Are you ready to move on from Stoops yet?
- Thread starter AE82
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He has only been here 10 years moron. Looking at the history of the 2 schools over the last 40 years which one has actually been the under-achiever the last ten years. Hint: Stoops is way ahead of the curve.
At least with meyer in his best case he has you competing for the 12 team playoff and maybe capable of making some noise. Most UK football fans are ok with just being solid and making a meaningless bowl exhibition and sadly with the coaches we get and where we play getting to another level won't ever happen.
It's one of the reasons the faux outrage on here and rafters and by jones and his cronies over the calipari comments this summer were so outlandish. Comments shouldn't have been said but with school brand and national media and other fanbase perceptions, he was and is 100% correct. Doesn't matter what any UK fans on a message board say as we don't determine what type of sports chool we are. The historic results do, how the media views us, and how other fanbases do.
Until UK football wins something that matters the perception isn't changing. New years 6 bowl game, sec east, sec, make the playoff, etc. Have to build the brand and earn respect. In order to do that you have to win enough games.
Plateaued at our recent 10 win seasons? Stoops accomplishments are nothing to scoff at for anyone with a firm grasp on reality. Two 10 win seasons with good but far from overwhelming rosters gives me every reason to believe he can take it a step further. If Stoops leaves the risk of returning to the Vandy neighborhood is more likely than winning east titles and becoming a playoff fixture.
Must be nice living in fantasy land. Odds are definitely against improving over what we have.
Stoops is the 16th highest paid coach in all of college football. Marrow is handsomely paid as well. When have we ever had that type of investment in the program? You don’t think with top 20 money we could land a good coach? I think we could.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that. The pool if interested coaches would be much better this time than when we fired Joker. Stoops deserves immense credit for improving the program. We are now in a spot where we could go out and get a good coach. The infrastructure is there for this program to be better than it is.
I read somewhere that coming into this season, Cats were 16-2 against Missouri, South Carolina and Vandy over the previous six (6) seasons. The law of averages tells you that is not going to continue. Missouri will be a tough game.
I am on the fence with him. His type of football is only going to work at a school that has tons of talent like a Bama,Ga.,OSU, Mich. So that never going to happen here. He will always be a 6,7,8 win coach at UK and with Texas and OU coming to SEC it going to be even tougher.
I voted on the fence. On the side of wanting him to stay, the simplest and best argument is that he has been getting results at the end of the day that we haven’t seen here in my lifetime. He’s done a great job building us into a respectable program after literal decades in the basement of the conference. We’re recruiting legitimate SEC players, improving our facilities, and fan interest is booming. That’s definitely not anything to scoff at. He also seems like he’s genuinely invested himself in being here rather than just using as a stepping stone to the next job offer he can get, and I appreciate that.
The part of me that’s ready to move on knows that we’re unlikely to improve much further with him in charge, and may even regress. A lot of you keep using the term “plateaued”, but the longer I think about it, the more I realize that may be a best case scenario because it implies that we’ll stay at our current level. Honestly, I’m not so sure that we haven’t peaked and are now looking at a step back though. When you really look back at our best seasons (2018 and 2021), truly impressive wins are few and far between. There was 9-3 Florida and 8-4 Mississippi State in 2018, and then you’re probably taking your pick of whoever you think was the strongest 6-6 team for our best win last year if you exclude the bowl games. That’s not to say that we were total frauds, but our pool of mediocre opponents may be dwindling with Tennessee fully reawakened, South Carolina showing a spark, Louisville buying high end recruits, and Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC.
We’ll need to step up if we want to keep up, but unfortunately Stoops seems stuck in his defense, field position, and clock control philosophy that becomes more obsolete with every passing season. Perhaps even more frustrating than that is how undisciplined we still play this far into his tenure. Despite the low margin for error his philosophy comes with by design, we’re still routinely having problems with blown assignments, late substitutions, procedure penalties, etc. That really shouldn’t be happening at this point.
The bottom line is that I’m not ready to call for him to be fired as of today, but I probably have a little less patience than a lot of you do. He’s going to need to make some big changes to keep us where we are now, let alone take any kind of next step towards competing with the big boys, and I’m not convinced he has that in him at this point.
