What does HC Mark Stoops have to do in 2025 to save the family?

Kentucky Football needs a massive rebound

Only one word can describe Kentucky football in 2024: disaster. Many fans (myself included) had the Wildcats penciled in as a potential dark horse in the SEC—a team that could really shake up the Southeastern Conference and make a run at double-digit wins for the third time in six years.

When Brock Vandagriff hit Barion Brown for the first touchdown of 2024 fans really thought Kentucky had something

Boy, were fans wrong—very wrong at that. When South Carolina rolled into Kroger Field and put an absolute drubbing on Kentucky, that should've been their first sign. But BBN refused to believe it. It was just a fluke. It wasn't until six weeks later, when the Cats suffered a nearly 30-point defeat at the hands of the Florida Gators, that most finally had to come to terms with the fact that the 2024 squad was doomed. The rest is history: Kentucky went on to win only one more game the rest of the season, against a bad FCS squad in Murray State.

What went wrong in the SEC?

Since the season ended, questions about the direction of the program have only intensified. There has been speculation about locker room issues, a culture problem, and even assistant coaches being linked to other jobs. That hasn't stopped Stoops & Company from exhausting all their effort to turn this roster over in the transfer portal.

This portal class has generated a lot of buzz, mostly because it appears Stoops has gone in a completely different direction than in years past. Kentucky seems to have a new "type" when scouting transfer prospects: proven commodities. Last year, the staff made a valiant effort to find former blue-chip prospects at schools like Georgia and Ohio State, hoping these players were hungry for their turn to see action, and tired of waiting. The logic was simple: if they were good enough for elite programs, they were good enough for Kentucky.

That philosophy did not yield a high return on investment. In the 2023-2024 portal cycle, Kentucky went all in on players like Brock Vandagriff, Chip Traynum, and Jamon Dumas-Johnson, with Dumas-Johnson being the only player of the three to provide a meaningful impact on the field.

One problem for Stoops and company in 2025 will be a familiar challenge: the schedule, which isn’t getting any easier. As of now, six of Kentucky's 12 games will be against top 25 competition, four of those inside the top 10. It’s savagely brutal—but that’s life in the SEC. There’s a very real possibility that the product on the field will improve significantly in 2025, but the results may not reflect it.

Besides the COVID-shortened SEC-only season in 2020, Mark Stoops hasn’t had a losing season in Lexington since 2015. That begs the question: how many wins does Stoops need to quell the noise and keep this thing going? I asked Big Blue Nation, and, as expected, the responses were surprising.

What does Stoops need to do in 2025 to win BBN back over?

In 2025, Kentucky desperately needs Mark Stoops to trust his assistants to do the jobs he hired them to do—most notably on offense. At a certain point, it’s no longer a coincidence. The offensive coordinator position has been like the revolving door at Malone’s, but for the first time since Eddie Gran was fired Kentucky has continuity at OC. Mark Stoops has got to be completely hands-off.

Mark Stoops needs to find his edge

He’s become visibly defeated at press conferences after losses, sometimes seeming to not even know what to say. Fans need to see him back having fun with it again—something that’s been missing the last few seasons. He needs to want to be here.

The program must become disciplined again. Kentucky was one of the most penalized teams in the country last year. Procedural penalties in big spots that killed momentum, along with unsportsmanlike penalties, plagued Kentucky football in 2024.

Can offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan deliver?

Mark Stoops has to win at least six games and return Kentucky football to a bowl game next season. That is the only answer. To do that the offense has to better, simple as that.

From top to bottom, all of BBN feels the same palpable pressure in the air, it's heavy... Stoops is coaching for his future next year.

Being the winningest coach in Kentucky history has made him a victim of his own success. This program has consistently been on the cusp of taking the next step but has never been able to get over the finish line. All indications point to next season being much of the same.

The program is obviously in a transitory period. Is it a transition into a "new Mark Stoops era"? Or is it a transition into the post-Mark Stoops era?

Whether 2025 marks the beginning of a new era under Mark Stoops or the end of his tenure, the season will serve as a pivotal moment for Kentucky football—a chance to redefine the program’s trajectory in the forever challenging SEC.