Bush Hamdan (Vicky Graff Photo)
How many quarterbacks does a Southeastern Conference team need?
The answer apparently is as many as it can get.
The Cats have two true freshman quarterbacks — Stone Saunders and Brennen Ward — along with a redshirt freshman — Cutter Boley — on next season’s roster. The Cats also have a commitment from high school junior to be DJ Hunter of Knoxville.
Now Kentucky seems to be making a big effort to add Oscar Rios, a 6-3, 170-pound four-star prospect who is ranked as the nation’s 12th best quarterback prospect in the 2026 recruiting class and top 200 overall prospect on On3.
The California prospect verbally committed to Purdue in June but decommitted after Purdue head coach Ryan Walters fired offensive coordinator Graham Harrell.
As a sophomore at Downey High School in 2023, the first-year starter threw for 2,633 yards with 23 touchdowns to five interceptions and completed 73 percent of his passes. He also rushed for 767 yards and seven scores.
As a junior in 2024, Rios threw for 2,554 yards and 22 touchdowns and ran for 735 yards and 11 touchdowns.
Rios had offers from Auburn, Kansas, Washington, Utah, Michigan State, Nebraska, Cal, Arizona State and San Diego State when he committed to Purdue. Now he has narrowed his potential schools to Kentucky, Oklahoma State, Virginia Tech, UCLA, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. He has official visits scheduled to Virginia Tech (May 30), Utah (June 6), Arizona (June 13), and Colorado (June 20).
Kentucky offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan has made a positive impression on Rios to help persuade him to make his first official visit to Kentucky already.
4 Responses
The thing is will Stoops utilize the QB’s. That’s one area he’s not done well.
Oscar Rios would automatically be the second string as a true freshman only behind Boley. I’m not sold on Ward yet I haven’t seen him play enough, but Stone Saunders Oscar Rios and Cutter Boley would be 3 great future quarterbacks. I just hope Stoops doesn’t drop the ball on this one. All 3 quarterbacks I mentioned in a year or 2 could start for probably any team so he better evaluate and pick the best one and go with them. For some reason I don’t know if Cutter will ever be the man. You have to have a certain type of personality to be a quarterback. Kinda like Beau Allen. He was supposed to be the future for Kentucky and has been in college now for 6 years and is a third stringer how does that happen? Oscar Rios is the most talented out of the 3. Stone Saunders probably is the best in the locker room as he’s a winner. They all 3 have a decent arm and are all decent on accuracy. It will be a great quarterback battle but is there to many quarterbacks? That’s the question I see Ward transferring at the end of the year the writing is on the wall. So next year will be Boley Saunders(if he doesn’t transfer he had a ton of colleges wanting to sign him) I guess its a good problem to have. But I see Rios if he signs being the future of Kentucky football. I doubt he signs tho being a west coast kid.
Has Bush really been any recruiting asset yet?
Gotta feeling everything will change for UKFB after this year. Maybe north or south ??