Class of 2023 QB Christopher Vizzina talks his first Power 5 offer from Kentucky

(Photo courtesy of Christopher Vizzina)

Liam Coen has not been afraid to reach for the stars when searching for future quarterbacks.

Kentucky’s new offensive coordinator has hit the recruiting ground at a dead sprint during his first several months on the Wildcat coaching staff. He’s been extending offers to a slew of the nation’s top gunslingers from the classes of 2022 and 2023, putting his background working in the NFL to the test. Coen’s strategy hasn’t resulted in a top-ranked quarterback picking Kentucky just yet, but it’s very early into his tenure and he has feelers out all across the country.

When you’ve worked around the likes of Jared Goff, Cooper Kupp, and Robert Woods in the past, the pitch can speak for itself.

One prospect in particular to keep an eye on is class of 2023 quarterback Christopher Vizzina, who received his scholarship offer from Kentucky on Friday, his first from a Power 5 program. In addition to the ‘Cats, the Birmingham, Alabama product already has offers from Houston, Troy, and UAB. Don’t let that offer sheet fool you though, Vizzina is very much a rising star in his class and is hearing from some powerhouse schools.

“I’m really excited about Kentucky,” Vizzina told KSR on Monday. “I have three other offers but they’re not Power 5. To get Kentucky–Power 5 and SEC–that’s a big deal. So I was really excited about that.”

Blessed to receive an offer from the University of Kentucky! @LiamCoen @BriarwoodFTBLL @GasCrew7v7 @samspiegs @SWiltfong247 @adamgorney pic.twitter.com/p3TIWOVHMh

— Christopher Vizzina (@vizzina2) May 21, 2021

Vizzina said he received the phone call from Coach Coen on his way down to the lake for a quick vacation following the conclusion of his sophomore year of high school. He had no idea the offer was coming, either, and during the hour-long drive from his home in Birmingham, Vizzina was accompanied by some friends when the news came. Before that, he had very little contact with the Wildcat coaching staff outside of a Twitter follow here and there. The first time Vizzina ever talked with Coach Coen was when the offer came through.

“I’ve always been interested in Kentucky just by living down here in the south,” Vizzina added. “Just knowing that Kentucky has produced some pretty good QB’s is very humbling to me to know that the coaching staff thinks I could be another great one in line. I really like Coach Coen, when we talked on the phone he was very high on my skill set and compared a lot of things I do on the field to Jared Goff.”

The comparison to Goff, now the QB for the Detroit Lions after five seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, stuck out to Vizzina, as well. For those that don’t know, Coach Coen was the assistant wide receivers and quarterbacks coach from 2018-20 with the Rams where he helped pioneer an electrifying L.A. offense.

“He (Coen) was comparing my throwing motion, my footwork, and reading the defense,” Vizzina said about Coen’s comparison to Jared Goff. “From what he saw, he likes. We (Goff and I) have the same throwing motion and all that, so I guess I really reminded him of Jared.”

Vizzina is a 6-foot-4, 200-pound pro-style quarterback who has already started two seasons of high school football despite finishing up his sophomore year at Briarwood Christian. He stepped in as a freshman starter just two games into his high school career and eventually took full control as a sophomore. Vizzina actually led Briarwood to the state semifinals when he was a freshman but was bested by Pleasant Grove, which featured a familiar face in current Kentucky freshman and four-star wide receiver, Christian Lewis.

It admittedly took some time for Vizzina to thrive as a youngster, both mentally and physically. He weighed just 170 pounds during his first season as a starter–“When I’d get sacked, I’d get killed,”–and he played against a bevy of Divison I prospects who were three or four years his senior. Vizzina was just 14 when he became a starter and had to earn the respect of his junior and senior year teammates before he could earn the respect of his opponents.

“It was my team, I became a leader,” Vizzina said about entering his sophomore season. “I started to feel comfortable because going in as a freshman it was hard to be a leader. I was playing with seniors that were four years older than me, I was 14 when I started. Just that perspective–you couldn’t really take over the team as a freshman but everyone still respected me because I respected them. There’s kind of an expectation for me and that’s when I started working even harder. These people believe in me and I got to hold myself accountable.”

Heading into his junior season, the expectations are going to be even more pronounced for Vizzina. Complacency will not be accepted. But he already knows what he needs to do in order to make another leap in his development.

“In high school football, most quarterbacks only go through one or two reads and then run or scramble. I’m trying to go from my first read to even a fourth read before I even try to scramble,” Vizzina said of what he needs to work on. “Continuing to get a consistent release on the ball. Improve my run game. I run a 4.7 (40-yard dash) but that’s not really going to cut it sometimes.”

Vizzina is not a ranked prospect quite yet among the top recruiting services such as 247 Sports and Rivals, but he is planning for a busy summer that will hopefully put him in a position to improve his stock as he progresses toward his junior season.

As of this post, Vizzina plans on touring plenty of impressive football campuses during the month of June. Kentucky doesn’t have a set date, but that is in the works and he does plan on taking a trip to Lexington at some point next month. Here’s a quick breakdown of his June schedule:

Alabama 6/2
Clemson 6/5
Duke 6/6
Wake Forest 6/7
Kentucky TBD
Vanderbilt TBD
Auburn 6/14
Florida 6/25

Vizzina told KSR that while he doesn’t have an offer from the likes of Alabama, Clemson, Florida, etc., he still hears from those schools on a weekly basis. He added that Southern California, Duke, and Wake Forest were some programs he expects to hear more from in the near future. It’s likely that those schools would like to see him in person before pulling the trigger on an offer, but Kentucky wasted no time sticking out as the first Power 5 program to do so–a tactic that has proved successful over the years under head coach Mark Stoops.