Mark Stoops has 'unbelievable confidence' in Kentucky offensive line coach Eric Wolford

Following the 2023 season, Kentucky gave offensive line coach Zach Yenser a one-year contract extension pointing to the former San Francisco 49ers assistant returning for a year three in Lexington. That changed once Alabama head coach Nick Saban decided to retire in January. Eric Wolford became a free agent and Mark Stoops decided to bring the offensive line coach back to Lexington.

Less than eight months after that hire, we saw Kentucky’s offensive line play one of the worst games in recent memory as the Wildcats had simply no answers for South Carolina’s pass rush. To make matters worse, penalties piled up in the second half and Kentucky lost starting left guard Jager Burton to injury during the game. Since the embarrassing defeat, the offensive line and Wolford are each receiving a ton of criticism from the fan base.

Despite the noise, Mark Stoops still believes Eric Wolford is the man for the job in Lexington.

“I have unbelievable confidence in Coach Wolf,” Stoops told reporters on Monday. “Especially the way he recruits, the way he coaches, and we just gotta continue to build that up over three, four years.”

Those recruiting results will not show up until down the road. Wolford has helped Kentucky land four high school prospects in the 2025 recruiting cycle. That was needed after the program struggled to attract high school prospects under Yenser. But now Kentucky needs to win games and likely will not be able to do that unless we see some marked improvement from the Kentucky offensive line.

Stoops believes that the recent offensive coordinator churn might be catching up to the program. Eddie Gran, Liam Coen (x2), Rich Scangarello, and Bush Hamdan have all called plays for this program in the last five seasons.

“The continuity is clearly doesn’t help,” said Stoops. “In recruiting it doesn’t help with the inconsistency that we’ve had in the turnover. So we have to settle in and we have to recruit.”

“The attrition — it takes it’s toll on you.”

Eric Wolford will help fix some of Kentucky’s roster-building issues. Now Kentucky must work on finding an offensive design that can allow the current personnel on the roster to succeed.

“Making sure we have a game plan that they can execute, and operate, and hold everybody accountable to do that,” said Stoops.