Rams system, play-action passing led Mark Stoops to Liam Coen

Following the 2020 season, Mark Stoops needed to make the hard call. Kentucky had won 36 games since 2016, but the offense was going in the wrong direction.

Following another year finishing as the worst passing offense in the SEC, Stoops relieved assistants Eddie Gran and Darin Hinshaw of their services in Lexington. Stoops knew the next hire would be a pivotal one for the program, and the head coach researched thoroughly.

Following an extensive search, the Los Angeles Rams offense ran by Sean McVay was very attractive to the veteran head coach.

“There was many reasons — obviously I vetted quite a few candidates,” the head coach said on his radio show on Monday evening. “Talked to quite a few, and I really spent a lot of time looking at, thinking about what I wanted to be. And what I felt like we could be at Kentucky. It’s one thing to say ‘who wouldn’t want to look like Oklahoma on offense,’ right? They have some really good players but have also been working at that system for a long time. They’ve recruited very well to that system, and Lincoln [Riley] knows it inside and out. Lot of reasons, but you have to also understand what you think you can recruit, what you’re already good at, and we are good at being physical, we play defense, and needed to improve in the passing game.”

When the program first decided to move on a get a new coordinator, one name that popped up repeatedly was Oklahoma assistant Cale Gundy. The brother of Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, Cale has been an assistant coach at Oklahoma since 1999 working under both Bob Stoops and Riley. Despite that relationship, Stoops decided to go in a different direction for this search.

The Wildcats wanted to find a way to take advantage of their current power game by installing a play-action passing offense that could challenge SEC defenses.

“I felt like we had to capitalize on the physicality and the running part,” Mark Stoops said. “Who is good at benefitting from that? Who does a great job of play-action? If you can run the ball, you ought to be able to throw it off some play-action and make some hay on first and second down.

Say hello to the Los Angeles Rams. More importantly, say hello to the offensive blueprint adopted and created by Sean McVay.

After finishing his playing career at Miami (Ohio), McVay got a job on Jon Gruden’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers staff and quickly moved up the ranks. In 2010, Mike Shanahan hired him to be an offensive assistant in his first season with the Washington Redskins. McVay worked under offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan for four seasons before being promoted to offensive coordinator in 2014.

Why is that Shanahan relationship important to remember? Because that is where McVay picked up the wide zone scheme. The play that Mike Shanahan made famous when the Denver Broncos were winning Super Bowls with John Elway and Terrell Davis was adopted by McShay. After three years of calling plays in Washington under Jay Gruden, McShay was hired to be an NFL head coach at the age of 30. He was the youngest head coach in NFL history.

In his second season, McVay led the Rams to an NFC Championship and Super Bowl appearance. On that NFC staff in 2018 was Liam Coen who worked in a similar offensive assistant role that McVay got his start with under Shanahan. Now the teacher became the student.

Kentucky is hopeful the student can bring that knowledge to Lexington.

“I felt like this system, and this guy was the right guy,” said Mark Stoops. “Liam was the right guy for the job. I felt like this system has the balance that I’m looking for. You need to be able to be physical and run the ball to set up play-action and make some hay on first, second down, and I think it’s going to be a good mixture.

“If you really look at NFL football, big plays happen on first, second down. The predictable pass is not a great place to be for anybody. Especially when at Kentucky or most of the rest of the SEC. If you’re in predictable pass, it’s very tough unless you have a bunch of freaks running around.”

Kentucky would like to have some of those freaks, but it’s well known that the Wildcats will have to scheme well each week to collect wins consistently in the talent-driven SEC. Mark Stoops is hopeful that Liam Coen and his wide zone scheme can have some of the magic we’ve seen become popular and successful in the NFL.

McVay has seen assistants move on to become head coaches for the Cincinnati Bengals and Green Bay Packers. Kyle Shanahan finally got a chance to run a franchise, and he recently led the San Francisco 49ers to an NFC Championship and Super Bowl appearance. New Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Shane Waldron worked with McShay and Coen in Los Angeles. Kevin Stefanski’s spin on the wide zone scheme helped lead the Cleveland Browns to their first playoff win since 1994 in his first season as a head coach. Derrick Henry rushed for over 2,000 yards last season in a wide zone scheme with the Tennessee Titans. Former Rams staffer Jedd Fisch will be installing a similar scheme at the University of Arizona in his first season as a head coach.

Some college programs have had success with it as well. Jeff Grimes used a wide zone scheme to unlock Zach Wilson and allow the Cougars to have their best season in years last fall. Dave Aranda decided to hire Grimes to be his offensive coordinator at Baylor in the offseason because he believed the future of football could be wide zone out of heavy sets to take advantage of defenses get smaller, faster, gutsier to create havoc plays.

“Getting it to where it’s more just wide zone and you’re picking stuff up and knocking them off and the same with play-action pass,” Aranda said at Big 12 Media Days. “The more you can run the ball, the more you can play-action pass off of it and hold people accountable as opposed to being in spread sets where now there’s pressures and stunts coming from different areas.

At SEC Media Days, KSR famously asked Nick Saban a scheme question and nearly went viral. However, the best coach in college football history thinks that there could be value in moving to a more conventional approach on offense.

“I do think that defenses are catching up and creating more issues with some of the things that they do, and people who get back in regular formation as we do — we never, ever abandon that,” Saban told KSR. “That’s always been a part of what we do to run the ball. People have a more difficult time adjusting to that, which used to be the starting point of where you taught everything you did.

Mark Stoops and Kentucky are banking on a couple of things — still leaning heavily into the run game, and an NFL play-action approach can make things easier in the passing game. If it works, this could allow the Wildcats to level up in the SEC and really start making some noise nationally.

“I’m bent on improving this football team and taking it to another level,” said Stoops. “I believe this is the guy to do it, I believe this is the system to do it. It’s not going to happen overnight — there’s going to be some ups and some downs, but I am very excited about what’s going on.”

Can Coen allow Kentucky’s offense to join the modern-day football world by getting efficiency in the running game and explosive plays in the passing game? Only time will tell.

Stoops took a risk, but it just might pay off big time.