Will Stein needs time to get Kentucky football where he wants it to go

• There wasn’t a lot to dissect during the Kentucky football spring game. Will Stein's Wildcats minimized their playbook for the scrimmage.
• UK was down a few offensive players who could be stars in Stein's offense: running backs Jovantae Barnes and C.J. Baxter; offensive lineman Lance Heard; and wide receiver Hardley Gilmore IV.

LEXINGTON — Kentucky football's spring game gave a quick glimpse of how new coach Will Stein's season is going to be before the rain and clouds came in, winds blew tents down the sideline and the game was called early for cautionary reasons.

Stein streamlined the Wildcats for maximum efficiency. But it's going to take some time before they reach maximum impact.

"Offense is like art, it takes some time to groove and get guys going," Stein said.

That much was clear early.

The game was not an offensive explosion and some of that was by design. For a first-time head coach, Stein has the paranoia of a veteran and instructed his offensive and defensive coordinators to keep their play calls vanilla.

The Cats huddled on offense a bit more than they will during the regular season and they purposely hid their hand signals. Stein didn’t want to tip any future opponents off on what might be coming.

“You don’t know who’s in the stands,” Stein warned. “You really don’t.”

Stein eliminated a lot of the excess he deemed unnecessary for the game. Kickoffs and punts featured only the kicker, long snapper and returner. There were no linemen and no lineups scheming to block the kicks.

He allowed tackling in the first half, but everyone wore Guardian pads over their helmets to protect from head injuries. Stein also kept his whistle on standby to ensure the officials didn’t allow his quarterbacks to inadvertently get hit.

Even if there were covert ops going on among the fans at Kroger Field, there wasn’t a lot to dissect with the Cats’ minimizing his playbook.

The Cats were also down a few offensive players who could potentially be stars in this offense: running backs Jovantae Barnes and C.J. Baxter; arguably their best offensive lineman in Tennessee transfer Lance Heard; and Hardley Gilmore IV, who is the leading receiver returning from last season.

Despite Stein’s background as a former quarterback and offensive coordinator, not even he could fast track the process of blending an entirely new system with new personnel into a well-oiled unit during 15 practices.

There were false starts, passes that should have been completed (quarterback’s fault) and passes that could have been caught (receiver’s fault). And one play where quarterback Kenny Minchey Jr. twirled and backpedaled so far he bumped into Stein, who stood on the field behind the offense to observe every play.

The newness of it all made playing a bit more complicated.

“That was the biggest obstacle, just being able to learn the offense, translate it and then when a play is called being able to picture it in my mind and execute it,” said Minchey, a Notre Dame transfer.

The product didn’t look like it will come Sept. 5 in the season opener against Youngstown State, but Stein was pleased with the amount of ground the Cats have been able to cover.

He recalled a spring during his time as Oregon’s offensive coordinator when he had Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix under center surrounded by future NFL players and Stein “felt like I couldn’t get a first down.”

The Ducks ended up being the No. 2 offense in the country that season. Stein isn’t comparing UK with Oregon, but his point stands that where they’re at now isn’t where they will be in the future.

Stein no longer questions his progress. He trusts in the system that is in place, which has produced success on the field and for the players who have run it.

“By the time we get to real games, we’re going to be so dialed (in) that we know the next call,” Stein said.

Stein focused on development not depth charts in the spring with the hopes that patience pays off in the fall.

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at [email protected], follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.