Yes, you read that headline correctly. Alex Afari, who became a star linebacker the last two seasons, could, in fact, return to school and play for Kentucky this season.<\/p>\n
This is all in the immediate aftermath of a ruling giving players who did not redshirt and completed their college careers in four years an extra year of eligibility. Just when you think college athletics can\u2019t get crazier, they just did.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind that Afari participated in Green Bay Packers minicamp this offseason. Now, he may be coming back to Kentucky, which, no doubt, would be a welcome addition for Will Stein\u2019s first Kentucky team. But it is unbelievable to think this could actually happen, where a player is literally in the NFL and then decides to come back to college.<\/p>\n
Afari, a Cincinnati native, had 123 total tackles, 18 tackles for loss, and four sacks over the past two seasons. He also had over 60 combined tackles in each of the last two seasons.<\/p>\n
Consider, too, Kentucky\u2019s current linebacker room. Yes, they went out and signed two second-year players in Bo Barnes and Tavion Wallace. Antwan Smith, Quintavion Norman and Devin Smith are also all third-year players, while Grant Godfrey enters his fourth college football season.<\/p>\n
Still, bringing a guy like Afari, who only played for Kentucky in his college career, would be a game-changer for a position group that could use another established veteran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yes, you read that headline correctly. Alex Afari, who became a star linebacker the last two seasons, could,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,90761,194821,29642,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-800791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-kentucky-wildcats-football","tag-kentucky-wildcats-football-recruiting","tag-kentucky-wildcats-news","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}