Monday Huddle: A pivotal Kentucky football season starts now

The week many have been waiting for has finally arrived. After Week Zero gave us an entertaining appetizer over the weekend, the real fun can begin this week with a full slate of college football waiting on us.

One of the best weekends of the year is just around the corner with college football taking over the sports world from Thursday to Monday for the beautiful holiday weekend.

The party will get started on Thursday before some intriguing games are played on Friday night. That will ultimately get us to Saturday for the first full lineup of the season. It’s go time.

Over at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility, Mark Stoops is preparing his 13th team at Kentucky for another grueling season in the Southeastern Conference. The Cats faced a loaded slate with more than a handful of new pieces on the roster.

KSR’s Monday Huddle is back for yet another season to serve as the official start of each game week. Now it’s time to set the table for a huge season as Stoops looks to get this program back on track after a highly disappointing 2024 campaign.

First Down: Much is on the line for this program in 2025

The Kentucky football program was running high on New Year’s Day in 2022 after the Cats finished off a 10-win season with a victory over ranked Iowa in the Citrus Bowl. Expectations were extremely high for this program entering 2022 with the arrow seemingly pointing up with a chance for the Cats to become a New Year’s Six contender and a legitimate threat in the SEC East.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen the program deliver three consecutive seasons that came short of preseason expectations with the bottom finally falling out in 2024 with a 4-8 finish since that big bowl win in Orlando. Despite some aggressive moves in the transfer portal at quarterback, the offense has struggled, and the team has had difficulty winning close games.

That led to a hard reset for this program in the offseason.

For the first time since he ended the program’s long bowl game drought in 2016, Mark Stoops is feeling some legitimate heat from the fan base. The winningest coach in program history still has full support from university leadership but the patrons are beginning to get restless. Things need to get turned around quickly or that heat will rise fast. Stoops made a bet on staff continuity and rebuilding through the transfer portal this offseason. That is what everything is riding on in 2025.

Facing one of the toughest expected schedules in college football, UK’s ceiling doesn’t appear to be very high this season. Followers of this program aren’t really sure what to expect from a team with 50 new players but the same head coach and three coordinators from last season. Some type of flip needs to happen — and it needs to happen soon.

The trend lines for this program are not promising right now. Add in that fact that Vince Marrow left for Louisville, UK has almost been a non-factor with in-state recruiting in the 2026 cycle, plus that long SEC home losing streak, and there is clearly the potential for a lot of fans to jump off the wagon at the first sign of adversity this season. This program needs something good to happen on the field and they need it to happen fast. Things are changing quickly in college football. The path to success is only going to get tougher starting next year when the program will be forced to play 10 games against power conference competition yearly. It feels like things could get ugly if a true bounce-back season doesn’t arrive this fall.

Stoops still has a contract that gives him true job security but there are some clear signs that the program is not heading in the right direction. The 2025 season will serve as perhaps the final chance for this current staff to prove that they can field a competitive team and get the program back to reaching expectations. That only happens with wins on the field with a roster that everyone helped build through free agency in the offseason.

This fall could be a breaking point if things do not go well. If Mark Stoops is going to have another successful act at Kentucky, it needs to happen now. Much is on the line.

Second Down: The first true look at Kentucky’s big transfer portal class

We all knew that heavy two-way movement for the Kentucky football program was coming in the offseason. But I’m not sure anyone was fully prepared for the amount of volume. The Cats saw numerous starters or notable players leave Lexington for other power conference programs. This program responded by filling holes through the portal.

UK added 30 transfers this offseason. New Mexico offensive lineman Wallace Unamba left for Virginia after spring practice, and Louisiana Tech wide receiver Tru Edwards went pro after not receiving clearance for an extra year of eligibility. Everyone else remains on the roster.

