More motivated than ever, Stoops explained the State of Kentucky Football on KSR

Mark Stoops stopped by the KSR studio on Tuesday for a long conversation with Matt Jones about the state of Kentucky Football. UK’s spring practice began on Monday, and the team’s Pro Day was held at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Still, Stoops told KSR he would stay as long as the show had questions and wanted him around.

Admittedly, the annual offseason conversation came much later on the calendar than usual, in part because of Stoops’ ankle surgery, the non-stop roster construction, and to cool off from his most disappointing season in Lexington. But once he found the date to make his KSR appearance, Stoops spent nearly an hour with KSR to discuss the problems of 2024 and what’s ahead in 2025.

You can watch the entire conversation below. First, here are five takeaways from a KSR co-host in the room.

“I’ve never been as motivated as I am right now.”

Let’s start with the end. Stoops’ best comments from his KSR interview were in his message to the fan base.

“Number one, I hear them, and I accept the criticisms 100 percent,” Stoops told the Kentucky fan base through KSR. “I’m not so hard-headed where I’m not going to try to embrace any challenge, any obstacle, to get better.

“You could take this or leave it, but I’ve never been as motivated as I am right now. If you know anything about me, I do not like an ass kicking. We didn’t play to our best last year and I can guarantee you since that season was over, when we lost on Saturday against Louisville, our butts were in that office on Sunday and have not stopped since.”

[An emotional Mark Stoops shares desire for a bounce-back with Kentucky: “I do not like an ass kicking.”]

“The results weren’t there, and little things became big things. That can’t happen.”

Now, back to the beginning of the interview, when last season’s problems were discussed. Kentucky went 4-8 in 2024, the worst record since Stoops’ first year on the job over a decade ago. He told Matt Jones the many problems behind the disappointing season are too broad to address with a single answer, but it starts at the top.

“Obviously, there are many factors that go into it,” Stoops explained. “It starts with myself and and making sure the leadership was what we needed it to be, you know, with myself, with our staff, with strength and conditioning, with nutrition, you know, Xs and Os, you know, everything that we do in the organization, and making sure we’re all on the same page.”

He was hesitant to get too specific with each issue, noting that last season, his comments were “ripped apart” when Kentucky wasn’t winning. “I have to be a little broad stroke there, you understand.”

When Matt pushed back, asking if discipline was where it needed to be, Stoops replied, “How can I say it was?… That was one many problems, right? And when I say discipline, there are different layers to that. It’s not like our team went rogue. That’s never going to happen under my watch. Was it as dialed in as we needed it to be? Clearly not, and I understand that. I take responsibility for that.”

He added, “I loved our team. Was it where we wanted to be? No, no, absolutely not. We didn’t coach good enough. We didn’t play good enough. We weren’t disciplined enough. We weren’t physical enough. There’s a lot of things, and so that is part of it, that I have to look at.”

Asked if player accountability wasn’t as tight as it needed to be in day-to-day operations, Stoops agreed, saying any criticism is fair, and he accepts it.

“Was it as dialed in or as tidy as it needed to be? Clearly not. The results weren’t there, and little things became big things. That can’t happen.”

Offensive line upgrades and the case for Eric Wolford

Kentucky’s offensive line was one of the biggest issues behind last season’s troubles. On KSR, Stoops admitted that he knew they were in trouble by Week 2, when the Wildcats allowed five sacks in a 31-6 loss to South Carolina in Lexington.

“We didn’t anticipate that,” he said of Kentucky’s struggles in the trenches, noting how the lack of protection changed the way Bush Hamdan ran the offense in Hamdan’s first season as offensive coordinator. The lack of continuity on the line and in the offensive coordinator’s office “clearly caught up to us,” Stoops added.

Moving forward, Stoops believes he improved the offensive line through the transfer portal with key returners from a year ago, in addition to Hamdan’s return with a full year behind him.

“I think we’re definitely better. One thing that was a point of emphasis was that we had to keep our good young guys in place: Malachi (Wood), Aba (Selm), we had to keep Jager (Burton), you know, he’s not young, but the guys we had inside, Jalen Farmer, we had to keep the nucleus of the good players we had and then add to it, in particular at tackle. We had to get better at tackle, and we certainly did that.”

UK’s offensive line coach, Eric Wolford, hasn’t been a popular man throughout the fan base since he left Lexington in the middle of the night to take a job at Alabama, only to return to UK one year later. Stoops’ defended the re-hiring of Wolford to KSR, noting that he gets more calls about Wolford than any other assistant on his staff.

“I understand the frustration. Heck, I was frustrated when Eric left the first time, and he and I go back. I could tell you this. There’s not a coach that I’ve ever had that I take more calls for. You know, the guy could go anywhere he wants at any time, and he knows the last time–and he decided to go work with Nick (Saban), and, you know, I understand that–it hurt us, though. The continuity. He knows that. When he came back, we had those discussions, both professionally and personally, about the responsibility and what we need and the consistency and continuity that I need. He understood that, embraced that. He’s taken those bullets. He’s come back. He just recruited as good as anybody I’ve ever had.”

[Spring Briefing: Kentucky Adds Experience to Rebuilt Offensive Line]

Eddie Gran has GM responsibilities without the title

Another one of Stoops’ staffers was a big part of Tuesday’s discussion. Eddie Gran, who was UK’s offensive coordinator from 2016-2020, has been a special assistant to Stoops since 2021. In the last three years, Gran took on the unofficial role of general manager, handling the NIL fundraising and assisting in identifying transfer portal targets.

Stoops told KSR, “Eddie is kind of our general manager. He works with me, works with our budget. He wears many hats. What he’s really worked hard at the last three years is raising the money that we’ve needed to pay some of these players.”

Several other staffers in the personnel department watch high school and college players all year long, Stoops explained, and then Stoops will make final decisions with his coordinators and position coaches on who to contact, offer, etc.

Keeping the Governor’s Cup

The Southeastern Conference is still considering a nine-game conference schedule after the 2025 season, which has many wondering about the future of Kentucky’s rivalry game with Louisville. Asked directly if he would want to keep the Governor’s Cup with nine SEC games, Stoops replied, “I do. That’ll be a real challenge, but I do.”

Earlier in the interview, Stoops called last year’s Governor’s Cup loss “indefensible.” He added,
We’ve had a really good run. Our players understand the importance of it. We embrace it. We embrace that challenge.”

[Mark Stoops wants to keep Kentucky vs. Louisville rivalry even if SEC moves to 9 conference games]

For lots more from Stoops, watch (or just listen) to the full interview:

Watch Stoops’ full interview with KSR

Follow KSR The Show on YouTube

Listen via the KSR Podcast