Andy & Ari On3 - Kentucky SILENCES Texas A&M in College Station: Will Stein picks up first SEC win vs Aggies

Episode Date: September 19, 2026

Join Andy & Ari live HERE as the guys react to Kentucky's shocking win over Texas A&M in College Station.Our show is presented by Polymarket!New User Offer: Deposit $10, get $50 upon sign uphttps://app.polymarket.us/S8ac/ON3Trade on College Football games every week on Polymarket. Download the Polymarket App with code ON3 for a $20 bonus upon sign up.18+ only. Restrictions and eligibility requirement apply. Not available in all jurisdictions. Trading is risky. 100% loss can occur.Join On3 today! https://www.on3.com/joinSubscribe to On3!  ⬇️ youtube.com/on3sports/?sub_confirmati...Welcome to On3 | The best of college football and recruiting https://www.on3.com/Listen to Andy & Ari On3 on podcast!Spotify 🎧: https://open.spotify.com/show/5AhQ4d2m5TQu5Q2vkwtxjt?si=d9016221aa2a4427Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andy-staples-on3/id1695325427Follow Andy & Ari On3 on X! https://x.com/AndyAriOn3Follow Andy Staples on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Andy_StaplesFollow Andy Staples on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andy_staplesFollow Ari Wasserman on Twitter: https://x.com/AriWassermanFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/on3sportsFollow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/on3/Like/Follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/On3Sports/Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River BaileyInterested in partnering with the show? Email [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

by Polymark in another instant reaction show. Kentucky has just beaten Texas A&M. Ari's out of breath. He's so excited from watching the Aggies get beat down by the Wildcats. Kenny Minchie. Holy cow, 14 yards per pass attempt. One of the more efficient days you will ever see from a quarterback. Nick Rauch was a week early, I guess.

He was, and he picked A&M this week. And I've called him out on that. I said, oh, you're not, you're not a believer anymore. Just a bad picker, I guess. A lot to unpack here, man, but Will Stein, I think we both agreed was a great hire. Kentucky did a lot of good things in improving their roster and making their lines play well, improving their lines. I think that, like, you could lean into that a little bit. Of course, the comment you just highlighted is going to be probably the main takeaway for most people of this game,

which is A&M season last year was a product of, an easy SEC schedule and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, like, I don't know. Do you lean into the A&M, what the hell happened here, angle of this? Or do you lean into what if the SEC found its new star upcoming coach? Both. It's both because Will Stein, okay, we thought this might happen against Alabama. We were a week early.

But remember, they were beating Alabama at halftime. Alabama's defense shut them down in the second half. And it's, you know, Will Stein's first SEC game as a head coach. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on there. And I think Kentucky's better. Do I think Kentucky's going to win the SEC or go to the playoff? No, I don't. But they are significantly better, and they're going to knock people off.

And Texas A&M learned that the hard way. Now, the crazy thing with Texas A&M is we talked about how their schedule in the SEC was one of the easiest draws last year, and it will not be so easy this year. But this was not one of the games we had them losing or even sweating in. Like they're going to Baton Rouge next week. Yeah, that's not a great start, man. You know, I thought that there was a lot to be excited about last weekend when they put Arizona State away. You know, maybe the first three quarters or two and a half quarters of that game should have been more of a clue of like, hey, you know, this team is getable.

But, you know, the thing that we have to understand and, you know, we've talked a lot about is in the SEC, you don't get like a lot of mulligans for really bad games because you have enough really hard games on your schedule already. So if you slip up and you fall early in the year, it's really hard to redeem yourself because even if you go 500 against the most talented teams on your roster, I mean on your schedule, which would be a really good success story, right? If you go 500 against, you know, Texas, LSU, Alabama,

and Tennessee, it's pretty good, right? But if you lose Kentucky and go 500 against those teams, it's pretty good, but also you're completely off track of where you want to be. Look at Texas last year. one game that they lose that they weren't supposed to lose and it knocks them out of the playoff. So, like,

