Eric Wolford’s task: Keeping the ‘Big Blue Wall’ strong without John Schlarman
Eric Wolford and Mark Stoops are not strangers to sharing a big challenge.
In the 1990s, Stoops worked as South Florida defensive backs coach and Wolford as the Bulls offensive line coach while then-USF head man Jim Leavitt started the school’s football program from scratch.
“We weren’t making any money, I can tell you that right now. We were living in the dorm,” Wolford recalled Friday at Kentucky Wildcats football Media Day. “I think our first-year salary was $12,000 a year.”
That did not go a long way in Tampa. To make ends meet, Stoops and Wolford would hire themselves out at night to remodel and paint apartments.
“We were sub-contracted out by a guy named ‘Tex’ — he was from Texas,” Wolford says. “That’s what we did for extra spending money.”
This fall, Wolford and Stoops will be reunited in taking on a far more visible “remodeling” job.
After the death of beloved Kentucky offensive line coach John Schlarman last November at age 45 from cancer, Stoops called on his former painting partner to assume the delicate task of following him.
If that weren’t daunting enough, Wolford, 50, is inheriting responsibility for Kentucky’s offensive front in the first season in which the installation of a new offensive system is going to require the UK line to fundamentally alter the way it plays.
During UK’s current five-year bowl streak, the four primary foundation pieces that allowed the Kentucky program to ascend have been Benny Snell, Josh Allen, Lynn Bowden — and The Big Blue Wall.
Wolford says he would rather come into a program with a recent track record of offensive line success than inherit a front that needs to be built from the ground up.
“It gives me a lot of confidence,” Wolford says. “Coach Schlarman set a very high standard here. He did a wonderful job. ... We’re going to embrace everything (Schlarman) did here with these players, this university and this community. We are going to keep a high standard.”
Returning Kentucky offensive linemen say Wolford has so far deftly handled the emotionally fraught task of succeeding Schlarman.
The coaching transition “wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn’t as rough,” says UK senior left tackle Darian Kinnard. “Coach Wolf came in and understood he wasn’t going to be a replacement (for Schlarman). He just told us, ‘I’m not here to replace John. I just want to come in and help you guys get better.’ And he’s kept his word.”
Says sixth-year senior center Luke Fortner: “We all miss John Schlarman. We think about him every day. (Wolford’s) got big shoes to fill. And, so far, he has filled them.”
With Eddie Gran and Darin Hinshaw running the Kentucky offense the past five years, UK primarily employed an inside-zone rushing scheme. To over-simplify, that required the offensive linemen to primarily block straight ahead and the backs to run between the tackles.
Now that former Los Angeles Rams assistant Liam Coen has been brought in to diversify the ground-hugging Kentucky attack, the Wildcats are installing an outside-zone rushing attack.
Again to over-simplify, in the wide zone, the back probes the perimeter looking for a lane while the offensive linemen are required to move side-to-side and make more blocks in space.
“It’s definitely a big adjustment. It takes a different skill set,” Fortner says. “The angles you take, the ‘get offs’ you have and just the way you are working together is a lot different.”
Wolford says he expects a veteran Kentucky offensive line used to a different style of play to need adjustment time.
“When you run the wide zone, that is your primary bread-and-butter play,” Wolford said. “It takes a lot of work (to master). It’s something you’ve got to learn. It’s not something you just instill and learn it overnight.”
Besides South Florida, Stoops and Wolford also coached together for one season (2000) at Houston and three seasons (2004-06) at Arizona.
Wolford has also been offensive line coach at North Texas, Illinois and in two separate stints (2009 and 2017-20) at South Carolina, as well as assistant offensive line coach with the San Francisco 49ers.
From 2010-14, Wolford was head coach at Youngstown State, producing four winning seasons and going 31-26 overall.
Though both are Youngstown, Ohio, natives, Wolford says he got to know Stoops, who is four years older, at Kansas State University in 1995.
At the time, Wolford was serving as a graduate assistant on the same KSU staff where Bob Stoops was the defensive coordinator. When Mark Stoops, then working as a high school athletics director in Ohio, came to Manhattan, Kan., to visit his older brother, Bob introduced him to Wolford.
“I took (Mark Stoops) out and we kind of connected,” Wolford says.
That relationship eventually led to the Stoops/Wolford apartment painting and remodeling service as two young college football assistants tried to keep the bills paid in Tampa.
Says Wolford: “Those kind of experiences make you appreciate working hard, doing things right and not being afraid to roll your sleeves up and get things done.”
That sounds like the ethos that will be required to keep the Big Blue Wall standing strong.
