To answer UK football’s biggest question, the Cats are counting on a Lexington kid

AUGUST 06, 2023 6:45 AM
Whenever his football career ends, Jager Burton has a post-pigskin business plan ready to go.
The Kentucky Wildcats offensive lineman and former Frederick Douglass High School star wants to open a restaurant/sports bar. Already, Burton is working on his menu.
“Nachos, (chicken) wings, mozzarella sticks. A few specialties worked in,” he says. “Honestly, I just think it sounds fun. Just have a place where a group of people could get together to watch good games and eat good food.”
This fall, Mark Stoops and the troops are counting on Burton to help the Wildcats come up with an improved recipe in a critical area.
As the Wildcats brain trust seeks to restore to respectability a proud Kentucky offensive line that suffered through a dispiriting 2022, Burton is moving from left guard to assume the starting center position.
“I think it kind of pushes me into more of a leadership role,” Burton said Friday at UK’s annual Media Day at Kroger Field. “I’ll have to know what everybody has to do (on) every play. I’ll need to be the guy people come to every play when they don’t know what to do.”
The Stoops-era ascension in Kentucky’s football fortunes was built on the shoulders of physical, relentless offensive-line play. Four times in six seasons between 2016 and 2021, the “Big Blue Wall” was named a semifinalist for the Joe Moore Award — which signifies the nation’s best offensive line. Kentucky was a finalist for the honor in 2021.
Last season, down three departed starters from 2021, the “Big Blue Wall” crumbled. Only two FBS teams, Colorado State (59) and Akron (55), allowed more quarterback sacks than Kentucky (47). Only 23 teams rushed for fewer yards a game than the Wildcats (116.2). The offensive line struggles were a large component in UK’s disappointing 7-6 season.
“Last year, it was tough,” says second-year Kentucky offensive line coach Zach Yenser. “Obviously, you want to do a great job and continue on what (the UK offensive line) had been. (Now), your whole goal is just to continue to get that (position) room better.”
When Liam Coen returned to Kentucky from the L.A. Rams to re-assume the role of Wildcats offensive coordinator, Yenser says “one of our first discussions early on was, ‘Hey, we think (Burton), we can really utilize his athleticism at center.’”
On a reconstituted UK offensive line, Kenneth Horsey is returning to left guard after being pressed into left tackle duties in 2022. Eli Cox is moving back to right guard after playing center a season ago. That puts each of the veterans back in the positions they held in 2021.
Meanwhile, in Marques Cox (Northern Illinois) and Courtland Ford (Southern Cal), the transfer portal may have given Kentucky a pair of new starting offensive tackles in 2023.
Yet the fate of the offensive-line revamp depends heavily on whether Burton — a 6-foot-4, 307-pound redshirt sophomore who turned down Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Oregon, among others, to stay home and play for UK — can handle the center position.
Learning to effortlessly snap the ball has been a focus of Burton’s off-season. “It’s like a lot of other things in life: You just do it a bunch and it becomes second nature,” Burton says.
This summer, Burton says he and incoming UK quarterback Devin Leary, the former North Carolina State standout, worked on the exchange between center and QB after every weight-lifting session.
“We would get in 50 (snaps) a day, 25 a day, depending on whatever we had to do that day,” Burton says. “The snap is now second nature. It wasn’t in the spring.”
The biggest adjustment in moving from guard to center, Burton says, is actually not the snap itself. It is the cost that the responsibility to hike the ball takes from a center’s blocking technique.
“It is weird. You only have one hand available for you (to engage a defender) for the first half-second of the play,” Burton says.
For Kentucky, the center is also responsible for making the blocking calls. In assuming that role, Burton figures to get a boost from the presence of Eli Cox at right guard. The ex-West Jessamine standout handled those duties in 2022.
“He’s got a lot on his plate as a first-year center,” Cox says of Burton. “Defenses will present a lot, you will see a lot of different looks in this league. (I plan to be) another set of eyes who helps him see the entire field.”
In the run-up to Burton’s first season as Kentucky’s starting center, Cox believes he will derive a unique benefit when the Wildcats go “good-on-good” in practice. That will come from having to block Deone Walker, the 6-6, 348-pound defensive lineman who is expected to be an All-SEC-caliber player as a sophomore.
Asked about that, Walker endorsed the notion. “I feel like if you can (block me), you are good for the season,” he said with a smile.
Before Jager Burton opens his restaurant, Kentucky is counting on him to help cook up a better offensive line.