A lot was made of the Liam Coen saga towards the back end of the Mark Stoops tenure in Lexington.
Coen, who first joined UK in 2021 as the offensive coordinator after leaving the Los Angeles Rams, stuck around for just one season, putting Will Levis on the map with a riveting offense. Perhaps the best of the Stoops years.
From there, he returned to Los Angeles as OC for one season before coming back, this time saying he had no intentions of going anywhere. Then, a poor season and a much-poorer offense than the first time around struck and, after just one year, Coen was again on the move back to Tampa Bay.
The entire ordeal left quite the poor taste in the mouths of Kentucky fans, many of which turned on Coen entirely. Nothing he's accomplished since, even his rise as a strong NFL head coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars and former Wildcat Josh Hines-Allen, has redeemed him to some.
Behind the scenes, though, there was a lot more at play. And Coen was willing to pull back the curtains and shed some light on that.
Coen recently joined The Pivot Podcast with Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder, where, amongst other things, he provided more insight into what went into his decisions at the time.
During what ended up being a 40-minute episode, Coen first started his story around 15 minutes in.
"I didn't know anybody in the NFL," Coen started. "So, I think at one part of life, you're like, 'Man, if I could be the Brown head coach, University of Brown, that'd be great!' But then you're like, 'That's not what I really want, though.'"
Coen famously finished his playing career at UMass in 2008 and, within a few years, was a position coach with Brown in the Ivy League. With high coaching aspirations, he worked his way to Rhode Island, back to Brown, to UMass and to Maine before his first chance came in the NFL.
That first pro job came from the Rams in 2018 when Coen was hired to be assistant wide receivers coach and eventually assistant quarterbacks coach.
Unfortunately, in a strong program led by Sean McVay, Coen felt like he perhaps got too much of a good thing too early.
"My first year, we went to the Super Bowl, lost to the Patriots," Coen said of the 2018-19 season. "I'm like, 'Oh, this is easy!' I thought Super Bowls were just easy."
Despite believing he would "never leave" the NFL after that first stint, that changed when Kentucky and Stoops came calling.
"You're there for three years, essentially kinda getting your Ph.D. is how I looked at it," Coen said of his first stint with the Rams. "Spent all your time on that. Kentucky calls, and you're like, 'Man, I can go call plays in the SEC. I kinda wanna do it. I wanna prove that I can do this and see if it works.' (I) take that opportunity."
At Kentucky, as mentioned, Coen found a ton of success. In his single year in 2021, Kentucky went 10-3 while Levis looked like a genuine first-round talent. There's an argument to be made that the 2021 season, more so than the 2022 season, is what made Levis into an NFL Draft pick to the Tennessee Titans.
For Coen, though, the dream was always there to return to the NFL and, when he got another call from McVay, he simply couldn't refuse, especially after the Rams were triumphant in the Super Bowl during Coen's first stint in Lexington.
"Sean calls again… You just left, they won the Super Bowl. I leave and they win the Super Bowl," Coen said. "Now he calls me and he's like, 'Hey, Kevin O'Connell's gonna get the Vikings job. I'd love for you to come back as the OC.' I'm like, 'I was just an assistant position coach there. I was the assistant quarterbacks coach. Now? What?' That was, again, another honor of a lifetime that I'm like, 'I can't pass that up.'"
If the story had ended there, Coen's legacy in Lexington would be very different. Despite leaving, most understood. Most would have done the same.
When Rich Scangarello became UK's next OC, and didn't particularly excel in the role, many still looked back on Coen fondly and even wished he'd return, though they understood the decision to depart.
What happened next, though, changed that. The saga that would follow not only tarnished Coen's reputation amongst diehard Kentucky fans, but became what he considers the "biggest regret" of his career.
See, despite the storybook rise Coen experienced, things were about to get a lot harder.
In 2022, the Rams, fresh off a Super Bowl, weren't great. Then, after a poor year, came the retirement rumors around McVay. The floor seemed to be falling out from under Coen and, as he would admit, he looked for a way out.
"It ends up being our hardest year and the most challenging year," Coen recalled. "That was probably one of my biggest regrets in this profession. We had that tough year, won five games and weren't really quite sure what he was gonna do in ways. And Kentucky called back.
"We had just loved it there," Coen continued. "It was beautiful, it was amazing, we had our first child there."
Coen said he felt like he chased money in returning to Kentucky and also admitted that, for him, it was a case of letting his ego get the best of him.
"I wasn't calling plays in LA," Coen said. "I knew what I was getting into, but I did miss that. And not just calling plays, but leading. Leading your way. That was my biggest regret, going back to Kentucky in '23."
The regret, though, had little to do with Kentucky. For Coen, the regret and the reason he struggled to perform at his best during his second stint with the Cats, came down to personal reasons. As he'd tell it, he felt like he had given up.
"(I) hadn't lost a lot in my career, like I didn't have a ton of losing seasons or been on a lot of bad teams. I've been on some," he said. "I thought it was just a great opportunity to stick something out with a friend in an organization that gave you your first (opportunity) that I missed. I walked away from it when it was hard and went to a familiar place that I had success (at).
"Looking at it, (I) immediately got back in that Spring and, yeah, I had a little— I had some regret," he continued. "I didn't feel great about myself, about the decision I made."
Ultimately, the silver lining would be that, because he returned to Kentucky, he had a chance to be Tampa Bay's OC and that, itself, turned into the head coaching job in Jacksonville where he is today.
At the end of the day, Coen's second stint in Lexington is not remembered fondly and, for many Kentucky fans, permanently changed the way they viewed him, but it was only through brutal honesty that Coen can admit now that he looks down on himself for the decision as well.
Truly, Coen seems to have a love for Lexington and Kentucky, but with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to say that, for both parties, his second stint should've never happened.
Whether or not that changes the minds of Kentucky fans, no one can say for sure, but, at the very least, Coen's reflection of his misstep with UK was refreshing in a world of coach speak and an inability for many to show any sign of weakness or regret.
WR commit Austin Coles speaks on Kentucky commitment
Coles, a UK legacy, has been committed to Kentucky since June.
Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) St. Thomas Aquinas wide receiver Austin Coles (6-foot-4, 195) committed to Kentucky while on his official visit in June; fulfilling a journey that allows him to follow in the footsteps of his mother, who also attended UK.
"He said he would be crazy if he let a big, athletic guy walk out of here. It is pretty sick. We have some roots there from my mom. I am just ready to get to work. She was really excited [I chose to go to UK]. She took me by the street she lived on and the big library," Coles told CatsPause.com.
Wide receivers coach Joe Price III has been the primary recruiter.
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