Mark Stoops says he's impressed with the new offense: 'Our completion percentage is extremely high'
Kentucky has several new faces on the offensive side of the ball, from new assistant coaches, to a battle for the starting quarterback position. So far, coach Mark Stoops said the installation of the new offense is going great.
The Wildcats held their first full-pads workout of the spring on Saturday, and Stoops reviewed the practice with reporters. He said he was very pleased with the efficiency of the offense.
“Just the basics, the communication, the urgency,” Stoops said. “Getting to the line of scrimmage, alignments, assignment. Just being efficient at our plays. I feel like the accuracy, our quarterbacks know where to go with the football. Our completion percentage is extremely high, which I really like to see. Very few drops, very few footballs on the ground.”
On defense, Stoops said the defenders showed some pop and punch, which you can imagine helps when full pads are put on.
At quarterback, Beau Allen shared his initial thoughts about the new offense under Liam Coen. He said footwork is among his toughest challenges.
“There’s definitely a transition,” Allen said. “We’re always having to learn more stuff and trying to dive more into the playbook every day, but I don’t know if there’s one certain thing off the top of my mind that may be the hardest, but there’s definitely a lot of things you have to put some extra effort in to get right and get to the ability you want to have. There’s definitely a change, but it’s a good change for me to help learn more stuff on football and learn more different styles of offenses. The struggle and the grind’s been fun so far.”
Joey Gatewood also offered his thoughts on how the installation of the offense is going. It’s his third offense in college, but he said he tries to take something from each to the next one.
“I’m just putting everything together and really trying to make it one,” he said. “I feel like if I can get that done, and I keep striving every day and push people with me, my teammates with me, I think we’ll be pretty good.”
Gatewood added that, “I know our guys are really excited for this opportunity with him and ready to take advantage of it.”
Finally we have a quarterback coach and a OC that knows how to develope quarterbacks.Eddie gran was great play caller and I wouldn’t want to play against him in chess he always a play ahead of you.but he wasn’t best at coaching the quarterback position but it falls more on hinshaw then Eddie.this team should really improve now that we could have a well developed quarterback.
I think you are correct on the QB development, which was really more on Hinshaw. As much as I’ve pointed at Hinshaw, we do have to balance the criticism of Hinshaw with the fact that Alabama came in and flipped Mac Jones and Williams was flipped to Miami. After those two recruiting losses, Gran and Hinshaw had to go looking for a QB via the junior college route. I’m still of a big fan of Steven Johnson and Terry Wilson but I don’t think either were truly consistent SEC QBs. A lot of people want to throw Eddie completely under the bus, but his specialty was with the RBs which he proved again that he can develop.
I’m with you on the team improving overall offensively with the new OC and system, but I think it is going to take some time for the players to adapt to.