Kentucky football had the SEC’s ninth-best offseason, according to ESPN

It’s rankings season on the internet. Earlier today, we relayed a ranking of every college football team over at CBSSports.com. Now, we open a new browser tab for ESPN.com, where a team of college football writers recently ranked the offseasons for every Power 4 football team.

For our purposes, we stuck to the SEC’s offseason talk in the story, though you can read up on the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and Notre Dame if you’re interested. On the SEC side, Kentucky had the ninth-best offseason in the conference, according to Eli Lederman, Max Olson, and Adam Rittenberg.

They wrote about three criteria: the biggest coaching move, what went wrong, and what went right for each team since the season ended. For Kentucky, the biggest coaching move was obviously the transition from Mark Stoops to Will Stein. No surprise there.

Under “what went wrong,” the story says that losing Cutter Boley to Arizona State was a blow to Stein’s first roster, which is debatable, along with Seth McGowan and Kendrick Law moving on to the NFL.

New skill players coming off injuries are another worry. “Concerns over Kentucky’s reliance on a group of injury-prone newcomers were not eased by limited participation this spring.”

As for “what went right,” ESPN writes, “(Kenny) Minchey’s flip from Nebraska was one of the headline moves in an impressive debut transfer portal class, which included a trio of veteran offensive linemen in Heard (Tennessee), Coleton Price (Baylor) and Tegra Tshabola (Ohio State), who are expected to anchor a refurbished unit.”

Read more on ESPN’s version of UK’s offseason here.

More offseason talk with ESPN’s Peter Burns

For more on Kentucky Football this offseason, check out Nick Roush’s interview with ESPN’s Peter Burns, who spent a day with Will Stein in Lexington last week. Roush and Burns, which sounds like a law firm, discussed the Wildcats’ ceiling in 2026, Stein’s first months on the job, and a whole lot more about what’s brewing at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility in Lexington.