The part of me that’s ready to move on knows that we’re unlikely to improve much further with him in charge, and may even regress. A lot of you keep using the term “plateaued”, but the longer I think about it, the more I realize that may be a best case scenario because it implies that we’ll stay at our current level. Honestly, I’m not so sure that we haven’t peaked and are now looking at a step back though. When you really look back at our best seasons (2018 and 2021), truly impressive wins are few and far between. There was 9-3 Florida and 8-4 Mississippi State in 2018, and then you’re probably taking your pick of whoever you think was the strongest 6-6 team for our best win last year if you exclude the bowl games. That’s not to say that we were total frauds, but our pool of mediocre opponents may be dwindling with Tennessee fully reawakened, South Carolina showing a spark, Louisville buying high end recruits, and Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC.
We’ll need to step up if we want to keep up, but unfortunately Stoops seems stuck in his defense, field position, and clock control philosophy that becomes more obsolete with every passing season. Perhaps even more frustrating than that is how undisciplined we still play this far into his tenure. Despite the low margin for error his philosophy comes with by design, we’re still routinely having problems with blown assignments, late substitutions, procedure penalties, etc. That really shouldn’t be happening at this point.
The bottom line is that I’m not ready to call for him to be fired as of today, but I probably have a little less patience than a lot of you do. He’s going to need to make some big changes to keep us where we are now, let alone take any kind of next step towards competing with the big boys, and I’m not convinced he has that in him at this point.
He has already won 10 games twice so this claim is downright stupid.
I wouldn’t mind Hugh Freeze. I haven’t given it much thought because I don’t think there’s a chance Stoops is on the hot seat anyways.
There have always been mediocre teams in the SEC but we didn't beat them. Now we do. Historically, we are one of the worst programs in the conference. We are not significantly different than Vandy in a lot of ways. Historically awful. Now we aren't. We have also beat some good programs in bowl games. This year has been a disappointment but every coach is going to have ups and downs.
Why would we need to be bowl eligible without those five wins? That would mean we would need to go 7 - 0 in the other games. Pretty illogical reasoning there.
Stoop's SEC record, while not as good as would like it to be, it's substantially better than a lot of his predecessors. Also I don't think it's fair to penalize him for the crap he inherited when he got here. If you throw out the first 3 seasons he was 25 - 25 going into this season. That's not great, but it is great by UK standards. I haven't looked at other programs in the conference, but I bet it is better than many.
Again, why would any program fire the best coach it's had in 70 years? Who would come here if the AD did that? Why would any decent coach want to coach at a place that gets that kind of support from its AD? The idea that Stoops is just another in a long line of losing coaches at UK is laughable. I can't believe I have spent this much time arguing against such a ridiculous idea.
Not that it matters with respect to my point, but UK has had 11 coaches since the Bear. The Bear left 69 years ago. That's a new coach about every 6.3 years. Maybe you want a new coach every 3 years until we hit gold?
Nope but I do believe he made a all time bad hire with Scang and Yenser.
We are much different than Vandy in regards to financial commitment. Stoops is among the 20 highest paid coaches. That type of investment has never been here before, and it would make legitimate head coaches interested. Stoops has been here for 10 years. Firing him now would still signal to other coaches that you will be given time to implement your program. I don’t think it’d scare coaches off, especially with the money we’re willing to pay.
I think Ten years is a good run - his recruiting has slipped - his style of play has Iowa stamped all over it.
Kendal Briles - Sonny Dykes - Hugh Freeze
Stoops hit his ceiling at UK and is behind times offensively
Kendal Briles - Sonny Dykes - Hugh Freeze
Stoops hit his ceiling at UK and is behind times offensively
This is the saddest thing I think I might have read on here.
First: your entire premise is that because we have sucked worse, we should just be okay with sucking now, because we aren't the suckiest.
Two: if you can't obtain bowl eligibility without those wins, then it sure sounds you are reliant on those wins to obtain bowl eligibility, correct? 🤔 Also, you only need 6 wins. So you wouldn't need to go 7-0. Not really sure what you find illogical about it.
