Overcoming Adversity is the Key to Kentucky's Success in 2025

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. We’ve heard Mark Stoops diagnose what went wrong for Kentucky in 2024 and share a few details on how he plans on fixing it. At Kentucky Football Media Day, Brad White helped us peel back another layer of the onion to get to the root of the program’s problems.

Friday served as the official introduction to the 2025 football team. Even though there are 50 new players, it’s clear the Kentucky coaching staff was looking for a specific kind of player. You can feel the maturity emanating from the entire group.

“I think this group is wired right. I think there’s depth across the defense, maybe not the experience within the system, but there’s multiple pieces. So I think it gives us the chance to withstand, you know, the natural attrition that happens within a football season,” the Kentucky defensive coordinator said.

“We sit up here on August 1, and you really don’t know what you have until you hit the middle of the season. That’s the reality of it, because that’s when attrition happens. That’s when bad things in the season, the roller coaster, starts to happen. And now you figure out how mentally and physically and emotionally tough you are. We were not that enough last year, midseason. We were able to plug holes and cracks that had showed up early in the season, but they’re going to get exposed as the season goes along, and so the idea is to limit or eliminate those cracks here early so they don’t show up late.”

Kentucky Must Coach Toughness

The defensive dam broke in the middle of the 2024 season. The stout run defense turned into a sieve. White and the rest of the coaching staff clearly diagnosed what went wrong. The Cats didn’t have the depth or the mental toughness to overcome adversity.

We know the what and the why. Now we need to know how they’re going to fix it.

Culture is a word that gets used a lot. The fact is the culture these players operate in has changed. In order to look like a well-coached team, which they did not a year ago, the onus is on Stoops’ staff to set these players up for success by empowering them.

“The Xs and Os will take care of itself. The strength staff does an unbelievable job getting our guys prepared, in terms of being physically ready. But we’ve got to have them mentally and emotionally ready because it is a freaking grind of the season,” said White.

The Kentucky defensive coordinator was passionate in his prose and delivery. He let it be known that he has his players’ backs and that they have each other’s.

“Collectively, they’re leaning into each other, and they’re going to be stronger that way… When a guy’s having a down day, it doesn’t pull everybody down. The rest of them rally to lift that one up. Because here’s the reality of it: In this day and age, in the media age, these young men, it doesn’t matter whether they’re your senior leader, it is hard to stay positive, uplifted every single day.”

White continued: “They have a lot more off the field that they have to deal with than young men in the past. I never had to deal with what they have to deal with on a daily basis. And I get it. You know, there’s a lot of pressure, because everybody understands that they get compensated, but they’re still 18 to 22 year olds that are dealing with a lot of stuff off the field, personal issues they have to deal with, the pressure of succeeding, feeling the weight to the world.

“They want to do right. Ninety-something percent in that locker room, all they want to do is write. They just want to please you as a coach. They want to please their family. They want to please the fan base. They want to do right. We’ve all been there. When you feel that kind of pressure, it’s hard to execute at a high level. So part of our job as coaches is just to try to clear their mind so they can have fun and enjoy it. That’s when they’re going to play their best on the field.”

Kentucky has identified the pieces the football program needs to be successful. They have a month to put them all together, and we won’t know if it’s correctly assembled until after they’ve played a handful of games.