do you think Texas A&M can make the playoff now? Theoretically, yes. I mean, they've only lost one game. But you look at the schedule. It's going to be almost impossible for them to make the playoff now. Yeah, right. And if they do,

that'll make what happened here today even weirder because that means they'd have to beat probably two of the three teams I just mentioned, LSU, Alabama, and Texas. So, yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of margin for error. And I think it's a good thing. And part of the reason why I want to hold on to the 12th team playoff as long as possible, because while games like this would have eliminated you from CFP contention five years ago,

it puts you in a win or go home mentality for the rest of the year. And, you know, your season's not over, but it makes it more interesting and much harder. So, you know, I think that I'm a little bit surprised by this. Not that, you know, A&M lost to a better Kentucky team, especially because we know that Kenny Menchie looked really good, right? Yes. You know, there was a big touchdown drop in the second quarter that, you know, this could have been a lot worse.

It's going to be a lot worse. 3821, yeah. I'm not so much surprised that they lost. I'm surprised that it, you know, went the way that it did in terms of they weren't in it. Ari, to point out, now, Marceli didn't play great. But I want to point out just how good and how lethal and efficient Kenny Menchie was. Kenny Menci threw for 252 yards.

Marcel Reed threw for 236. Marcel read through the ball 31 more times than Kenny Minchie. Is that real? Is that really? That's that. Marcel read through the ball 49 times. Kenny Menchie threw it 18 times. Kenny Mitchell was 14 of 18 for 252.

That is obscene. Like that is an incredible stat. Now, the play design was awesome. like they're trying to salt the game away that that play where Henry Boyer the tight end they line up unbalanced and here your boyer leaks out and nobody sees them which by the way they scored a touchdown against Alabama on last week A&M doesn't pick it up great play like but the way Kenny Minci throws that that's not like he was under pressure but that was a pure athlete throw like I played a million sports growing up and I'm just going to chuck this

up here, but the guy's wide open, so I'm not throwing it in a danger. And then you saw plays, like there was a throw in the second quarter, and I'm blanking on which drive it was. They ended up scoring on it. But he threw an absolute laser beam, 45 yards down the middle of the field on a seam route.

It was just beautiful. And like, this guy could be the next really good quarterback. And I know there's some others we're talking about. I'm watching Camaro Taylor and Lenora Sellers duel right now. now, but Kenny Menchie might be the next really good SEC. You know what else we're watching right now in the moment, which Lincoln Keenholz over in Louisville? Yes.

It's like the two quarterbacks who went up against other quarterbacks that will either be a Heisman finalist here or were a Heisman finalist last year. We doubted or wondered whether the quarterback battles that they narrowly lost were actually as narrow as they were described. And now they're also bawling out at their new places. So to me, like I think it's like both of those guys. Yeah, because Kenny, Kenny Menchie lost to C.J. Carr in the Notre Dame quarterback competition last year.

The Notre Dame coaches said it was very close. They were not just blowing smoke. They were telling the truth. And then you watch this. Yeah. And it's like you kind of understand that. And Andy, with that crazy staff that you just shared, that touchdown or would be touchdown pass that he threw to Kenny Darby in the second quarter would have been like a 65-yard completion.

So it would have been, yeah, he would have been 15 of 18 for over 300 yards. Over 300 had that been complete. crazy, crazy day. So, yeah. I mean, it's pretty unbelievable. And, you know, I think that while, you know, there's some doubt or some question as to whether Kentucky is going to go on make a playoff run, especially with what happened last week against Alabama, probably not. But when you think about like breath of the program, NIL donations, people getting excited, like the magnitude or the, you know, bump that an early season win, especially one on the road like this does for a program, a new coach, I think is massive. I mean, if you go back and look at some of the other coaches that have, you know, had some pretty early returns,

like a lot of times the big wins and the early portions of their tenure's there were the thing that, like, powered them through. So, you know, I'm really on high alert for what Will Stein can do. We already know that Kentucky in hiring him was committed to spending commeserate with their, with their competition and their peers. You know, you go out and you beat Texas A&M on the road, like all of a sudden, like the checkbooks come out and people are really excited because the one thing that I took away from Nick Rausch when he was on the show with us, about Kentucky before the Bama game was, is that you're not talking about a basketball fan base here. You're talking about football fans who love basketball and are dying for a football winner.

