Ask Kentucky football coach Will Stein how he plans to spend the first night of his head-coaching career, and he starts down one road before swerving onto another: "I'm going to go have a cold beer and f*****g"—he catches himself—"excuse my French, I was going to say F-ing hang out with my family, sorry. Apologize, sorry, Big Blue Nation. They probably liked that."
They probably did. It was the loosest sixty seconds of an otherwise exacting hour, and it tells you almost everything about the version of Stein who just beat Youngstown State 45-13: a coach with a beer in one hand and a red pen already in the other.
The final score wasn't close. Kentucky ran for 205 yards, threw for 301, and held a legitimately dangerous dual-threat quarterback to
59 yards on 28 carries. Stein gave the opponent his full respect without giving an inch of credit to his own defense's margin for error: "I think that guy can play a lot of different places. Not just in this league, but all over the country. He can run it, he can throw it, and for the most part we stopped him running the ball, which was a big part of the plan. " Praise for the other guy, a checked box for his own game plan, in the same breath—a trick most coaches can't manage after a 32-point win.
What Stein couldn't do, even for one afternoon, was leave well enough alone. Somewhere in the first half of an already comfortable game, his offense huddled a beat too slow. Most coaches forget that by the postgame buffet. Stein brought it up unprompted: "That's where it pisses me off as a coach," he said. "You have to play at a certain standard every single snap. Regardless of circumstances. I don't care if it's hot, and I don't care if it's freezing cold or raining. Sleeting, snowing, you need to get your butt back to the huddle and get to the line of scrimmage ASAP so we can dictate the pace."
Dictating the pace, it turns out, is the whole point of the operation. "We dictate the pace of the game," Stein said. "That's how our offensive is really built. You will see us huddle, you will see us speed break, and you will see us no-huddle. To me, if you just go one pace the whole game, that's where the defense can kind of catch on and get your rhythm. We like to mix it up on people." It's a tempo built to be annoying on purpose—a fitting description, honestly, of Stein's whole news conference for anyone hoping to just enjoy a season-opening blowout in peace.
His new quarterback got the identical treatment his opponent's did: real praise, filed immediately next to real notes. Eighteen-for-27, 304 yards, and four touchdowns in his first career start, and Stein's headline take on it doubled as a syllabus. "That's not how you play quarterback; how you play quarterback is you take the easy money. You take what they give you," he said, before circling back to the compliment. "I thought the majority of the game he managed extremely well. He had a lot of checks and kills built-in. He was able to elude some rushers on nakeds. I think for his first start I was very pleased with his performance."
The running back rotation, at least, went exactly to plan—Stein's plan, specifically. "We really went in this game saying, 'Let's try to get him 12 to 15 carries max,'" he said. "He had nine, which I thought was perfect. " Two true freshmen receivers earned the kind of unscripted enthusiasm that's harder to fake than a compliment on cue. Kenny Darby got it first: "That guy can play football. You can just see it. He's got twitch; he loves the game. He never wants to come out. He's a real deal." Prince Jean got the same file stamped on him minutes later—"He's a real deal," "smart, tough, dependable." A few questions after that, someone brought up freshman linebacker Isaiah McMillan, fresh off five solo tackles, a tackle for loss, and a pass breakup. Stein's answer sounded less like a scouting report than a coach who'd already seen the trailer. "When he got his opportunity in practice, he played the exact same way," he said. "Our second scrimmage, I think he had an interception, he had two fumble recoveries, and he had like seven tackles. I'm like, Dang, let's play this game. He can go." Then, almost on autopilot, the same three words came back out: "He's smart, he's tough, dependable, and really proud of him just stepping up when his number is called."
Even the day's one real offensive hiccup—stretches where the ball didn't find Kentucky's playmakers—got turned into a teaching point instead of a gripe. "I want to credit DJ on that play, too, for the perimeter blocking," Stein said. "When the ball is not coming to you in a game, it can be frustrating. I thought the guys handled adversity in terms of identifying him." Then, on how a receiver is supposed to respond when the ball simply doesn't find him: "You play your ass off, and you go out there, and you block. "No sympathy. Just a standard.
Then, for a few minutes, none of it was about football at all. Stein's father served as Kentucky's honorary captain—"the time we spent here at UK together and being a Letterman," Stein said, "and being the reason why I'm here"—and his wife and kids were waiting on the field afterward. He didn't linger there long before the job pulled him back. "But my kids know their dad, and my wife knows that her husband has got a job to do," he said, before adding, almost as a correction to himself, "I am really thankful that they are here to support. They are my biggest fans. My wife is my biggest cheerleader. My kids love me no matter what, which is great."
The day's most sober moment had nothing to do with wins or standards. Kentucky honored the memory of Nic Smith with an open locker, an empty seat, and a helmet sticker, and Stein didn't treat it as a ceremony. "I saw his dad before the game walking into the stadium, which was just a reminder about how precious life is," he said. "You know, I've got a little boy, I've got a little girl, and I can't imagine losing them. So we are always going to remember him."
By the time Stein got back around to that beer—the one he'd promised himself and then apologized for wanting—he'd already told the room exactly how long it would last. "I've got to watch it," he said. "But I'm going to grade the ball security, then the effort running to the ball on defense, and the effort chasing the ball on offense harder than anything. And so, that has to improve, I know that. To me, that was where the standard lacked today, and it wasn't for a lack of want to. It's literally we just got to practice running to the ball and chasing the ball on offense better."
Forty-five points on the board, and Kentucky's coach walked out of his own celebration already hunting for what was wrong with it. That, more than the score, is the actual scouting report on Year One. Now the real test starts with Bama next up!
This article originally appeared on UK Wildcats Wire: Will Stein finds plenty to fix after Kentucky victory
