Devin Leary, Liam Coen Excited to Game Plan vs. Ball State

Time for talking is almost over. In just a matter of days it will be Football Time in the Bluegrass. There might be a few nerves for some Kentucky football players once the game draws near, but right now it’s full speed ahead to prepare for Ball State.

Most of the offseason is spent focusing on how to make Kentucky better. Now it’s time to play the game of chess that is SEC football. It all starts in the film room where Devin Leary has spent extra hours alongside offensive coordinator Liam Coen.

“It definitely helps now that I’m a graduate, so I’m not spending super amount of time on campus as I was in the past,” Leary told reporters Tuesday evening. “Now it’s really cool being able to kind of hang at facility with Coach Coen and watch how he comes up with certain plays and how he sees the game going about in certain ways. I make it a priority to just kind of sit in the room as much as I possibly can, spend as much time in this facility as I can and try to be an extended coach out on this field for all my teammates.”

This portion of game-planning is a symbiotic relationship. Coen has a lengthy script of potential plays and Leary shares which calls he likes and which ones he doesn’t. If the quarterback doesn’t like the call, Coen will throw it out or explain why he believes it will work.

“It’s really cool, honestly, to pick his brain when we’re watching an opponent or scouting a certain team to kind of to see how Coach Coen sees their defense, or what he thinks will work versus them or how he wants to specifically attack them. You can kind of get a feel for when he played the position, what he kind of likes or how he sees certain things going about throughout the course of the game,” said Leary.

“It’s been a good process,” Coen added, “kind of bridging the gap between the two of us and some of the things that we’ve done in the past. He’s pretty dialed into this game plan.”

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Game-Planning in the Transfer Portal Era

College football teams vary from year-to-year, but that turnover has been amplified by the transfer portal. Kentucky added 16 players from the transfer portal. Ball State lost their best player to the portal, UCLA RB Carson Steele, but brought in 14 players, including starting quarterback Layne Hatcher.

Typically the Kentucky coaching staff gives each player tape that highlights the specific individual they will face on Saturday. It helps them get a feel for who they will have to hit or run by once the game starts. That’s not possible for each opponent this week.

“It’s difficult,” said Coen. “Maybe they’re coming from somewhere where we don’t have a lot of access to that film. You don’t have a great feel for some of those guys that have transferred and maybe didn’t play as many snaps at the place that they just came from, but now they’re expected to be starters. That’s hard.”

Primary Point of Emphasis for Liam Coen

The Kentucky offensive coordinator is stressing the sentiment shared by his boss: play clean football. Not every play will be perfect, but pre-snap penalties and sloppy ball security are inexcusable, regardless of the setting.

“That is literally the thing that I got up and spoke about yesterday,” said Coen. “(It’s) a similar thought process your first scrimmage. You want to come out of this thing without self-inflicted wounds, whether that’s pre-snap penalties, alignment, assignment, turnovers, playing clean and then the rest will ultimately take care of itself. If you play hard, you play fast and play physical, but you don’t shoot yourself in the foot, typically good things happen. And that’s been the huge message this week is to play a clean game.”

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A Hard Lesson Learned

The final pre-Ball State media opportunity began with a relatable question: is it more challenging to game-plan for a MAC opponent or game-plan a two-year-old’s birthday? It’s gotta be the latter. This weekend they celebrated another year around the sun for his son and the Coens realized they went a little overboard.

“About an hour prior to the actual party starting we said, ‘You know, why don’t we just do this at Malibu Jack’s and have somebody else deal with this?’ But it was fun.”

His son may not remember the party but Liam Coen will definitely remember that lesson before the next birthday party.