Liam Coen reveals how far along Kentucky is in installing offense

What’s old is new for the Kentucky football offense this offseason as offensive coordinator Liam Coen returned from a one-year stint with the Los Angeles Rams, where he coached prior to being hired by the Wildcats in 2021. Back in Lexington now, Coen is pleased with the progress being made on the offensive install.

It helps, certainly, that there are some players on the roster still from Coen’s last stint at Kentucky in 2021. Either way, he’s sure they’ve got enough offense installed to go out and play a game at this point.

“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 on Tuesday.

But just having the repotoire of plays down doesn’t mean Kentucky is game-ready right now.

They might be well versed in the offense Coen is going to run, but they haven’t come close to getting to the nuts and bolts of a specific game plan. That’ll come around the end of the month, once the opening game against Ball State is around a week away.

Then it’ll be time for Coen to not only have his offensive personnel well-versed, but feeling comfortable with their plan of attack in Week 1 and the weeks to come.

“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,” Coen said.

Coen was generally pleased with how the Kentucky offense performed in a recent scrimmage

He said their ball movement up the field was great but that, by the end, they weren’t doing what they needed to do in the red zone to consistently score.

“I liked how we moved the ball. I just didn’t like how we finished,” Coen said. “You get down there on the first drive and, on second down, threw, like, a shallow concept to Dane (Key). (Devin Leary) was a little quick on it, bypassed it. We go to third down. That’s the one that’s to Tayvion (Robinson) kind of on the side and he pulled him away. We make that play? We’re in the endzone.

“You go down bang, bang, bang and kick a field goal, are you upset? No. You say, ‘Hey, let’s go! We got points’. But, instead, we worked the situation, went for it on fourth down, don’t get it, and we’re a little deflated,” explained Coen. “We kept going down the field, down the field and then just missed a couple things in the redzone offensively that, ultimately, is the difference between touchdowns and field goals. That was a little disappointing.”