For Mark Stoops and UK football, the chickens have come home to roost in one vital area

If you want to understand just how much instability there has been among the key personnel directing the Kentucky Wildcats football offense, consider:

▪ A different person has called offensive plays for UK every year since 2020.

▪ UK has not had the same offensive coordinator and the same offensive line coach finish back-to-back seasons together since Eddie Gran and the late John Schlarman, respectively, did so in 2018 and 2019.

▪ Kentucky has not had a quarterback start every game in consecutive seasons with the same offensive coordinator in place for both those years since Andre Woodson and Joker Phillips in 2006 and 2007.

In assessing what has been mostly a lost season for the Kentucky offense, it’s hard not to conclude that Mark Stoops and UK are paying the price in 2024 for the revolving door that has existed in recent years on the office of the Kentucky offensive coordinator.

With UK coming off a dispiriting 48-20 loss at Florida last Saturday night, Stoops used part of his weekly news conference Monday at Kroger Field to lament UK’s inability to finish drives.

In what felt like the pivotal moment of Kentucky’s lost night at “The Swamp,” a Kristian Story interception and return gave the Cats the ball at the Florida 11-yard line with 6:21 left in the first half and UK trailing only 13-6.

Alas, four straight Kentucky running plays gained only 9 yards. With a chance to tie the game, the Cats were stopped on third-and-2 from the Florida 3-yard line, and fourth-and-1 from the 2.

“We have to finish drives,” Stoops said. “(UK’s offensive struggles) are not quite as magnified with the opportunities we have if we get them in the end zone. There’s no excuse for not getting it in on third-and-short and fourth-and-short. You’ve got to get the ball in the end zone.”

Against SEC competition, Kentucky has done precious little of “getting the ball into the end zone” recently.

Through five league games this season, UK has scored a whopping total of six offensive touchdowns. Going back to last year, it has been 11 games since Kentucky scored as many as four offensive touchdowns in one game against an SEC defense.

Amid UK’s ongoing offensive futility, there is an interesting statistical comparison to be made.

Two seasons ago, in Rich Scangarello’s lone season running the UK attack, the Wildcats averaged 17.5 points, 306.4 yards and 2.1 touchdowns a game against Southeastern Conference foes.

Through five league games of the current season, new UK offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan’s first Kentucky offense is averaging 16.2 points, 286.8 yards and 1.2 touchdowns a game.

Those 2022 numbers earned Scangarello a pink slip.

Even with offensive stats versus SEC teams that are worse than 2022, UK’s history of offensive instability means the Wildcats brain trust pretty much has to bring Hamdan back.

How UK got to this point involves unceasing churn in the offensive coordinator position.

After UK went 5-6 in the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season, Stoops moved on from longtime offensive coordinator Gran.

In search of adding a passing dimension to what had become a ground-hugging attack, Stoops tabbed Los Angeles Rams assistant Liam Coen to run the Kentucky offense.

Under Coen, Kentucky’s 2021 offense averaged 27.4 points, 385.8 total yards and 3.1 offensive touchdowns a game against SEC opposition.

It helped that Coen was working with a Kentucky offense that featured a future NFL quarterback (Will Levis), a future NFL running back (Christopher Rodriguez), two future NFL wideouts (Wan’Dale Robinson and Josh Ali) and two future NFL offensive linemen (Darian Kinnard and Luke Fortner).

After that season, however, Sean McVay lured Coen back to the Rams. Stoops again turned to the NFL for an offensive coordinator, hiring Scangarello, the San Francisco 49ers’ QB coach.

When a less-talented UK offense in 2022 seemed to buckle under the complexity of Scangarello’s system, Stoops and Coen engineered a reunion.

“Liam 2.0” was not as effective as the first go-round. Kentucky ended 2023 having averaged 24.8 points, 313.5 yards and 2.9 touchdowns in SEC contests.

When Coen again went one-and-done at UK by taking the offensive coordinator’s position with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Stoops hired Hamdan away from his job as Boise State’s offensive coordinator.

Obviously, things have not gone great for Hamdan and UK so far.

A big part of Kentucky’s offensive struggles have been the difficulties UK has had pass protecting at the tackle position. At quarterback, Georgia transfer Brock Vandagriff has not proven as far along as had been hoped for a fourth-year college player (albeit one who had played little prior to his transfer).

Assuming Stoops wants to return for 2025 (and, in my view, that call will be up to him) I don’t see how you can change offensive coordinators again. The ample history of offensive instability at Kentucky argues for keeping Hamdan in place with the hope that some year-to-year stability will lead to better play in 2025.

In the short term, with Auburn (2-5, 0-4 SEC) coming to Kroger Field this week to face Kentucky (3-4, 1-4 SEC) in a battle of desperate teams, Stoops said UK is “looking at all options” to get a better offense on the field.

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