Kentucky Considering a Redshirt for LB Daveren Rayner

In week four of the 2024 season, the Kentucky football coaches were thinking ahead to the 2025 season. When I spotted Daveren Rayner in street clothes during our Rapid Reaction from the sideline, I assumed the linebacker suffered an injury we missed the week prior. You know what they say about assuming.

Mark Stoops left Rayner off of this week’s depth chart. During today’s press conference, the Kentucky head coach revealed that Rayner was a healthy scratch against Ohio.

“We’re going to see. There’s a possibility we may look to redshirt him and get him back (for another season), just to let him really get his strength and body weight up to what he’s capable of. We’ll see,” said Stoops.

Size has been an issue for Rayner since high school. Listed at 6-foot-2, 217 pounds, he spent his first three seasons at Northern Illinois where he was a highly productive rotational player on the Husky defense. He’s light in the shorts for an SEC inside linebacker, but he had 30 tackles, 3.0 for loss, last fall. Rayner was Kentucky’s highest-graded defender against Southern Miss and averaged 17.5 snaps in the two SEC contests.

Stoops isn’t ready to shelve Rayner for the entire season. This is an option they will be mulling while rotating in a couple of second-year players behind D’Eryk Jackson, Kentucky’s leading tackler through four games.

“He’s played in three (games) he’ll have an opportunity to play in at least one more prior to the bowl game. Depending on how Jayvant (Brown) progresses and Grant (Godfrey) progresses, and where we are at that position, surely it’d be great to have them back a year from now,” said Stoops.

“But we are in the business of trying to win every game we can right now. We’ll try to balance that and see where it goes.”

The Future of the Kentucky Linebacker Position

D-Jack and Jamon Dumas-Johnson have made linebacker play a strength of the Kentucky defense. This is their last year of football. The future is less clear and that’s why Rayner might wear a redshirt this fall.

Kentucky tried moving Alex Afari from Sam/Nickel to Will linebacker this offseason. After the first week, he was back to his old spot. The aforementioned Brown and Godfrey were four-star recruiting wins two years ago. Godfrey missed all of his true freshman campaign with an injury. Brown played 29 snaps in 2023 and 13 against Ohio, his first of the fall. The most game-ready linebacker of this freshman class is Devin Smith and he’s injured, likely out for the rest of the season.

There are a lot of bodies in the Kentucky linebacker room, albeit without much experience. This move gives others more opportunity for reps and potentially gives the Cats a veteran in the middle of the 2025 defense.