosophy was night and day better without Bush coincidence I think not!
Wow great the worst receiver that we have is coming back! Now maybe he will get open!
I think Maclin was actually the best receiver the last few games when given a chance to make plays
Exactly Larry–I was going to post the exact same response! And not only was Maclin our BEST and most consistent receiver the last 3 or 4 games, but he was also about the only player on the team who displayed any significant signs at all of positivity in terms of team leadership or actual work and effort put in at a time when it was easier to just quit, like most of them did, and showing he was willing to publicly take accountability for the team’s issues and be honest about the team’s lack of leadership. Him and Eli Cox were the only two that I heard speak during the final 3 weeks or so who even cared anymore. And I think that is revealed here as part of Maclin’s reason for returning. I very much expected him to hit the portal too, but he may see a leadership spot available for himself next season as the #1 receiver, and maybe has a little pride and love for UK–maybe not–Im just saying it would have been very easy for him to leave too, and he didn’t. And he showed enough in his short time that if he has a QB decent enough at throwing the ball, that he could emerge as a top target. He and Wimsatt seemed to develop a chemistry this season, and they were the only signs of life they had left in that LOU game. Also, I think Hardley-Gilmore is another one to watch for next season on the team in terms of talent at receiver–he also came on late in the season and showed the flashes of his hype coming out of high school. He and Maclin are two good pieces to have and to work with for next year,and may be the ONLY talent u have to work with for next year. What has happened to this football program is just a travesty, and for me it turned to sadness from anger after the LOU game. That was a new low point–but it reflected the real problems and issues with this team more than any other game this year. I have never seen a KY FB team LAY DOWN to the degree with which they did against LOU since the last days of the Joker era, and the last days of the Hal Mumme era before that, when the team was being hit with NCAA probation. The thing that is so concerning about that is that we have never really seen that level of low during the entirety of the Stoops era because even starting with his first season, his teams have always been playing in a culture that was about going UP, aiming to BUILD UP the program, first REBUILD IT with recruiting, utilizing the pipelines Stoops and Marrow had in Big Ten country, then BUILD IT UP to a level of having a winning season and making a bowl game every year, which began in 2016, then BUILD UP from there to a level of respectability nationally and being able to win in the SEC, which really took off in 2018 and peaked from then through 2021. The 2022 season was when all of that began to take a slide downward, but that was only the first full football recruiting year of the new NIL and portal rules. So that all hadn’t really taken effect longer-term yet, and we still had a lot of veterans and seniors in 2022 that were from those previous teams who were still a part of that old KY culture, and were still playing for that. 2023 was really the first year that our program was more so affected by that, as for the first time, we had to completely rebuild the central cog of our offense entirely through the portal and NIL incentives. And through those two years, Stoops still managed to keep the program minimally stable by posting back-to-back 7-6 records, and still maintaining the bowl streak and the UofL winning streak–and last year, Ray Davis was single-handedly responsible for keeping all of that going–if we don’t get him last year, we see everything that ended this year end last year. That’s how good he was. And that’s also how fast the changes in the sport can change any particular program –look at the gradual slides that began taking place in 2022, more so in 2023, then the bottoming-out in 2024. Last year, we lost Davis and the remainder of any of the old seniors that were still around from our original run under Stoops, and that, combined with transitioning fully into the NIL era, caught up to our program and has completely erased the original "KY DREAM" that Stoops and Marrow were selling recruits on from 2014 to 2021. What makes me so sad is that it was working–even Stoops’ second and third seasons, we were only one win away each of those seasons from bowl-eligibility, so he was already knocking on that door, and just think: we did something those two seasons that we have not done the last 3 seasons: beat SCAR and Vandy. Let that sink in for a moment……..and take a second to realize that starting with 2022, which to me was the start of the dividing line between the old and the new for UK FB, the further the game of college FB itself has immersed and transitioned into the new NIL and portal era, the worse and more increased the downward slide and downward trend has been for KY FB. When u start with 2022, and look at the patterns and trends that have taken place with KY from then until the end of this season, the evidence is blatantly clear, obvious, and damning. The ability to maintain two consecutive 7-6 seasons was carried mostly on the back of veteran defensive players from that old Stoops culture who were on their final years of eligibility and their COVID eligibility—but u saw a major slide occur