Zach Yenser, a student of John Schlarman, takes over Kentucky’s offensive line
Kentucky’s new offensive line coach spent the last three years in the NFL, learned under the late John Schlarman and hails from Fort Mitchell.
Zach Yenser, an assistant offensive line coach with the San Francisco 49ers, has been put in charge of UK’s offensive front. The 38-year-old succeeds Eric Wolford, who left Kentucky after a year to coach the offensive line at Alabama.
Yenser’s family moved from Kentucky to Georgia while he was in third grade but it was a fellow northern Kentuckian, Schlarman, who gave him his first coaching job as a graduate assistant at Troy in 2007.
“Zach is an incredible hire,” head coach Mark Stoops said in a news release Tuesday. “He checks all of the boxes and is the total package. He grew up in Kentucky, he’s connected to John Schlarman, he has great relationships with people and is well-thought of in recruiting. ... This is a high-caliber hire and I couldn’t be more excited to have him coaching our offensive line.”
The 49ers during Yenser’s tenure, in which he coached alongside offensive line coach John Benton, played in a Super Bowl (2019) and made the most recent NFC Championship Game. He joined the 49ers after one season as an offensive quality control coach at SMU, and his other college stops include Kansas, California and Louisiana Tech.
Contract details weren’t immediately available.
Schlarman was UK’s offensive line coach under Stoops from his initial hiring in 2013 through his death from cancer in the midst of the 2020 season.
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 4:58 PM.