Three: Just because other coaches sucked more doesn't mean Stoops SEC record is acceptable. It's 39% for God's sake! And you do realize 1 year before we hired Stoops we were in a bowl game, correct? Joker's last year we weren't, and then Stoops had a 5 year drought. TN was in a mess and their coach had them contending forna NC in year 2. 😳 Yet, we have to throw out Stoops first 5 years to make it "fair" for him. Sounds like a lot of excuse making for Stoops.
Four: because they want to compete for something more than Music City Bowls, Belk Bowls and other meaningless bowls. Particularly after they have invested a decade and hudreds of millions in facilities upgrades and salaries. It would also be nice to have a coach who has demonstrated an ability to build a successful staff. In year 10, we need our 6th new OC, a new DC and we need to hire a Special teams coach because our HC was evidently too stupid to do manage hiring one on his own. If we got Stoops, who you find acceptable, while being bottom of the barrel, why couldn't we find an even better candidate now? That seems illogical to think we couldn't. Particularly with what we now invest into football.
Five: I would take a new coach every year if it's what we had to do to have a chance at a special season here and there. It's called having standards. Most of our employers sure wouldn't tolerate a 39% success rate for us, or even a 53% success rate, which is Stoops overall win % at UK. Not sure why UK football should be any different. The whole "just because we have done worse historically" is a loser mentality. This isnthe exact mentality that will keep us from ever being relevant or able to contend in fb.
Hooker is good but im telling you this is a great scheme and until someone figures out how to stop them they are going to score points on everyone. it may take D coordinators in the SEC another year to figure it out.
Elite coaches can pick where they go. We haven’t shown we can be an elite program yet. Why would an elite coach who can pick a school with history come to a school with no history that just fired the best coach it’s had in 70 years who everyone in the media thinks has done a fantastic job. Our competition for an elite coach will pay just as much or more than we will. I think you are underestimating how few elite coaches there are and how much control they have over where they coach.
I’m a Mark Stoops supporter and one of the biggest homers for the Cats in the universe, I truly do love what he’s done here and has made me proud as hell to be a fan. Saying that, I’m not going to be Naive enough to act like he’s the only coach in the country who’d love the opportunity to make 6 million dollars a year to have a SEC PROGRAM to run and be a hero in beautiful Kentucky . There’s a lot of great coaches out there who for whatever reason, aren’t exactly where they want to be right at the moment and would love to be in his position. And there’s quite a few of those coaches who could/would do just as good or better. Now again, I love Stoops and I actually love this entire staff, and as long as they’re coaches for Kentucky, I’m going to pull for them to be the best. I hated the Tennessee game and it was honestly embarrassing to me as a fan who thought we were better than that. I thought the play calling that I personally saw could’ve been made by dogs or monkeys! A monkey is pretty smart though so no, just a dog I guess. Lol. You get the point, it was awful. Scared to death to actually play football should’ve just stay home and forfeited the game. Down with two minutes to go before the half with timeouts and we would’ve taken a knee if we could’ve. That’s scared to play football. Embarrassing and I was ashamed of it. Then trying our best to take time off the clock the entire second half, , While we’re behind on the scoreboard!! That’s scared football and no coach in the world would do that unless he knew it didn’t matter because as long as he won six games a year it’s ok. Maybe it’s that maybe not, I really don’t know. I do know, playing like that will never win a big game or any game if you don’t even try and give yourself a chance to comeback and win it. Anyway, Sorry, my whole point wasn’t to say any of that stuff but it is what it is I guess. Again, I do appreciate Stoops and if that’s all we’ll ever be is what we are, whatever, I believe we could be more and am happy to think that. So yes, there’s other coaches out there who would love this job and would be great. Maybe they’d do better, maybe not, but I’m never going to be satisfied again winning 6 games to just get to a bowl game every year anymore. I can’t. I hope Stoops makes some kind of changes with himself or staff or whatever but something has to change after that. Damn I write a book every time I write on here. Lol. Go Cats. Just sad guys. I still love everyone of my Cats though.
We kind of do suck. What was the score last night again? How many losses do we have in our last 4 games? Just because we don't suck as bad as we have previously doesn't mean we don't still suck.
One year or a stretch of games doesn’t define a program or a coach. The program doesn’t suck anymore. It used to but doesn’t anymore.
