Early enrolling has freshman WR Anthony Brown ahead of the curve

Kentucky football had a pair of freshmen wide receivers come in and make immediate impacts last season. Dane Key and Barion Brown were both well-respected and highly-ranked high school prospects, but leading the team in touchdowns and receiving yards, respectively, wasn’t something the Big Blue Nation expected. Now, with Liam Coen back in the playcalling seat, those two will hold even higher expectations heading into 2023.

Could a similar story play out for another talented true freshman in back-to-back years? Anthony Brown is drawing buzz as a potential impact wide-out from Week 1 for the Wildcats. Head coach Mark Stoops already praised Brown, an undersized yet speedy pass-catcher, during Saturday’s Fan Day. But that wasn’t a one-off compliment from the coaching staff — following Tuesday’s practice, associate head coach Vince Marrow compared Brown (who he recruited to UK) to former Wildcat/current New York Giant Wan’Dale Robinson on multiple occasions.

Coen is noticing the potential, too. When Brown first arrived at UK in January, he should have been finishing up his senior year of high school. But much like Key did when he stepped on campus months before the rest of the freshman class, Brown did the same by enrolling early — and the extra reps are paying off.

“Huge, huge. When you come in as a freshman that’s really supposed to be going to prom, that’s awesome. It is,” Coen said following Tuesday’s practice of Brown enrolling early. “Because he’s able to come in — and really in the spring, he’ll tell you, he had some drop issues. And when you go from catching the ball at Springfield High School to catching the ball from Devin Leary in a span of a couple months, that’s different now. The ball gets on you faster and it’s a little bit of a different deal.

“But I thought he’s handled this go-around extremely well in terms of being someone we can count on to go play, somebody that we can be able to push the ball down the field to, and he’s a diligent worker, smart kid, bright future ahead of him.”

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While Kentucky has a three-headed monster of receivers in Key, Barion Brown, and fifth-year senior Tayvion Robinson, the depth beyond them gets a bit thin. That’s where Anthony Brown can come in to help fill out the rotation. Coen also said on Tuesday that Leary will “throw it to anybody at any time”. If Brown (or any freshman wide receiver, for that matter) wants to be a part of that scheme, he first needs to lock into perfecting the fundamentals — the rest will come with it.

“It’s alignment, it’s assignment, it’s just knowing your job,” Coen said of what freshmen pass-catchers need to do in order to play. “So often, you get young guys and they try to go play and they think about making a play. Well, how about let’s just go get lined up? Let’s get lined up, let’s understand what the motion is, the shift, the run play — let’s just understand the basics.”

With an extra few months of being around a college program now under his belt, Brown is adjusting well. It might just lead to some early (and often) playing time for the former three-star recruit.