{"id":647386,"date":"2026-05-16T21:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T21:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/647386\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T21:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T21:08:08","slug":"when-will-stein-knew-kenny-minchey-could-be-his-qb-at-kentucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/647386\/","title":{"rendered":"When Will Stein Knew Kenny Minchey Could be His QB at Kentucky"},"content":{"rendered":"

How successful will Kentucky be in Will Stein<\/a>\u2018s first season as a head coach? The answer to that question depends on what you think about Kenny Minchey<\/a>. If you don\u2019t have a strong opinion on the Kentucky quarterback, it makes sense.<\/p>\n

Big Blue Nation was closely monitoring Sam Leavitt<\/a>\u2018s moves in the transfer portal when the Notre Dame quarterback committed to Kentucky. The abrupt announcement<\/a> came about 24 hours after he committed to Nebraska. It felt like a big move by the new coaching staff, but why? <\/p>\n

The tape on Minchey is limited. Over three years at Notre Dame, the former four-star quarterback attempted 29 passes in 104 total snaps. What can you actually learn from that? Will Stein liked what he saw. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing with successful quarterbacks, especially in college, is being able to throw on time and with accuracy into tight windows. Even though the games weren\u2019t \u2018gotta have it\u2019 plays, must-have calls, you can still see somebody throw on time in a college environment, in a college pocket. When I saw that on tape, I knew this guy can process; he\u2019s accurate,\u201d the Kentucky head coach said recently<\/a>. <\/p>\n

We all know that Minchey received resounding endorsements from all of the coaches at Notre Dame, who believe they could have been just as successful if he had beaten out CJ Carr<\/a> to be the starting quarterback. Even so, Minchey had to answer some of Stein\u2019s questions in spring practice. Tthat\u2019s exactly what happened. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut you still don\u2019t know. Then you get him in practice and see the operation. When I see a guy that can operate literally, meaning he can get the play in the helmet, communicate, it doesn\u2019t look rigid, or he doesn\u2019t know. It\u2019s just clean. All right, we have something here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most enlightening moment at Kentucky spring practice was actually an incompletion. Defensive coordinator Jay Bateman<\/a> dialed up a blitz to one side of the line of scrimmage. Minchey flipped the protection, then the defense flipped the blitz. Minchey was able to react in time and change the protection once more before snapping the ball, then threw a pass from a clean pocket that was batted away near the sideline. <\/p>\n

Will Stein takes a \u201cplayers over plays\u201d approach to play-calling. He wants to put his quarterbacks in a position to succeed. They just have to be able to operate efficiently. How good can Kenny Minchey be? We\u2019ll be asking that until he takes the field, but we do know that he can make accurate throws on time within the system. That checks a lot of boxes. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How successful will Kentucky be in Will Stein\u2018s first season as a head coach? The answer to that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,170521,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-647386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-kenny-minchey-23-pope-john-paul-ii","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}