Roundtable: The UK football players we're excited to watch
Cats Illustrated's long offseason series of roundtables continues today with each football writer on the staff chiming in with the player they're most excited to watch this season.
Travis Graf: Boogie Watson. The ‘JACK‘ ‘backer is coming off of a stellar junior season, finishing with as many quarterback hurries (28) as Josh Allen did during his senior season before Allen went on to win the Bednarik Award, Nagurski Trophy, SEC Defensive Player of the Year and solidify himself as a top-10 draft pick.
Watson finished 6th in the SEC in sacks a season ago with 6.5 and also tallied 36 tackles and 11.5 TFL coming off of the edge. Like Allen, Watson has consistently developed since he first arrived in Lexington and has shown a positive trajectory from season to season since 2017. If that trend continues in 2020, he could be a fear monger on the outside for the ‘Cats.
Jeff Drummond: I'd have to say, after what we saw transpire last year, the healthy return of Terry Wilson is at the top of the list. Will we see the dynamic guy who led the Cats to a bowl win over Penn State and looked really sharp in the first two games of the 2019 season, or will it take some time for Wilson to round back into form? Will he have the same explosiveness in the RPO game? What are the Cats capable of doing with the threat of a real passing game?
Honorable mention for Kelvin Joseph on the defensive side of the ball. The hype has been really strong for the LSU transfer defensive back since he arrived last fall.
Justin Rowland: Both of my esteemed colleagues' choices are good, but I'm especially eager to watch Joseph. Kentucky has had some really talented defensive backs over the last 10-15 years, including Trevard Lindley, Mike Edwards, Lonnie Johnson, and others. But I'm not sure I've ever sensed the same kind of excitement for the upside and potential of LSU transfer Kelvin Joseph. The fact that he has already locked down a starting spot in spite of what UK returns in the secondary is intriguing. Last year's UK defense was very fundamentally sound and just solid across the board. Brad White told me he's hoping that sound becomes explosive this year, and Joseph could be the kind of game-changer in the secondary that can really narrow the gap with some of the league's top teams.