Will Stein didn’t hire Joe Sloan because of the LSU box scores. He hired him because he already knew the coach, had seen him from the other sideline, had crossed paths with him on the recruiting trail and even spent offseason time with him talking football. By the time Kentucky needed a new play caller, Stein had a pretty clear read on Sloan’s value.
That’s how the Wildcats ended up with LSU’s former offensive coordinator running their attack - and how Sloan gets his first crack at his old program Saturday at 6 p.m. on ESPN, when LSU visits Kentucky in its second SEC road game of the season.
Stein said he and Sloan were “like-minded people,” and he trusted enough to hand over the offense. His view of Sloan was built on more than the two seasons LSU’s offense spent sputtering under Brian Kelly and Sloan. Stein saw a coach he believed in.
“I really liked his mindset,” Stein said. “I liked his confidence. I liked his football IQ and his track record of developing quarterbacks.”
Kentucky has at least given Stein reasons to feel good about the gamble. Through five games with Sloan calling the shots, the Wildcats have shown real punch.
They put up 31 points in a road win at Texas A&M on Sept. 19, then followed that with 35 in an overtime win over South Carolina last Saturday. Kentucky is also running the ball at a level that stacks up well in the SEC, with only five conference teams averaging more rushing yards per game, and the Wildcats have turned more than three-fourths of their red-zone chances into touchdowns.
It hasn’t been clean, though. Notre Dame transfer Kenny Minchey has already taken 11 sacks, and Kentucky’s third-down work is a glaring problem. The Wildcats are converting only 25% of the time, which puts them at the bottom of the national chart.
Even with those issues, Stein likes what he sees. The 37-year-old first-time head coach said in July at SEC media days that he stepped away from play-calling because no head coach who also handled every snap had won a national title since Jimbo Fisher did it at Florida State in 2013. Stein wanted room to operate in “all facets” of the program.
“There's just too much going on,” he said, “to only worry about the offense.”
That logic lines up with the way LSU is built under Lane Kiffin, where Charlie Weis handles the play-calling and Kiffin can keep his attention on the bigger picture. Kiffin pointed to that setup on Aug. 5, saying he could handle a compliance matter instead of sitting in an offensive meeting at the same time.
“And now I can go do that,” Kiffin said, “because it's an immediate thing that might be happening that I'm dealing with, knowing that everything's done the exact right way. So the Charlie benefit is huge for our program.”
The results have been loud. LSU enters the Kentucky game ranked in the top 10 nationally in both total offense and scoring offense. The Tigers need just one more rushing touchdown to match the total Kelly and Sloan’s LSU offense produced all of last season, and they are 164 rushing yards shy of matching the entire rushing total from the 13 games LSU played in 2025.
Kentucky’s jump under Sloan is not quite that dramatic, but it’s real enough. The Wildcats finished 2025 ranked 101st in scoring offense and 105th in total offense. Right now they sit 48th in scoring offense and 53rd in total offense, and they’ve already hit 30 points in a game as many times as they did all of last year.
For Stein, the bet on Sloan has started to look smart. Kentucky has a more efficient offense than it had a year ago, and now the Wildcats get a chance to show it against the coach and program Sloan used to help run.
“He's an elite person,” Stein said. “He's an elite coach.
He's an elite recruiter. And I'm really, really happy he's with us.”
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