LEXINGTON, Ky. — There are all kinds of preseason topics associated with Kentucky football for the upcoming 2022 season.
“We’re the main topic,” Justin Rogers said Wednesday.
“We” being Kentucky’s interior defensive line, a group of highly touted signees who three years later will be thrust into the role of a key grid indicator concerning which direction the Cats’ 2022 season is likely to go.
Their time to shine?
“We’re ready,” said Rogers at the team’s annual Media Day.
There’s Rogers, the 6-foot-3, 332-pounder from Detroit. There’s Octavius Oxendine, the 6-1, 281-pound junior from Radcliff, Ky. There’s Josaih Hayes, the 6-3, 309-pound junior from Horn Lake, Miss.
They have big shoes to fill. Gone is defensive end Josh Paschal, the heart and soul of the UK defense — if not the team — whose college career spanned from cancer survival status to the No. 46 pick in the 2022 NFL draft. Gone is Marquan McCall, affectionately known as “Bully” but who was not so affectionate to opponents while plugging up the middle of the line as a nose tackle.
“Really, you go back to when (Quinton) Bohanna was here,” said Rogers of the former UK nose tackle. “He was the first person who set the path. Then it was Marquan. I feel like it’s me now. We just want to keep passing it along.”
Having previously gotten their feet wet, the new guys will pick up the torch. A five-star recruit, Rogers has played in 20 games over the past two seasons. Hayes has played in 18. Oxendine has played in nine, but was just coming into his own last year when a lower-body injury in the sixth game shelved him for the rest of the season.
Oxendine admits he hated rehabbing from that injury, especially the isolation part of working away from his teammates.
“It’s a mental thing, you’ve got to get over,” Oxendine said.
And now?
“I’m 100 percent healthy,” he said Wednesday.
He’s also lighter, having lost 20 pounds over the summer. Intentionally. The idea was to make Oxendine quicker while continuing to play with power. “I feel faster,” he said.
“We all agreed to lose weight and get in the best shape possible,” Hayes said. “It’s going to be a long SEC season. The goal is to get to Atlanta. That’s the best way to do it.”
The hardest food to give up?
“Pasta,” Oxendine said.
“He’s got to be the leader in that group,” said defensive coordinator Brad White of Oxendine on Wednesday. “He’s trained so hard to get back to the point he was before he got injured. It’s early, but he looks explosive. Yes, his weight is down, but he looks stronger. He’s looser than he’s ever been in the past. He’s brimming with confidence.”
This is not to say that this trio of juniors will have the sole responsibility up front. White said Wednesday he feels like the rotation at the line positions will be deeper this season.
“There’s going to be a lot of competition in there,” White said. “There’s going to have to be a lot of guys who rotate through and a lot of guys who get snaps. This is not a situation right now where you’ve got a guy like Josh Paschal where you knew you were just going to put a huge workload on him.”
Overall, it’s hard to overestimate the importance of the position, especially in the SEC, where Alabama and Georgia have built game-changing defenses on defensive line play.
“Any defensive coordinator you talk to will say it starts up front on either side of the ball,” Oxendine said.
So this is the year the group shows it can live up to the hype?
“Yes sir, I feel like it really is,” Oxendine said. “I feel like we’ve already put in the work to do what everybody is expecting us to do. It’s just a matter of time to show the world.”
