Spring camp at Kentucky has a new look in head coach Will Stein’s debut year. Thanks to him, practice now has an Oregon twist to it, Instead of the usual “ones” and “twos,” the Wildcats are set to face something much less predictable. 

“We don’t have a depth chart,” Will Stein told reporters at Kentucky’s spring practice. “We have a blue and a white squad that’s intertwined. There’s not a ones, twos, threes at all. So that’s really, to me, the big part of development. Everybody says, you want to be developed. Well, how do you do it? Like, don’t have a depth chart.”

Having a definite, guaranteed spot can make anyone complacent. But if that job is up for grabs, everyone’s going to work hard for it. That way, this team won’t be as unfazed when an urgent situation arises, needing someone who is proven to deliver.

“The last thing I want is week six of the season, and we got to have a new person at a position that’s never done it before,” he explained. “So, we intermix the groups. We intermix people at different positions… you want to have a position flexed within your team, and that’s why we do it.”

Stein said that Kenny Minchey, who is expected to be the starting quarterback, will not have starting linemen in the trenches for protection.  means young WRs will get reps regardless of where they stood on day one. It means OLs like Cutter Leftwich will cycle through combinations. But if you look closer, there’s a clear influence here from his time at Oregon under Dan Lanning, where competition was enforced weekly.

Last year, Dan Lanning made headlines when he elevated former walk-on QB Brock Thomas to the No. 2 spot over scholarship players. Thomas never featured in the QB1 battle as prominently as teammates Luke Moga and Austin Novosad. But Lanning brought Thomas up because of what he saw in the practice reps.

“Over time, he’s done a really good job in practice,” Lanning said in his reasoning behind the decision. “There’s not anything necessarily that Brock hasn’t done to earn those reps. He’s earned them in practice. We talk about rent’s due in football every single week. And he’s been a guy that’s been paying rent and doing what he’s supposed to do. We don’t care about your status, the stars.”

Stein spent three years in Lanning’s system. Understandably, he will borrow a few pages from the Oregon head coach’s playbook. But the Kentucky head coach isn’t blindly rolling an exact copy of that at practice.

“It is similar to what I experienced with Dan,” Stein said. “But I put my own spin on it where I see fit, based on player workload, based on depth. There’s still a lot of moving parts, but I do like to think we practice differently than maybe years past.”

Will Stein has to bring life to a program that has been languishing in the SEC’s bottom ranks for years now. That’s why he is putting his players through the grind early. And, he’s doing it with a roster that has over 30 new faces trying to find their place. When the Wildcats take to the field, Stein wants them to carry one special trait of his in their game.

Will Stein wants Kentucky to play with an edge

Stein’s arrival at Lexington was touted by many as one of the good hires in the coaching carousel last year. Kentucky was getting a dynamic coach who helped shape Oregon into a playoff contender. But unlike the Ducks, there are so many expectations from the Wildcats. That’s why Stein encouraged the locker room to embody him in their mindset and personality.

“I want us playing with an edge, playing with a confidence that resembles me,” he said. “I was never the biggest player, but I always play with an edge and chip on my shoulder. And that’s what I want our players to embody: a spirit of me. But also play smart, tough, dependable football.”

Kentucky finished 5-7 last season and won only two of its conference games. But with a coach like Stein, fans should hope to see the Wildcats breaking free of the ‘mediocre’ tag. Oregon football carried an identity that resembled Lanning’s and Stein’s. That is exactly what the Wildcats have been missing for some time now. Kentucky football needs to pack a punch, and they’ve already got a coach who has made it his signature. The onus is on the team to work hard and be able to match up to Stein’s energy.