Cats Illustrated publisher Justin Rowland is taking a stab at listing Kentucky's best players ahead of the 2024 season. Of course, at least a dozen games will impact what the list looks like at the end of the season so it's all up for debate.
At No. 3 we're staying on the defensive side of the football and rolling with cornerback Maxwell Hairston, who had a true breakout in his first season logging significant snaps in college.
Sure, Hairston logged 82 snaps as a redshirt freshman in 2022 but that mostly amounted to special teams play.
Kentucky has gotten some very good players out of Michigan in the second half of the Stoops' era to date. Not only Hairston, but the likes of Deone Walker, Justin Rogers, DeAndre Square, and Jeremy Flax.
Walker certainly has star status but Hairston can cement that for himself with another strong season in 2024.
During the 2023 season Hairston was one of the breakout defensive players in the entire Southeastern Conference and that's a very high bar. It can be argued that Hairston had the biggest breakout of any UK player last season.
At times during the Stoops tenure in Lexington defensive backs have been slept on a little bit. The production in terms of picks hasn't always been there with some guys who have gone on to make an impact in the NFL. But in the case of Hairston there were plenty of splash plays that will be on highlight reels going into the season.
Hairston played a whopping 855 snaps for Kentucky last season, the great majority on defense but still often on special teams as well. That Kentucky had Hairston on its punt coverage, punt return, and field goal block units is a testament to what the coaches think of him. During a breakout season on defense, they still wanted him to play on special teams.
According to PFF and the raw stats, Hairston was a star. Any way you break it down he was one of Kentucky's best players. While UK struggled to defend the pass last year, don't blame Hairston. PFF gave him an 81.8 overall defensive rating: 66.3 in run defense, 83.8 as a tackler, and 85.3 in coverage, where he was elite. PFF charged him with only six missed tackles on the season, and as a cornerback he was one of UK's leading tacklers.
Of his tackles, 19 were "stops" or wins for the defense, so it's not like he was getting carved up and making stops downfield.
Hairston was often covering some of the SEC's top receivers, important context when assessing his numbers. Those are players that opponents will force feed the ball to, even if the coverage is solid. Last year opposing quarterbacks completed 44/67 passes thrown Hairston's way for 432 yards.
But those quarterbacks only threw three touchdown passes against Hairston and five picks resulted with four additional pass breakups. Those QBs had a 67.5 NFL QBR throwing to him. Receivers only averaged 9.8 yards per reception against Hairston, too. He only gave up two throws of longer than 20 yards all season.
He was flagged three times against Vanderbilt but more than made up with that by returning two picks for touchdowns in that game.
The Associated Press named Hairston a Midseason All-American for his play last year.
He was a second team All-SEC pick and led the league in interceptions. Hairston forced a fumble as well.
Hairston probably has a bright NFL future ahead of him and given how important receivers have become for the nation's elite teams, he gives Kentucky a chance to fare better in those matchups than many other teams might.
