How Devin Leary worked to justify the hype as Kentucky football’s quarterback for hire

When Mark Stoops blasted his Kentucky football squad for a lack of leadership and sense of entitlement after a March spring practice, his comments might actually not have been the most interesting thing said about the Wildcats that day.

Instead, that honor went to senior offensive lineman Eli Cox when he was asked to expound on the leadership issues facing Kentucky.

“I think college football has changed a little bit in the aspect of the way the rules are, the things you’re allowed to do,” Cox said, pointing to the rule allowing most players to transfer once without sitting out a season. “I think it’s harder to build a team than it ever was. Stoops is doing his best job, all the coaches are doing their best jobs to bring in quality guys, but it’s just a lot of turnover because there’s going to be some disconnect at the beginning.

“We’ve got a lot of guys that haven’t been a part of this program but for two months. That’s the majority of our roster.”

While Cox’s description of the large group of newcomers in the Kentucky locker room as the majority of the roster might have been an exaggeration, there was no doubt the Wildcats were embarking on a season of unprecedented roster turnover.

By that point, Stoops and his staff had already added seven transfers from Division I programs and six mid-year enrollees from the 2023 freshman class. Kentucky would add seven more transfers in the summer alongside the other high school signees.

Cox’s comments came just minutes after the player with the highest profile of Kentucky’s transfers, former N.C. State quarterback Devin Leary, had addressed reporters.

“Devin, the guy you just talked to, he’s only been here a couple of months,” Cox said. “He’s still trying to figure out what Kentucky is all about. He’s done a great job, but there are a lot of guys in that position.

“I think we just really need to focus on driving home the rest of spring, all through summer, all through camp what this program was built on because there are a lot of guys that haven’t been here very long that are being asked and tasked with being a big part of this team.”

How well the Wildcats answered that challenge will likely say much about the success of the 2023 season, which kicks off on Sept. 2 against Ball State.

Can Kentucky’s recent run of success, built around the physical, workmanlike identity instilled by Stoops and his staff continue when many of the players counted on to fill key roles were free agents for hire rather than former high school signees who had spent years absorbing the program’s culture?

What lessons could be taken from the disappointments of 2022 if a large chunk of the roster was not around to learn from that adversity?

How would the culture Stoops had spent a decade honing react when the players who had been here for years watched the new transfers soak up much of the outside attention?

The 2023 case study of what Kentucky football looks like in the transfer portal era begins with Leary.

As arguably the most highly touted transfer in program history, Leary arrived in Lexington having already been anointed the face of the program before he even met many of his teammates.

This was not the same scenario as two years ago when Will Levis signed with Kentucky as a transfer from Penn State.

Levis had been an unknown quantity since he spent most of his time at Penn State as a run-first backup. There was no guarantee he would even win Kentucky’s starting job, and UK coaches started camp with him taking reps as the third-team quarterback.

Leary was a 2021 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award finalist and the 2022 Preseason ACC Offensive Player of the Year. Multiple websites ranked him as the top available quarterback in the transfer portal when he signed with Kentucky. Kentucky coaches made no attempt to even pretend he was simply competing for the starting job.

Leary’s first job is to play the way that had him considered one of the top quarterbacks in the country a year ago before he suffered a season-ending injury, but Kentucky needs more than just a quarterback capable of completing passes. If Leary is the face of the team, the Wildcats need him to be a leader as well.

“Devin is a very natural leader,” Stoops said. “He doesn’t overdo it. He still wants to work and take care of his own backyard, ultimately finding his voice and finding that leadership role to whatever level it goes to. It will happen authentically in time.”

Why Devin Leary is so hyped for Kentucky

Had things gone according to plan for Leary, he would not be at Kentucky now.

In 2021, Leary completed 65.7% of his passes for 3,433 yards, 35 touchdowns and five interceptions. His 35 touchdowns broke the N.C. State single-season record set by longtime NFL quarterback Philip Rivers. He was named one of five finalists for the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award alongside future NFL Draft picks Matt Corral, Kenny Pickett and Desmond Ridder and current Notre Dame starter Sam Hartman.

The 2022 season was supposed to be the chance for Leary to prove those numbers were no fluke and then make the jump to the NFL.

Instead, he tore the pectoral muscle on his right side in the sixth game. With no clear answers about when he would be able to resume throwing after surgery, Leary had to consider a different path.

“At any given time the game can be taken away from you,” Leary told the Herald-Leader in a one-on-one interview. “That’s happened to me. That’s something I want to share with the team. We’re truly blessed to be out here every single day.”

The injury provided Leary a chance to reevaluate his future.

Ultimately he decided a fresh start at a school that ran a pro-style offense would make the most of his final season of college eligibility.

