Will Stone

The storyline around Stone's transfer is almost too on-the-nose for a kicker: a guy who spent four seasons being very good at the half of the job nobody notices, now betting his last year of eligibility on the half everybody remembers. At Texas he was a fixture on kickoffs — 47 games, 300 boots, a 63.2-yard average — but his only placekicking reps came when he went 2-for-2 on extra points in the CFP semifinal against Ohio State. His last competitive field goal, per the UCF coverage, came in high school in 2022. So when he hit the portal in January and special teams coordinator Pete Alamar came calling, the appeal was obvious on both sides: a strong, playoff-tested leg looking for a stage, and a UCF staff that lost Noe Ruelas and needed a new foot.

The wrinkle is that the job isn't his. Stone is in an open competition with redshirt freshman Noah McGough, and the beat consensus out of spring is that neither created separation — Stone has the experience edge, McGough is the unknown, and crucially neither has attempted a field goal in a real college game. Alamar has been blunt that 'no jobs are won in spring,' which is coach-speak for: this goes to August, maybe to September. For Stone the perception is generous (CFP pedigree, a leg coaches rave about) but the production is a blank page — the tension every UCF preview keeps circling.

The forward stake is the cleanest question a kicker can carry into a season: does the leg translate when the snap is for three points instead of a touchback? Stone has spent four years being trusted to do one thing flawlessly and never asked to do the other. 2026 is the year he finds out — starting with whether he even wins the job — if he can be a field-goal kicker at all.