Landyn Watson, a transfer linebacker from Kentucky who committed to Kansas back in January and was with the Jayhawks this spring, is no longer on KU’s roster and will not be eligible to play this upcoming season.
Watson would have been a sixth-year senior, but he told the Journal-World in a text message that he had been appealing for the sixth year of eligibility based on tearing his meniscus as a freshman at TCU. He appeared in one game that year, the season opener against Duquesne.
He said he thought he would have been approved because he had collected letters from the surgeon who performed his surgery as well as then-TCU head coach Gary Patterson and then-position coach Dan Sharp, but his appeal was denied due to insufficient medical information. (The Journal-World has reached out to the current employers of Patterson and Sharp — USC and Louisiana Tech, respectively — for confirmation.)
Now Watson’s college career comes to a sudden end after two years at TCU, two at Marshall and one at Kentucky.
In a post on X announcing the failed appeal, he wrote that he wants to continue his career, but he acknowledged to the Journal-World that he’s not sure what comes next.
“(I) want to enter the supplemental draft and become a free agent to get an opportunity but really just whatever opportunity is best for my daughter,” he wrote.
The NFL supplemental draft, which usually takes place in July, is a secondary draft that the league holds for players who were not able to take part in the NFL Draft. A supplemental draft has not happened since 2023 and a player has not been selected since 2019.
Watson, listed at 6-foot-1, 245 pounds, had his most productive season when he was at Marshall in 2024 and started 11 games while recording 65 tackles with four for loss and an interception. At Kentucky as a fifth-year senior, he added 21 more tackles to his career total.
A native of Hutto, Texas, he was a three-star prospect out of high school.
Watson had arrived at KU in the winter as one of a handful of transfer linebackers, along with Jibreel Al-Amin, Bam Crouch (Boston College), Quincy Davis (New Mexico State) and Jaron Willis (South Carolina), who joined returners Malachi Curvey and Trey Lathan and freshmen Joseph Credit and Josh Galbreath among the scholarship members of the position group.
Linebackers coach Chris Simpson described Watson in the spring as a player who “has been in a lot of different schemes — he is a multi-transfer guy — so there’s not a whole lot that we’re doing that is new to him, it’s just the translation of it.” With the return of Lathan and emergence of Davis in the spring, Watson might have been in line for a rotational role.