The fact that Levis had just developed into a second-round draft pick in two years as Kentucky’s starter peaked his interest. While Leary insists he was not promised offensive coordinator Liam Coen, the Wildcats’ coordinator in a 10-win 2021 season, was returning to Lexington, he was confident Stoops would hire a coordinator capable of helping him address any lingering questions from NFL teams. The presence of promising young receivers, including Barion Brown and Dane Key, offered evidence he would have the help needed around him.

While Leary is not considered the same level of NFL Draft prospect as Levis, he is already a more accomplished college quarterback.

That experience was immediately noticeable when Leary returned to the field in time to participate in spring practice for the Wildcats.

“His game is going to speak for itself, literally,” outside linebacker J.J. Weaver said. “The balls he (throws) in practice are unbelievable. The small, tight windows, he throws in there.”

Weaver and many of Leary’s other new teammates describe the Wildcats’ new quarterback as initially reserved, choosing to observe rather than speak out. Over the course of the spring and summer, teammates saw Leary grow more comfortable in taking a vocal leadership role, but he is unlikely to ever be the type of leader who screams and yells to get others’ attention.

“He’s got a great way about him,” Coen said. “He has a really nice way of connecting with people just so naturally.”

At N.C. State, Leary had watched incoming transfers work their way into the existing team culture, but he never imagined he would one day be faced with the same challenge at another school.

Rather than develop a specific plan about winning his new teammates over, Leary fell back on the work ethic he had been taught by his parents and high school coach Rob Hinson. If his new teammates saw Leary working to learn a new offense and return from injury, Leary was confident their respect would follow.

“I would definitely say I’m not a super rah, rah type of guy,” Leary said. “I’m definitely someone that leads by example, someone that kind of is able to pull guys to the side and kind of communicate on how I see certain things, what they can do better or how I can help them.”

Handling the spotlight

While Leary was happy to put in the work behind the scenes needed to ensure a successful marriage between himself and Kentucky, there was no avoiding the attention that came with being one of the top-ranked transfers in the country.

As with most of its SEC brethren, Kentucky chose to bring only returning players to the league’s annual media days extravaganza in July. Leary might not have been physically present in Nashville for the event, but the three UK players there fielded questions about Leary throughout the day.

That attention continued into preseason camp where the most popular question posed to Kentucky players on both offense and defense centered around their impressions of the Wildcats’ new quarterback.

Despite that hype, Leary insists he placed no added pressure on himself to justify the attention.

“As much as I don’t really try to be aware of what the media or anyone is kind of ranking me … at the end of the day what I kind of put on film and the success I’ve had in the past, I feel like I’ve kind of earned it,” Leary said.

With no proven backup quarterback on the roster, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where Kentucky improves its seven-win total from last season without Leary backing up that hype.

The strides he has made in embracing the leadership role required of the starting quarterback since the damning assessment of locker room dynamics delivered by Stoops and Cox in the spring might be equally important.

As many as 14 new transfers could be listed on the first two-deep depth chart of the season released in advance of the season opener.

“I think the biggest thing for all of us transfers was really being vulnerable to embracing this culture, really understanding what Kentucky football was all about, what Coach Stoops has built here,” Leary said. “It was our job to fill our role and understand our place of why he recruited us and why he brought us in. Make sure we all meshed together and, honestly, we’ve done exactly that.”

When Stoops was rebuilding Kentucky’s program from 2-10 in his first season to seven consecutive bowl berths he did not have the luxury of adding immediately eligible transfers to address personnel holes on the roster. Under those rules, it would have been close to impossible for the Wildcats to fix an offensive line that ranked 126th of 131 teams in sacks allowed in one offseason or to weather the loss of the program’s first quarterback picked in the NFL Draft since 2008.

Leary and Kentucky’s other transfers still have to perform to ensure the transfer portal provided adequate solutions to those concerns, and Stoops knows the roster turnover means more attention has to be paid to the off-field dynamics, too.

“There’s not a hundred guys in that room that have been there for years and have heard me talk and heard us build that culture,” Stoops said. “It’s different. We have to do it very quickly. We have to adapt. We have to build this team. I feel like we have a very good football team, but we have to come together and be united and be a team very quickly.”

If the highest profile transfer can combine on-field production with the example needed for returning players and newcomers to blend together that task becomes much easier.

A quarterback garnering the lion’s share of attention is nothing new in football. Leary experienced that at Timber Creek High School in New Jersey and at N.C. State.

But all eyes are on Leary in a different way now. How he handles that spotlight will say much about Kentucky’s 2023 success or failure.

“It’s pretty cool being able to sit down here with guys at Kentucky and a little bit just share my story,” Leary said. “Just how I’ve come about to get to where I’m at today, the success and the failures I’ve had throughout my career.

“I just think me being an older guy it’s very important for younger guys and guys I’m just kind of meeting to understand why I play this game. I think it’s really crucial when you’re building a team, especially me coming in as a new quarterback, for everyone in the entire locker room to understand my purpose and why I play this game.”

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