Kentucky football: With Eddie Gran gone, where does Kentucky go with its offense?
By Joe Cox
Published:
Sunday’s news couldn’t have been less shocking. Kentucky offensive coordinator Eddie Gran’s 5th season in Lexington will be his last. While Gran helped lead the Wildcats to a 36-26 mark during that span, there was an increased sense in and around the program that the Wildcats might have been winning those games in spite of his offense and not because of it.
The Wildcats sit at 11th in the conference in scoring and dead last in total yardage. The passing attack not only is last in the conference, it is 63 yards per game behind 13th-place South Carolina. Fairly or unfairly, Gran is the scapegoat for a season of offensive difficulty, which is why he and QB coach Darin Hinshaw were relieved of their duties.
The question now is, what direction will the Wildcats go?
Mark Stoops has had 3 offensive coordinators in his 8 years. Perhaps the most effective was current West Virginia head coach Neal Brown, whose 2014 team passed for 231 yards per game in 2014, which is by far the most effective passing season the Wildcats have had under Stoops. Those Wildcats went just 5-7, though, mostly because Stoops was still building his defense, which allowed 31.3 points per game. The last three Kentucky defenses have allowed 17, 19, and 26 points per game, the last coming in the all-SEC schedule of 2020.
Of course, Kentucky’s bread and butter has been the ground game. Brown’s offense yielded 4.1 yards per carry, while Gran led 5 UK teams that each topped 4.3 yards per carry (including 2019, when their 279 rushing yards per game led the SEC). But the lack of balance cost Kentucky not only in the win column, but on the recruiting trail, where top receivers and passers had some reluctance about the current scheme. For instance, 2021 recruit and wide receiver Armond Scott recently decomitted.
The new Kentucky coordinator will likely have a chance to reshape the offense. With the departure of Gran and Hinshaw, and with the recent death of OL coach John Schlarman, only WR coach Jovon Bouknight stands to return, and he just completed his first year in Lexington. Rumors had long surrounded the program that Gran’s run-heavy ways were heavily influenced by Stoops, but reporters say those whispers are not based in reality.
I'm told that the idea Mark Stoops "handcuffs" his playcallers and demands a ground-and-pound is just not true. That he never goes in the offensive meeting room. He grew increasingly frustrated by a lack of passing game, knows he has to open it up to sell tickets and recruit.
— Kyle Tucker (@KyleTucker_ATH) December 6, 2020
Kentucky will doubtlessly look for some prestige and punch, both on the stat sheet and the recruiting trail. The earliest rumors have centered around Oklahoma offensive coordinator Cale Gundy. Like Stoops, Gundy has family ties within the fraternity of major college coaches. He’s in a situation at Oklahoma where title aside, he doesn’t actually get his shot as a play-caller. That said, it’s fair to wonder whether the Kentucky situation is glamorous enough to entice Gundy.
Some of the other names mentioned include former Mississippi State head coach Joe Moorhead and former Boston College head coach Jeff Jagodzinski, who has temporarily assisted Kentucky in coaching the offensive line after Schlarman’s untimely passing. Yet another interesting possibility is that Stoops may try to hire Garrett Riley, whose brother Lincoln was reportedly under strong consideration when Neal Brown left Kentucky after the 2014 season.
Ultimately, Kentucky is unlikely to go for any sort of offensive gimmickry, but will mine established coaches to find somebody to inject a fresh approach to the passing game. Given the recent investments in the program, the Wildcats may need to open up their wallets to lure Gundy from Oklahoma or Moorehead from Oregon, for instance. But the Wildcats have reached a point where they have an opportunity to keep their coaching nucleus intact and inject something new on offense.
Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.