Player	Position	Former School	Year
Sam Greene	EDGE (6-2, 248)	USC	Redshirt Sophomore
Landyn Watson	LB (6-1, 245)	TCU | Marshall	Redshirt Senior
Joshua Braun	iOL (6-6, 342)	Florida | Arkansas	Super Senior
Alex Wollschlaeger	T (6-7, 310)	Bowling Green	Super Senior
J.J. Hester	WR (6-5, 201)	Missouri | Oklahoma	Super Senior
Zach Calzada	QB (6-4, 230)	Texas A&M | Auburn | Incarnate Word	Super Senior
Henry Boyer	TE (6-6, 265)	Illinois	Redshirt Junior
Kendrick Law	WR (6-0, 203)	Alabama	Senior
Dante Dowdell	RB (6-2, 227)	Oregon | Nebraska	Junior
Jaden Williams	iDL (6-4, 291)	Wyoming	Redshirt Junior
Kevis Thomas	CB (6-0, 181)	Maryland	Junior
Evan Wibberley	iOL (6-5, 301)	WKU	Redshirt Junior
Kam Olds	EDGE (6-4, 252)	Buffalo | Kent State	Senior
David Gusta	iDL (6-3, 316)	Washington State	Redshirt Senior
Troy Stellato	WR (6-1, 178)	Clemson	Redshirt Senior
Mi’Quise Humphrey-Grace	DL (6-4, 265)	South Dakota	Redshirt Junior
Shiyazh Pete	T (6-8, 321)	New Mexico State	Redshirt Senior
Hardley Gilmore IV	WR (6-1, 165)	Nebraska	Sophomore
Lorenzo Cowan	EDGE (6-3, 247)	USC	Redshirt Freshman
Seth McGowan	RB (6-1, 220)	Oklahoma | JUCO | New Mexico State	Redshirt Senior
Elijah Brown	TE (6-6, 250)	Alabama | Florida Atlantic |UCF	Redshirt Junior
Rob Fogler	T (6-7, 304)	Ball State	Redshirt Sophomore
Ashton Cozart	WR (6-3, 195)	Oregon/SMU	Redshirt Sophomore
Cameron Jones	T (6-6, 330)	James Madison	Redshirt Sophomore
Devon Gusta	DB (6-0, 186)	UC Davis	Redshirt Sophomore
Zach Schreiner	K (6-0, 181)	JUCO | Sacramento State	Super Senior

Luckett’s Scouting Notebook: What Kentucky added to roster via the transfer portal

Kentucky is expected to open the season with first-year starters at quarterback, tailback, wide receiver, left tackle, left guard, right tackle, defensive end, defensive tackle, and outside linebacker. Meanwhile, multiple other transfer additions will play key roles as rotational players off the bench. A lot is riding on this portal class.

Most of everyone’s attention in Week 1 will be on quarterback Zach Calzada and the new-look offensive line, but this game against Toledo will be the first time that the program can show how they improved their football team. The portal additions were made to help Kentucky climb out of the current hole and help provide a flip and some momentum creation in a redshirt season. We have watched the tape, and seen the players in action in open practices, but Saturday will be the first time that we will see all of these players in a game setting with a Kentucky jersey on. The Cats need most of these additions to be hits.

Everything is riding on what was added in the portal as Kentucky had to replace some heavy turnover from the 2022 and 2023 high school recruiting cycles. This high-volume roster-building move needs to work or this football program could find itself in trouble this season.

Saturday will give us our first true glimpse of how well Kentucky did in the portal.

Third Down: Many will have Kentucky on upset alert this week

Jason Candle is now in his 17th season at Toledo. Matt Campbell‘s former offensive coordinator joined the Rockets as a tight ends coach in 2009, was promoted to play-caller in 2012, and replaced Campbell in 2016. The 45-year-old Mount Union alum is now in year 10 as a head coach with a 73-40 record and two MAC titles. Candle has led the Rockets to a pair of 11-win seasons and is likely only still at Toledo because he has not won enough MAC titles with what is consistently the best roster in that conference.

But this could just be the season where Candle becomes a legitimate power conference head coach target that multiple schools want to hire.

Toledo finished just .500 in conference play last season but did beat both Mississippi State and Pittsburgh. The Rockets have coordinator continuity, return a starting quarterback who threw for 2,808 yards and rushed for 448 non-sack yards, and returned a bunch of starters on top of some notable additions in the transfer portal. Add in a very manageable schedule and some will have this team as a potential playoff contender.

The Rockets will be a popular pick to win this football game outright. That message will very likely be shared throughout the walls of the Joe Craft Football Training Facility. An argument can be made that Toledo is the best Group of Five team Kentucky has played in some time but the Cats did handle MAC champion Ohio last season at Kroger Field.

This mini-rebuild done by Kentucky in offseason could be blown up immediately if the home team doesn’t win this football game. However, Toledo isn’t sneaking up on anyone in this matchup.

The week ahead at KSR

Game week is here, and KSR will provide the Big Blue Nation with in-depth pregame content from now until kickoff arrives on Saturday afternoon. The wait for football is finally over.

We will have full coverage of Mark Stoops’ press conference on Monday before breaking down the first depth chart of the season. From there, practice reports and daily podcasts will take over as Saturday quickly approaches.

Over at KSR+, we will have our in-depth scouting report on Toledo published on Thursday along with some more preseason content before the games finally start. It’s time to get this party started.