Nyjalik Kelly's Packers highlight has UCF buzzing
A former Knight is forcing his way onto Green Bay's roster, Barnett has the QB job locked down, and Thursday's opener against Bethune-Cookman opens at 41.5.
The guy who already left is the best thing on the timeline
UCF_Football has spent the last two nights bragging about a guy who no longer plays for UCF, and it should. Nyjalik Kelly, who racked up 22.5 tackles for loss and 12.5 sacks across four seasons as a Knight, went undrafted this spring but still landed $265,000 guaranteed from the Packers — the highest guarantee ever given to an undrafted free agent in franchise history, per Yahoo Sports. He is now cashing that in for real: a sack and three pressures in Green Bay's preseason opener against Denver, according to Acme Packing Company, then an interception to go with another sack in the very next outing.
Have a game, Nyjalik Kelly 😤😤 He’s now got a sack to go along with his pick! 📺 Preseason on @NFLPlus t.co/8sRvgybUf5
That second game is the one @UCF_Football posted about Saturday morning — 'He's now got a sack to go along with his pick,' the account wrote, stacking both plays on top of each other. It is the rare club post that is actually about something rather than a countdown graphic or a gear drop: a program watching one of its own crash Green Bay's 53-man conversation in real time. Heavy Sports has already flagged him as making a late roster push, which is not the language teams use about camp fodder.
Last season ended on a four-game skid, and this is the reset
Last season did not finish well. UCF lost four of its final five games, closing with a 21-41 defeat at BYU on November 29 that came on the heels of a 3-30 loss at Baylor, a 27-30 home loss to Houston and a 9-48 blowout at Texas Tech — the lone win in that stretch was 17-14 over Oklahoma State. It was Scott Frost's first year back in Orlando, and the finish read like a program still figuring out its new conference.
The offseason answer was the transfer portal, and it was a heavy one: Alonza Barnett III arrived from James Madison to solve the quarterback spot, and the roster around him carries more experience up and down the two-deep than it did a year ago, per SFL Media's season preview. Frost has been blunter about his second season than his first. 'The standards and expectations that the players have for each other is a lot higher than it was a year ago,' he told reporters during camp, per On3 — a coach setting the bar this time instead of explaining where it fell short.
Barnett has the job, and camp finally built him a bench
Barnett walked into fall camp as the clear QB1 — the transfer UCF went and got specifically to fix this position — and nothing in camp has moved him off that spot. What has moved is who's behind him: Kaleb Annett has separated himself as a legitimate backup, per SI.com's camp coverage, in a room that also includes true freshman Rocco Marriott, Keyone Jenkins, Dante Carr and Kane Archer. Offensive coordinator Steve Cooper said this month that Marriott specifically is 'not leaving anything off the table' in that competition.
The bigger question for most of the offseason wasn't who was behind Barnett — it was whether Barnett himself would be ready. He was held out of practice with an undisclosed injury when spring camp opened and missed a chunk of spring ball as UCF played it cautious with him, but Frost said this summer he expected his quarterback to be 'full go' by the time fall camp arrived, per Heavy Sports. He was. UCF opens the season with its starter healthy and, for the first time in a while, actual depth stacked up behind him.
The Bounce House opens with a 41.5-point head start
UCF opens the season Thursday night vs. Bethune-Cookman, and the number attached to it says everything about the gap: the line opened at UCF -41.5, with the total set at 59.5. Bethune-Cookman's most recent result on the board is a 38-34 win over Florida, but that was last season, not last week, and it's a MEAC program walking into the Acrisure Bounce House as a 40-plus-point underdog for a reason. Brett McMurphy noted this week that UCF's actual Big 12 opener doesn't arrive until September 26, at home against TCU — which makes Thursday less a measuring stick than a tune-up before the games that actually count in the standings.
There is at least one non-negotiable Bounce House tradition riding on it regardless of the score: CFBHome flagged this week that UCF runs a different hot dog for every opponent, so whatever gets served Thursday is specific to Bethune-Cookman and nobody else on the schedule. Kickoff is set for 6:00 PM in Orlando, and after a five-loss season a year ago, it's the first real data point of the Frost rebuild.