Kansas State lands highly-coveted transfer receiver Keagan Johnson

Kansas State has added their first player from the transfer portal in Iowa receiver Keagan Johnson. All indications were pointed in that direction after an in-home visit with K-State assistant Thad Ward and immediately canceling visits to Notre Dame, Texas A&M and Nebraska.

Sources close to Johnson revealed that he had a number of offers that reached the double digits. That is also why he chose to keep his recruitment private once he tweeted about the offers from Notre Dame, Kansas State and Nebraska.

Plenty of others followed.

Johnson was a former On3 Consensus four-star recruit and chose the Hawkeyes out of high school over offers from schools such as the Huskers and K-State. Nebraska and the Wildcats both threw their hat in the ring again for the receiver when he entered the transfer portal.

However, the stiffest competition for Kansas State came from the Fighting Irish. Head coach Marcus Freeman and his staff made a huge push for the Omaha native but came up empty and were not even able to convince him to make a trip to South Bend, as originally planned.

Next chapter… #EMAW pic.twitter.com/OLsD2hm5YJ

— Keagan Johnson (@_keaganj) December 11, 2022

K-State is expected to miss their trio of starting wideouts in Phillip Brooks, Malik Knowles and Kade Warner. Because of that, receiver was a need for the Wildcats and Johnson saw it as an attractive destination to play the same role bestowed upon Knowles in the offense directed by Collin Klein.

Johnson was very productive as a true freshman for Iowa in 2021. He tallied 18 catches for 352 yards and two touchdowns in 2021. That spearheaded him to being a finalist for Big Ten Freshman of the Year, along with Ohio State’s CJ Stroud and Wisconsin running back Braelon Allen.

His 2022 was hampered by injury and forced Johnson to only play in two games with just two catches for 11 yards. He is the No. 80 ranked transfer wide receiver, according to the On3 transfer portal rankings and will arrive in Manhattan with three years of eligibility remaining.

As a KSO subscriber, Kansas State fans can find out more about the rest of the recruiting targets still being chased, which underclassmen players could return for the Wildcats and how many of the seniors will be back on the roster for an extra season in Manhattan.

Remember, we have plenty of bowl coverage on the way for Big 12 Champion K-State as well in the lead-up to the Sugar Bowl matchup with Alabama, plus Jerome Tang and company are cooking and have shot out to an 8-1 record.

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