Less than three hours ago Kentucky shook up everyones peaceful Sunday afternoon and named their starting quarterback. Mark Stoops said he hadn't originally planned to announce on Sunday, and had planned for tomorrow, Monday. After news got leaked before hand, UK announced they would have a 6 pm press conference, to officially announce their decision. While the word had been rumbling around for a solid two weeks now that Levis would be the guy, nothing had been plated official yet.
"All three that were in the quarterback competition are all great young men, and did everything we asked them to do. You know, we just simply made the best decision for our football team to win games. We all know how important that is. I really care a lot about the players and they've all really just have worked extremely hard... With that being said, I did inform them that we were naming Will (Levis) as the starting quarterback, and that we were going to move on and rotate the other two." said Stoops.
There it was, confirmed, that the Penn State transfer Will Levis had earned the starting job, just 3 months after arriving on campus. Coach Stoops said, "This was clear" after naming Levis the starter. Said it wasn't final going into the scrimmage yesterday afternoon, wanting to give all three guys a true shot at the spot. After the decision came final, Mark said he wanted to let the guys know so that they had the opportunity to adjust (in other words transfer if they didn't want to stay) before the final week of camp. He approached (Joey) Gatewood and (Beau) Allen, informing them that they would be battling for the backup position, and Joey Gatewood said he understood the decision, but felt it was best for him to transfer.
It sucks to see Joey Gatewood enter the portal again, but I can see why he wants to. He's been here for a year and a half, and has been fighting for a role on the offense the entire time, and it just hasn't worked out. He's appears to be extremely talented, but just keeps winding up just too short behind his competition. I do believe if he would've stayed that he would've had the lean on the backup spot over Beau Allen, but Gatewood said he didn't want to sit and wanted to be somewhere that he could actually play and you can't fault him for that. He has put in his time battling it out here, and has finally reached his end. He is a junior, and is ready to see some action.
Joey officially enters the portal, and won't be practicing with the team this week, and likely by the end of the week will have found a new home. Beau Allen cements his name at QB2.
I think we can all agree that Will Levis deserves that starting spot, and the coaching staff believes he's the obvious answer, so we have to put all of our trust into that.
Kentucky has 20 days until they kickoff against Louisiana-Monroe, where we will finally get to see the Will Levis that's been making "extraordinary" plays in practice this summer. I'm sure we will also get to see Beau Allen get some reps in, and after that first week we will feel a lot more comfortable on this programs future.