Kentucky Football: Wildcats Land UGA Transfer QB Brock Vandagriff

Kentucky has landed a commitment from Georgia transfer quarterback and former 5-star recruit Brock Vandagriff, as announced on Twitter Wednesday morning.

The Wildcats has been search for a transfer portal quarterback with last year’s starter Devin Leary graduating and both of their top backups from 2023 entering the portal themselves in Kaiya Sheron and Destin Wade.

Kentucky lands Georgia transfer quarterback Brock Vandagriff

As mentioned, Vandagriff is a former 5-star recruit and was one of the top high school recruits in the class of 2021. Vandagriff ranked as the No. 17 overall recruit in the class and the No. 2 player in the state of Georgia (behind only fellow Georgia commit Amarius Mims).

The 6’3, 215 pound QB has career numbers of 12/21 passing (57.1%), 165 passing yards, 46 rushing yards, 2 passing TD’s, and 0 INT’s with the vast majority of those numbers coming in 2023.

Vandagriff is a good athlete with a strong arm who dominated small-school GA football in HS.

To give you an idea of how big of a HS QB recruit he was just a couple years ago, he was also the No. 4 QB in the class trailing only Quinn Ewers, Caleb Williams, and Sam Huard. At the time, he ranked ahead of guys like Drake Maye, JJ McCarthy, and Kyle McCord.

Vandagriff red-shirted his first season in Athens in 2021 before serving as the third-string QB in 2022. This season, Vandagriff was the backup QB behind Carson Beck after a fierce QB competition between the two of them to see who would replace Stetson Bennett IV after last year.

With how well Beck played this year (earning second team All-SEC honors), but it also being likely that Beck returns for another season, it makes sense for Vandagriff to look for the opportunity to start elsewhere (Vandagriff entering could also hint at what Beck’s initial plans are). That’s especially true with Georgia bringing in one of the top players in the class of 2024 in 5-star QB Dylan Raiola.

Vandagriff will have two seasons of eligibility remaining at Kentucky.

It’s also possible that Kentucky isn’t done portal shopping for QB’s either with those top three from last year all leaving. However, I believe Vandagriff would be going to Kentucky with the intention of starting.

Kentucky has become a transfer QB hot-spot over the last few years. The Wildcats landed Will Levis from Penn State (which was right before the transfer portal’s hayday) and then added Devin Leary last offseason from NC State with Levis heading off to the NFL. With Leary now out of eligibility and transfers behind him at the position, Kentucky was forced once again to dip back into the portal.