Kentucky loses two young wide receivers to the portal as Will Stein reshapes the room

When you change offensive eras, the depth chart is usually the first place you feel it. Some guys fit the new system and some guys just don't. And for Kentucky, going from Mark Stoops to Will Stein is a massive shift.

Kentucky is already seeing that play out at wide receiver, with two young pass-catchers, Preston Bowman and David Washington, planning to enter the Transfer Portal and look for new homes.

Why 2 young Kentucky football wideouts leaving says more about fit than panic

Bowman, a three-star wideout from Ohio, picked Kentucky over Louisville, Michigan and others. He became the second member of the 2025 class to announce portal plans after quarterback Stone Saunders did the same. He didn’t log any stats in his lone season in Lexington, which probably tells you all you need to know about where he sat in the pecking order.

Washington, a 2024 signee out of Philadelphia, took a similar path. He was also a three-star prospect and chose the Wildcats over Virginia and Boston College. His entire Kentucky stat line is one nine-yard catch against Murray State.

On paper, it’s easy to shrug and say, “They barely played.” But these are useful data points in understanding what Will Stein wants his receiver room to look like.

Under Mark Stoops, the passing game was built around a power run identity: heavy play action, a handful of shot plays, and a limited volume of targets. The receivers you recruited for that world aren’t always ideal for a pedal-down tempo spread that wants to attack horizontally and vertically for four quarters.

Stein’s offense, paired with Joe Sloan, is going to ask receivers to do a lot more. They need to win in space repeatedly, and will be handling a high-volume style of passing. They all need to be interchangable pieces who can motion, stack, and/or move around thr formation.

If you’re a young receiver who doesn’t quite fit that mold or who sees a wave of transfers and 2026/2027 recruiting targets coming, you’re going to look for a clearer path to the field. That doesn’t make you a bad player. It just means your timeline and the staff’s vision don’t match.

Bowman and Washington leaving hurts depth, but it also frees up scholarships for Stein to bring in his kind of wideout. In the portal era, this is the churn you live with. The bigger story will be who comes in next and how quickly they look like his offense.

For a full portal breakdown, click here.