Liam Coen admits it's a 'pain' going against Brad White's defense at Kentucky
Liam Coen is back as the offensive coordinator at Kentucky after going to the NFL and coaching the Rams last season. As his first Fall Camp in Lexington continues, Coen has had to adjust to competing against defensive coordinator Brad White in practice.
Coen explained that it’s an incredible challenge to go up against White’s defense in practice.
“It’s a pain, man. It’s a pain,” Liam Coen said. “Brad is hands down one of the best coordinators in the country, if not the best. He throws so much at you every play. So, if you’re just scripting a play against our defense, you have to be ready for odd, Okie, four down, four down over, four down under, jam, pressure from the boundary, pressure from the field, safety pressure, corner pressure. It’s a lot.”
Ultimately, Liam Coen is happy he gets to compete against that defense. As the saying goes, ‘iron sharpens iron’ and playing Brad White’s defense is a great test for the offense.
“It’s a lot so even scripting just one run play, well, you’ve got to make sure that run has answers for all those defensive looks. That’s not easy. And then from a quarterback standpoint, when you just stand back there and they do such a good job of holding rotations, their safeties play on a string, they do a great job of holding rotations on the back end, and it’s not easy,” Coen said.
“So, this is great for our offense every single day we come out and play our defense because [it’s] arguably one of the best in the country.”
Liam Coen on how far the Kentucky offense has come
Despite previously being the offensive coordinator at Kentucky, Liam Coen has needed to reinstall his offense this offseason. Recently, he shared how far along the Wildcats’ offense is in that installation.
“We have, I would say, at least five times, maybe more, than we did in the spring from an installation standpoint. And they’ve handled it. They’ve handled it. Yesterday we swam a little bit. Yesterday, coming off the scrimmage, we kind of put a lot on their plates mentally, we didn’t have as good of a day as we’re used to having. It was definitely not the standard which we were looking for. We tightened it up a little bit today, trimmed it down in terms of some of the inventory and came out and executed at a better level today,” Coen said.
“So the game plan element of training camp, we’re not really game planning, right? We’re just trying to install as we go so it’s a lot. You’ll run something today that you didn’t even really run since the first day of training camp. That’s not what you do in a game plan. So, there’s a give and take to some of that stuff.”