Mark Stoops wants to move forward after disastrous 4-8 campaign in 2024

The Kentucky football program was flying high leaving the 2021 season with 10 wins and a ranked finish. It appeared Mark Stoops had this program primed to make a jump and possibly enter a true contending tier in the Southeastern Conference. Since that moment, we’ve seen the landscape of college football shift drastically and the Wildcats have delivered three consecutive underachieving seasons.

The bottom fell out in 2024 when UK finished the year with just four wins and the program’s worst conference record (1-7) in over a decade. It seemed like everything went wrong for this organization last year. Mark Stoops and his coaching staff simply went to work to try and fix it.

This offseason has been filled with pessimism about the program. The noise will most likely get much louder if good results do not arrive this season. Over at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility, the coaching staff immediately went to work to fix the problems. That all led to massive roster flip with 50 new players entering the program and reemphasizing the program’s core values. Now the Wildcats want to turn the page after much discussion about motivation levels, headline avoidance, transfer portal activity, and why coaching staff continuity was so important.

“I think it’s very fair to say that we needed to take good look at what went wrong. So I think I’ve been very open about those things. I don’t want to dwell on it,” Stoops told the local Kentucky media in Atlanta on Thursday. “When I’ve stood here before, after 10-win seasons, it was all about next year, right? So I think it’s fair for me to address last year, but not dwell on it.”

“Anytime you have a season like that, you better take a good look at yourself. So certainly, we evaluated everything within the program, as we always do.”

In the offseason, we heard about the staff meeting that Kentucky had where everything was laid on the table and we saw what appears to be a shift in recruiting strategy play out both in the portal and in the high school market. Stoops finally confirmed that former offensive coordinator Eddie Gran is the program’s general manager, there would be no major staff moves made, and that Kentucky has to “fix that culture”. But now the talk is over.

The Cats are in prove it mode. This program wants to stop talking about how bad last season was.

“For us, it’s business as usual. Like we’re always committed. Did we do things to the best of our ability at times last year? Absolutely not,” Mark Stoops explained at SEC Media Days. “I’ve been the first one to admit that, to talk about that, to address that. I’m not running from that, and the same for our team.”

“When you have a down year, you have to stand up here, own it, face it, talk about the things you’re doing to address it, then move on.”

Moving on means starting a new season where Kentucky will likely be picked to finish second-to-last when the SEC’s order of finish is released on Friday. The Cats are true underdogs this season and will look to prove people wrong while playing against one of the toughest schedules in college football. Mark Stoops is done thinking about the disastrous 2024 season. The dean of SEC coaches is all-in on 2025.

“I don’t want to dwell on it,” said Stoops.