Offseason Spotlight: No. 11 Beau Allen

Lexington Catholic product and redshirt sophomore Beau Allen may have to be prepared to wait one more year for his chance at another competition for the starting quarterback position, but he is probably learning a lot along the way.

Allen is going into his third year in the UK football program. He has now had as many offensive coordinators during that time.

He committed to Kentucky when Eddie Gran was UK's coordinator and redshirted in the last year of his time running the offense. Last year as a redshirt freshman Allen was beat out by Will Levis for the starting quarterback position during the offseason, and the Penn State transfer didn't look back.

With Levis returning with a lot of hype, Allen is in a new position. He's a veteran in a college football program having to wait while remaining prepared in case he needs to go in the game.

The long-time assumption has been Alen would be the "next man up" if there were an injury to Levis. That may still be the case, although UK brought in Iowa transfer Deuce Hogan, a former four-star recruit, as a preferred walk-on, so there's competition even behind Levis.

Allen was 4/11 for 75 yards with a sack in the spring game. He had a long of 32, which went to walk-on receiver Rahsaan Lewis.

But anyone who watched the Blue-White Game could tell you it wouldn't be fair to grade Allen's performance in that contest with too much scrutiny. He was playing with a lot of backups around him, including sometimes the third and fourth offensive tackles, while sometimes facing the 1s on defense. In short, the deck was stacked against some of the backup quarterbacks.

When asked about Rich Scangarello and the shift to his offense from Liam Coen this spring Allen said, “There’s definitely a transition. We’re always having to learn more stuff and trying to dive more into the playbook every day, but I don’t know if there’s one certain thing off the top of my mind that may be the hardest, but there’s definitely a lot of things you have to put some extra effort in to get right and get to the ability you want to have. There’s definitely a change, but it’s a good change for me to help learn more stuff on football and learn more different styles of offenses. The struggle and the grind’s been fun so far.”

Last season Allen got into three games, completing 8/12 passes for 92 yards with no scores and no picks. He rushed four times for nine yards. Nothing has happened on the field or in a spring game that's worth reading into, so the coaching staff's true opinion of Allen remains inside the walls of the football offices for now.

But he may well be Kentucky's most important backup on the team going into the 2022 season, because the Cats seem to be set up for a big offensive year, and if Levis were to go down then Allen could very well have a chance to become a starting quarterback in the SEC.