The College Football Playoff begins on Wednesday night when No. 2 seed Ohio State faces No. 10 seed Miami in the Cotton Bowl. A fun 48 hours of football is ahead. On New Year’s Day, there will be a triple-header of quarterfinals action. To begin that day, Kentucky head coach Will Stein and offensive line coach Cutter Leftwich will be participating in the Orange Bowl for a huge game with No. 5 seed Oregon facing No. 4 seed Texas Tech. It’s go time for Dan Lanning‘s program.
The Ducks have been here before. The Red Raiders have not. Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire knows that his top-five defense will have quite the challenge ahead of them against Oregon’s offense. The 54-year-old is familiar with Stein and Leftwich. The Big 12 head coach has evened done deep dive research on how Stein’s offense operates in the offseason.
“Will Stein does a great job. I know Will very well. Excited for him getting the Kentucky job,” McGuire said last week. “One of the o-line coaches is Mack’s (Leftwich) little brother. He’s going with him to Kentucky and I think he has a lot to do with what they do run game wise.”
“They’re one of the teams that we actually throughout the year and the offseason study because they are so creative in the run game.”
Stein spent time in the Lonestar State from 2015-22 with stops at Texas, Austin Lake Travis High School, and UTSA. During that time, Joey McGuire was finishing up his high school coaching career at Cedar Hill High School in Metro Dallas before heading to Baylor where he spent five seasons as an assistant coach before leaving for Texas Tech. Back in 2023, Texas Tech hosted Oregon in a 38-30 win for the Ducks. In that game, Stein’s offense scored 20 points in the fourth quarter to erase a nine-point deficit. The Ducks rolled up 472 total yards (6.3 yards per play) as Bo Nix threw for 359 yards while Tyler Shough passed for 282 yards and rushed for 101 yards in a battle of future NFL starting quarterbacks.
Stein will look to have a similar result against Texas Tech on Thursday in South Florida. Joey McGuire is very familiar with the new Kentucky head coach.