Will Stein sells depth at Kentucky media day event

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky football coach Will Stein sat in front of a room full of cameras and reporters Monday and said something that, from most first-year head coaches, would sound like a dodge. There are no starters. Not yet. Maybe not for weeks.

"There really are still no starters," Stein said. "We can project out where we feel like this team is going to be, but I want this team to be as competitive as possible from top down with the roster."

Coming from Stein, it isn't a dodge. It's the thesis of his entire first season in Lexington. Everybody remembers the soundbite from media days: "because of me," the four words that turned into a national headline before Stein had coached a single down at Kentucky. He isn't surprised it traveled the way it did. He's also not particularly interested in relitigating it.

"I know more than anything it's about the people in our organization, and that's really important to me, more than me," Stein said.

That's the real story here, and it's a far more interesting one than a quote taken out of context. Stein isn't building a program around his own résumé, the Oregon pedigree, or the offenses that have traveled with him from stop to stop. He's building it around numbers. Multiple numbers, at every position, all competing for the same job.

"We have to have strength in numbers," Stein said. "That, to me, is a key component to play winning football, especially in October and November, where championships happen."

You can see that philosophy in how Kentucky has attacked the roster all offseason: high school recruiting, the portal, junior college, all of it, all at once. Stein added two JuCo running backs to a room that already features Kentucky's returning uncertainty at the position, and he wasn't shy about why.

"Both those players, if they would have been able to come out in January, would have had a multitude of offers throughout the entire country," Stein said. "We wanted to exhaust everything that we can to keep enhancing this roster, regardless of availability of players."

Martels Carter has been fully installed at running back. The quarterback room got an extra arm added after spring practice, a decision Stein made with the bluntness of a coach who's been burned before.

"I've been in situations where you don't have a guy that's necessarily ready to go into the game and then you look up and you're in a bad position," he said. "So we added people there."

The headline job, of course, belongs to Kenny Minchey, and Stein's description of him reads like a checklist for the modern quarterback: accurate, on-time thrower, good feet, mobile, high football IQ. But Minchey isn't getting a coronation. He's getting a competition, with Callum Wither, Matt Ponatoski, Brennen Ward, and JacQai Long all in the room behind him.

"There's been nothing given in that room," Stein said, "so we're excited about those guys to go out there and compete."

Health-wise, the early injury report is more maintenance than alarm. Nic Anderson and Jovantae Barnes are working back into full-speed reps after strong summers, Jaden Smith is in the same boat, and Tegra Tshabola is expected back within a week or so after a minor procedure. Stein singled out Sam Greene as someone who's "looking great" and expected to factor in on defense. None of it, in Stein's words, is "a major season-ending setback."

>Up front, Coleton Price anchors the offensive line at center, "as good of a center as I've been around," Stein said and on the back end, safeties Ty and Jordan give defensive coordinator Jay Bateman a pair of players who've combined for thousands of SEC snaps between them, with Ty coming off an All-SEC season.

>There's a personnel move worth noting off the field, too. Kentucky promoted Pete Nochta into a bigger front-office role last week, and Stein didn't treat it as a shake-up he treated it as overdue. Nochta is Lexington-born and bred, the son of a high school principal whose own father played football at Kentucky, and he was one of Stein's first calls after he took the job.

"Pete could be a GM across all of college football," Stein said. "He's very smart. He's extremely well organized, and he played football. I think that's really important at the GM role."

That local thread runs through Stein himself. His father played at Kentucky. Stein has talked openly about connection being the foundation of buy-in not compliance, connection especially with 45 new players folded into the roster this offseason.

"You have to know the guys next to you," Stein said. "I know the man to my left and right's story. I know where they're from... connected teams are tough to beat."

Even the schedule carries a bit of that Kentucky-specific texture. The Cats open September 5 against Youngstown State, with in-state rival Louisville pushed to the back end of the calendar, a TV-driven quirk of college football scheduling that Stein has made peace with because it's the one thing on his list he can't control.

"You just control what you can," he said. "We're playing on September 5th at 1:00 against Youngstown State, so I know I'll be here for that game, and that's all I can control right now."

Everything else — the process, the details, the depth — is very much within his control, and it's where he keeps steering the conversation, no matter what question he's asked.

"Our process really is our winning edge," Stein said. "How we practice, how we meet, how we recover, how we eat, sleep, and plan as a coach. All those are what I am going to double down on, and I'm not going to stop."

So no, there is no depth chart yet. That's the point. Fall camp exists to build one, position by position, competition by competition, until Stein has exactly what he says he wants most.

"I want them to see a team that gets better from week 1 to week 12," Stein said. "If you can get better literally every single day and every single week, that to me shows sustainability of a program, buy-in from the players, and it's going to result in winning football."

The clock on that starts now. Kentucky kicks off in a month at Kroger against Youngstown State. The roster Stein has been building one JuCo back, one portal addition, and one competition at a time is about to find out what it's actually made of.

>This article originally appeared on UK Wildcats Wire: Will Stein sells depth at Kentucky media day event