{"id":418810,"date":"2025-12-02T05:31:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T05:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/418810\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T05:31:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T05:31:12","slug":"kentucky-hires-oregon-offensive-coordinator-will-stein-to-replace-mark-stoops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/418810\/","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky hires Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein to replace Mark Stoops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kentucky has Will Stein in place.<\/p>\n

The Wildcats reached a deal to make the Oregon offensive coordinator their next head coach on Monday night, the school announced. He will replace Mark Stoops, who was fired on Monday.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m honored and excited to become the next head coach at Kentucky,\u201d Stein said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cGrowing up in Kentucky and sitting in the stands at UK games as a kid, I could only dream of one day leading the Wildcats. This is truly a dream come true. My goal is to lead with purpose and help young men grow on and off the field. I\u2019m deeply thankful to President Capilouto, Mitch Barnhart, and Big Blue Nation for the trust they\u2019ve placed in me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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“I also want to thank Coach Dan Lanning and the entire Oregon staff for their support and mentorship, they\u2019ve been incredible. Now, I can\u2019t wait to get started and make Kentucky proud.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Stein, a former Louisville quarterback, joined Oregon as the Ducks\u2019 offensive coordinator ahead of the 2023 campaign. This will mark his first head coaching job in college football. He held previous assistant stints at UTSA, Texas and Louisville.<\/p>\n

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Though the Ducks missed out on the Big Ten championship game, they still mounted an 11-1 record and are undoubtedly in a position to earn a berth to the College Football Playoff for a second straight season. They were knocked out last season in the quarterfinals by Ohio State after securing the No. 1 overall seed.<\/p>\n

According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel<\/a>, Stein is expected to keep calling plays for the Ducks throughout the postseason. He’ll juggle both jobs until Oregon’s season ends.<\/p>\n

Kentucky fired Stoops officially on Monday<\/a> after 13 seasons with the program. He was one of the longest-tenured coaches in the sport, though Stoops was coming off his second straight losing season. The team ended the year on back-to-back blowout losses, including Saturday\u2019s 41-0 loss to Louisville. Stoops is due nearly $40 million, which would be one of the five biggest in college football history if it\u2019s paid out in full.<\/p>\n

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The Wildcats are now the sixth school in the SEC to make a move for a new coach this fall, following Arkansas, Florida, LSU, Auburn and Ole Miss. Though Kentucky has struggled in the 16-team SEC, Stein has managed a high-powered offense in recent years up at Oregon.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old Kentucky native could breathe new life into the Wildcats program fairly quickly. Whether that leads to a replication of the success he’s found at Oregon and getting Kentucky back to a place where it’s not only consistently making it to a bowl game but also holding its own in the best conference in the sport, however, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kentucky has Will Stein in place. The Wildcats reached a deal to make the Oregon offensive coordinator their…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":418811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,34225,357,195993,1317,1315,1316,212,62,67,132,68,195844],"class_list":{"0":"post-418810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-head-coach","10":"tag-kentucky","11":"tag-mark-stoops","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-oregon","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-will-stein"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}