with the offense starting in 2022 with the dramatic crash of the O-LINE after losing a group of guys the prior year who had been there anywhere from 4-7 years, and were the guys who had built the original culture of what the KY OLINE was about. The group who started coming in as far back as 2014-15 and were there until 2021 were the architects of the Big Blue Wall, and losing all of them in one year was something u could not replace if u are KY. And now 3 consecutive years we have continued to regress on the OLINE and failed to rebuild it back up again. In 2023, we were faced with having to replace two years’ worth of Will Levis at QB, a once-in-a-gen receiver in Wan’dale Robinson, along with super senior Josh Ali, and 5-6 years’ worth of Chris Rodriguez at RB, who was the last in a long line of RB’s who carried a huge load of our offenses under Stoops going back to Boom Williams and JoJo Kemp in 2014-15 and Benny Snell and Lynn Bowden from 2016 to 2019, then C-ROD from 2020to2022. Ray Davis was plugged in for one year and saved that running game in 2023, and was the sole reason we beat LOU and kept the bowl streak alive for another year. But Devin Leary was a massive failure at QB for what that coaching staff had hoped, and he did NOT continue on with what Will Levis had gotten going here. But of course, he had weapons at his disposal that helped in his own individual success, and that brings us to 2024—This was the year the all-systems failure came. We had to go back into the portal once again to try to find an answer at QB, and wound up with somebody who wasn’t even as good as Leary. We for the first time in almost 10 years didn’t have an established answer at running back, and it was three straight years of horrible OLINE play. The losses of major veterans and talent at all those positions who were here between a total of 4-8 years finally caught up and came home to roost in 2024. And that has to eventually fall back on the coaching staff: where has the recruiting and the continued development of new players at these positions been over the last 3-4 years to replace these glaring losses and new replacement needs that existed in 2023, 2024, and today? What’s happening with Stoops and Marrow these last 3 years? I know nobody likes hearing Stoops complain about the NIL and the transfer portal, but it has clearly changed the game and changed recruiting, and i seriously question how good Stoops is going to be at it, and if he is the right man to continue on with trying to lead and build our football program into this new era. The disliking of it seems to have just gotten in his head to the degree that he is just obsessed with it and obsessed with how much he hates having to raise money that it has gotten in the way of his ability to develop players and taken away the time that he invested with his high school recrutiing. Because I will be honest–as angry as I have been about what has happened to the program the last couple of years, up to 2022, the culture Stoops created here and the way that he was recruiting and building teams and developing the players at those skill positions, it was working–it was at least working well enough, by KY standards. The only thing Stoops needed to figure out how to make better at KY was developing and recruiting better QBs, and receivers, and finding some kind of offensive identity/philosophy, and some kind of answer of how to move the ball thru the air, and move the chains in general, and score points! And find ONE OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR who will work with him on establishing that philosophy like he has gotten Brad White to do with him on the defense. If the strides he has made here on the defensive side of the ball, and in the running game and OLINE, could have been made at QB and receiver, Stoops could very well have been a unanimous all-time great here, and KY could have very well been right there in GA, TN, and FLA territory as far as being able to have as good a talent and recruiting as those programs, and being able to beat them semi-regularly. That direction was beginning in the 2018-2021 era, but that was the end of the pre-NIL&portal era—and that has changed everything in the world of college football for players, coaches, and administrations. And it looks like KY is going to be one of those programs negatively affected by it, because it really is now all about money—it always has been all about money, the only difference in now vs before is just that the money is right in front of the fans’ faces, it’s no longer under the table–and KY dosnt have as much money as programs like TN, FLA, GA……and we definitely don’t have the athletic leadership of our football program that those other programs have! That’s why I believe the time is now for a come-to-Jesus kind of plan and commitment for the football program from the entire athletic dept and entire coaching administration working together to decide what kind of football program they want to have for this new era in college sports and how they figure they can go about reaching their goals for its success. The men’s and women’s bball programs both got that same kind of fresh new face-lift and renewed commitment for the future this past year, so now its time for them to do the same for the football program! The expectations, perks, rewards, etc that are currently in place for the football coach’s contract at the University of Kentucky are the same ones that were made and put in from 2016 and 2018—-time to get with the times, UK FOOTBALL!!!!!!