Mark Stoops needs a breakout year

Mark Stoops has done plenty of good things for Kentucky football. Now he needs to smash down another wall and take the program one step farther than it has been in quite some time.

What exactly has Stoops accomplished at Kentucky?

Actually, he's done plenty.

He's brought the program from a very dark place, when it couldn't even win an SEC game over two full seasons and was on the heels of a 40-0 loss at home against Vanderbilt, to a place of respectability in the SEC. No one pretends the SEC East is the SEC West, but Kentucky is 8-8 in the nation's toughest conference over the last two seasons.

His teams have won four straight games against South Carolina.

Stoops took a program from two wins to five, held steady at five wins again, and then broke through with consecutive seven win seasons in 2016 and 2017.

He has proved that it's possible to recruit at a level, at Kentucky, that many smart people imagined wasn't possible.

Stoops has helped to bring the program, finally, into the 21st century by pushing for an expanded support staff, by overseeing badly needed and impressive facility renovations and by rehabilitating a program's image, desperately in need of an overhaul. The winning has contributed to the improved perception outside the fan base as well.

If Mark Stoops were to leave Lexington tomorrow he would go down as having done a large amount to place the program on better footing than it has usually been in. The cupboard isn't exactly stocked compared to upper echelon SEC programs, but it's far from bare and has many wondering, rightly, whether Kentucky could make some noise in 2018.

Stoops' program does need to make noise in 2018. More than it has made thus far.

No, this is not Stoops' most important season at Kentucky. That was in 2016, when he was fresh off three straight losing seasons. Even at the time, Stoops basically said the time for talk and hype was over. People wanted to win. With Kentucky 0-2, the team rallied to save Stoops' job and give him a new lease on life as the program's chief.

But this is Stoops' second most important year at Kentucky.

Georgia's rapid rise under Kirby Smart has all but closed the window of opportunity for any middling teams aspiring to sneak into an SEC championship game. The Bulldogs will simply have too much talent and too much coaching for any teams like, say, Missouri of a few years back, to make a mad dash for Atlanta before everyone sees what's coming. In other words, the rest of the East has to raise its game significantly if they don't want to be witnesses in a long era of Georgia dominance.

Georgia's rise alone has made the East more daunting, but there's still a chance to pad the conference win total so long as Florida has major quarterback questions and a coaching change, until South Carolina's young pieces rise to the top of the depth chart, and while Tennessee still searches for answers.

But a breakthrough this year isn't crucial just because the East is going to get tougher. It's never going to be easy for Kentucky to win big in the SEC.

Stoops needs a breakthrough year, which we'll define momentarily, because his program needs a breakthrough.

A program's progress is not linear. There are ebbs and flows, ups and downs. Then, finally, a coach either ultimately creates a much stronger program or fizzles out.

Kentucky enters 2018 with a lot of reason for optimism depending on the quality of the quarterback play and how the special teams unit performs. But fast-forward in your mind to the summer preceding the 2019 season.

The most likely scenario is that next year's talking points will include some version of the following:

- How will Kentucky replace Derrick Baity, Mike Edwards, Lonnie Johnson, Darius West and Chris Westry in the secondary?

- How will Kentucky replace Jordan Jones and Josh Allen at linebacker?

- How will Kentucky replace all-timer Benny Snell and his outstanding production from the previous three years?

Everything is subject to change of course. If Terry Wilson electrifies fans and befuddles opponents in 2018, the worries are much less pronounced going into 2019. If Gunnar Hoak takes control of the offense and passes for 3,000 yards with Lynn Bowden, Isaiah Epps, Tavin Richardson and Josh Ali all breaking out to form the program's best passing game since 2010, the worries go away. If the defensive line has a breakthrough this year and younger pieces on defense like Jamar Watson, Jamin Davis and Tyrell Ajian show flashes and both Quinton Bohanna and Josh Paschal are dominant, the defense becomes exciting.

But barring a quarterback renaissance, in all likelihood, the common assumption seems to be, and should be, that 2019 could be a year of transition.

Kentucky is still recruiting well but probably not at the highest level it has recruited under Stoops. In order to sustain the recruiting gains the program has made until now, Stoops needs a breakthrough year.

So what does that look like?

It doesn't have to be a set win total. There is no one clear formula.

Kentucky doesn't have to break its long losing streak to Florida, although that would clearly be a huge deal and could signal a potential breakthrough early in the season.

Kentucky doesn't have to beat archrival Louisville, although finishing 4-0 out-of-conference and capping the regular season with a dramatic victory on the road before bowl season would do quite a bit.

But Kentucky probably needs to win at least one of those games and to win all the others that it should.

Kentucky doesn't have to finish above .500 in the SEC for the first time since 1977, although I would argue that doing so would indeed qualify as a breakthrough because it would be a comprehensive, season-long success achievement so rare it couldn't be parsed or explained away.

Ideally, Kentucky's breakthrough year would mean nine or ten wins. Even if it's far from the most likely scenario according to what Vegas and pundits will say, it's absolutely possible. The schedule, SEC and all, isn't easy, but aside from Georgia there aren't any games that would be monumental upsets. Kentucky has the individual talent spread out across enough positions on both sides of the ball to create a surprising nine or ten-win season if everything goes their way.

When's the last time everything has gone this program's way? Whether you believe in a curse or say they're due, Kentucky could really use that. Stoops could really use it.

He's done so much to stop the bleeding, to update the program, to reimagine what's possible in the long-term and to create the conditions for a special year. But windows of opportunity only last for so long and if it doesn't happen this year it might be harder the next.

Beyond the 2018 season, Stoops' program needs a strong showing in the 2019 draft. That's something that has eluded Kentucky football for too long. It could be explained away this year only because several Wildcats pulled their names from draft consideration and returned to Lexington. But with Snell, Conrad, Edwards, Allen, Jones and potentially Landon Young, Baity, George Asafo-Adjei and others all draft-eligible again, this is Kentucky's best chance to make noise and make the case to recruits that Lexington can be a launching pad for prospects with professional aspirations.

Several times I've spoken with folks about other programs, especially those Kentucky recruits against, and when Purdue and the Boilermakers' recent success comes up, almost every person says, "That's where we were a few years ago."

It's easy to sell a vision without a track record. Several years in, you'd better have the results.

Seven wins is an achievement, but all of those four-star recruits who picked Kentucky early in Stoops' tenure did so with the belief that they would be drafted and playing on contending teams. The next batch of top talent will only pick Kentucky if they see the next step.