Rams’ Liam Coen couldn’t pass up ‘special opportunity’ to coach at Kentucky
Mark Stoops wants to trot out a more dynamic offense — for players and fans — in his ninth season at the University of Kentucky. He went to the National Football League to make that happen.
Following a search that lasted a little more than a week, Stoops landed on Liam Coen, an assistant for the Los Angeles Rams. Coen, whose name was one of several linked to the job for a few days, was officially announced as UK’s new offensive coordinator on Tuesday.
Terms of Coen’s contract were not immediately available. He will not join UK until after the Rams’ season has ended, but Coen is eager to get to Lexington. A return to the college level, where he coached eight years before joining the Rams, is something he has expected would eventually happen, though not quite this soon.
“I’ve always said it would take a special job and opportunity for me to leave the Rams,” Coen said. “A couple of things have come up the last few years, but being the offensive coordinator at the University of Kentucky is one of those special positions that I just had to take. There was no chance to be able to turn this thing down.”
Style of play was the guiding principle in Stoops’ search, which led him to Los Angeles for an in-person interview with Coen last Thursday. He sought a more modernized look, particularly in terms of how UK uses its quarterback and receivers, while still finding a scheme that embraces facets of UK’s offense that have worked well in recent years (i.e., its rushing attack).
L.A.’s offense is “quarterback-friendly,” Coen says, and he anticipates that being the case at UK while building on the pillars that Stoops hopes to maintain.
“It’s part of our core philosophy … running the football,” Coen said of the Rams’ offense. “I plan to continue to do so at Kentucky, but truly marrying the run and the pass. Being able to put pressure on the defense and make them defend every blade of grass.”
While UK has for the most part held its own defensively, putting crooked numbers on the board has been a struggle during Stoops’ tenure. The Wildcats ranked 12th in the 2020 regular season among all 14 Southeastern Conference teams in that department, and have never finished higher than eighth (2019) in that category in his eight seasons.
The Rams, under the direction of head coach Sean McVay, have recently been one of the NFL’s more productive offenses, especially in the passing game. They’ve finished second and seventh in total offense the last two seasons and rank fifth through 13 games this season. L.A. finished fifth and fourth overall in passing offense in 2018 and 2019 and ranks 12th this season.
Coen has helped coach quarterbacks this season but in 2018 and 2019 was a receivers coach. He’ll be UK’s quarterbacks coach in addition to its play-caller. At 35, his hire also injects more youth in the staff: before the filling of open assistant coaching jobs (one for running backs, the other for the offensive line), he’ll be the youngest member of Stoops’ staff.
This won’t be Coen’s first time calling plays or first experience at the collegiate level.
He was set to become the offensive coordinator at Holy Cross in 2018 before the Rams hired him. His most recent collegiate stop was at Maine, a member of the Colonial Athletic Association, a Football Championship Subdivision league. Coen was the Black Bears’ offensive coordinator from 2016-2017, and in his second year running back Josh Mack (now a standout at Liberty University) led FCS in yards per game (133.5) and was a finalist for that level’s Walter Payton Award.
Prior to Maine, Coen was the passing game coordinator under head coach Mark Whipple at UMass, the school for whom he was a star quarterback, from 2014-2015. UMass led the Mid-American Conference in passing yards per game in 2014. A year as the passing game coordinator at Rhode Island in 2011 was sandwiched by two stints as the quarterbacks coach at Brown University (2010, his first job, and a two-year return from 2012-2013).
Coen wants to adapt his offense to the players on Kentucky’s roster, and will have the chance to build around a brand new starting quarterback in, likely, either Beau Allen or Joey Gatewood next season.
“It’s definitely more about players, we all know that,” Coen said. “It’s not X’s and O’s, it’s G.I. Joes. So fitting out in terms of what we want to like, what pieces do we have here in place, and I believe that there’s pieces in place. … It’s not about them fitting to this system, it’s about me fitting to their skill sets. And I believe that for every position. I can’t come in and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re gonna do and I’m not gonna budge, you need to fit into what I want you to do.’ No, no, no. It’s about personnel and trying to find what these guys do best.”