That's kind of why I pointed to the 39% conference win record; the need for a likely 6th OC after 10 seasons, potentially 4 in 4 seasons; the need for a new DC; and best of all, a special teams coach. Because for whatever dumbass reason, Stoops felt one wasn't needed already.
Aside from beating a bunch of OOC opponents, Stoops hasn't done all that much here. For some of you, beating OOC teams and down SEC programs is good enough and worth it. Which is why we will likely never contend for anything meaningful as a program. At least not until we shed that loser mentality or the fans that share it. Enjoy another Music City Bowl!
I hear that....and look at the recent schools that fired a coach.
1. LSU.....Brian Kelly
2. Florida....Billy Napier
3. Auburn.....Brian Hairsten
4. Tennessee....Heupel
5. South Carolina....Beamer
6. Florida St....Mike Norvel
7. Miami....Crystobal
8. Va Tech...>Brent Prye
9. Oklahoma...Brent Venables
10. Notre Dame...Marcus Freeman
11. USC....Lincoln Riley
So out of all those schools with recent new coaches...Heupel and Lincoln RIley look very good. So you want to take a chance UK can lure a better coach than Stoops. You are taking a huge risk by even thinking about it.
I think the best road is to re-juggle offensive staff and truly pay immense dollars for an OC. We have had stable coaching and no firings to buy out. I think we'd be better off pony up huge bucks to get Stoops an offensive mind that is his weakness and see how that works out.
Yes! What year are most of those coaches in and what are there current records? I bet many of them are all very similar to our 5-3 record with our 10th year coach.
Kelly currently has LSU ranked 15th.
Beamer and USC beat us in year 2.
Norvel and FSU are ranked close to us, as are Freeman and ND.
So we should do what we have already done 5 times in the last 10 seasons and hire what will be our 4th OC in 4 seasons, and hope the 6th time is the charm? What do we do about the DC that obviously isn't getting it done, and the lack of a special teams coach? At what point do we hold the HC accountable?
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1. UK beat Beamer in year 1...and pulled away in 2nd half of this game with Levis out.....He's not going to be better than Stoops over the long haul IMO.
2. So why do we only focus on 5-3 now....why not bring up last year's Citrus Bowl and final ranking was top 15? Doe that count?
3. If you think it equal footing to compare LSU, Notre Dame to UK....then I don't know what to tell you.
Stoops is at the mercy of having a good offensive coordinator. Hate it or not...it is what it is. We were fine last year with Coen and we got like the only job come open he'd leave for. I like to imagine giving Stoops room to re-set the offensive staff with bags of money is a safer bet than firing/buying him out and then going on open market to hire a brand new coach.
It doesnt' matter as Mitch aint' firing him. But you arm chair ADs imagine we can get Urban Meyer all day long and settle for an assistant or lower tier head coach risk.....that is the reality if we go in a direction from Stoops.
Ohh, you're right, it took him only 2 years. That's much better.
We shall see, but it's pretty pathetic he can beat us in just his 2nd year of a rebuild. I would expect that series to be much more competitive going forward. Which doesn't bode well for Stoops and UK.
I'm not only focused on 5-3 or this season. I have repeatedly referenced his full body of work. Last yeat was nice, but it isn't like we beat some big teams along the way. We beat a #23 ranked 10-4 big 10 team in the Citrus bowl. And I am pretty sure they had a couple major players sit out. Aside from the Bowl game, who was the best team we beat?
You were the one who brought up each of those names. I just listed their similarity to us this year. Now they are off-limits because they don't support your argument? 🤣
Stoops has had 5 OC's in 10 seasons. The problem isn't the OC, bud. It's the HC! We will be hiring our 4th OC in 4 seasons.
What was so special about Coen and our offense last year? It still wasn't that good overall. Coen didn't even by a house until the same month he accepted the Rams job. He was never planning on staying if he had a better offer.
So your solution is to do the same thing we have already done 5 times and hope it works out the 6th? We also need a new DC and ST coach. Plus some line coaches. So basically we need a whole new staff, but that's probably completely normal for a coach a decade into his tenure. 🤣
It's a mentality like yours that has and will continue to keep UK football mediocre or worse.
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