Let me read this assonine comment here from Yogsaw. Will Stein called his shot last week and got embarrassed at home by a good but not great team. It's good he didn't let his team fall apart after that, but let's not pretend he's delivering. He is delivering. Guys, they sucked. That's why they fired Mark Stoops. They don't suck anymore.

sometimes I wonder, like, who, who's writing that? Like, is that just, like, a Louisville fan or something? Like, I just, it doesn't even make sense how that would confuse. I would think a Louisville fan is watching the global game right now. Don't ever underestimate our stardom, buddy. I think people watch us no matter what, no matter what their favorite teams on. I'm, that's what I'm going to choose the belief. But, yeah, like, I just, what do you mean he's not,

he beat a top 10 team on the road in his third game ever at Kentucky, a place that sucked ass last year. Like, what else would you want? Exactly. But now let's look at Kentucky the rest of the way because let's see where are their spots. Like, okay, they got South Alabama next. They should win that game. South Carolina on the road, LSU at home, Oklahoma on the road, Banderbilt at home.

Like none of these are gimmies, none of them. You could lose them all. But if you're better than you were last year, which I think they are, you're going to win some of these. Yeah. You know, I think that if you even finish like seven and five, and you know you have some bad games because last week was a bad game i mean you want to talk about how confusing college football is um look at some of the results of of games that happened at the beginning of the year and games that are happening last week and then games that are happening today

like a lot of stuff that just doesn't add up or make sense and one hand mada you get completely demolished yeah yeah it's early in bama's game but yeah they're they're they've got two interceptions since they came back from the rain delay so i bama may be fine oh the rain delays over with oh yes Yes. They didn't know that. They've been to ask the annuals twice since the rain delay ended, already. Okay.

Yeah. Sorry. I thought they were still in the rain to lay down. But yeah, that's good to hear. I'm happy that that's happening. But, like, still, nothing makes sense.

I mean, even like Utep losing 51 to nothing, then I'm not sure. I'm just going to end up winning by 100 still. But like, just weird results. Yeah. Are they winning now? They're not winning now.

They're down to trying to decide if they want to go for two or one. So got it. It's, yeah, it's, that one's turning. Also, touchdown floor. So this is just one of those days, but Kentucky didn't win in a fluky way. Kentucky dominated this game, are you? Like that's the, that's the part that I think if you're saying Will Stein's not delivering, like, no, no, no. He went out, got an offensive line, got a defensive line, and they played well. Like, they played well for a half against Alabama, too.

They just can keep it up. So perhaps that's part of the learning. curve is learning what you have to do to keep a team like that down and to keep a team like that on the ropes because they didn't let up today. Like the play I was talking about, the unbalanced play to the tight end, they didn't need to call that. They could have been really conservative. They could have given Texas A&M a chance to get back in the game. They got down the field. They got three points that forced A&M into a three score game that made it much more difficult for A&M to come back. Yeah, yeah.

And like we said before, that touchdown gets caught in the second quarter. Maybe the entire tenor of the game changes. You can at least add another touchdown onto the board here. So I don't know what happens with Texas A&M. I still truly believe in and trust Mike Elko. Maybe, you know, growth of a program isn't linear. You know, it goes up one year. It goes down.

The next year, obviously there's no like momentum in terms of roster building like there used to be. So, you know, it is what it is. But that's certainly not the way you want to start us. especially the fact that it was in college station too. Like that's, you know, Billy Lucci gets a picture taken with, you know,

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey their day and he comes home to this. Like, come on, what are we doing? That's our friend Billy from TechSags. Yes, he was, he's the one,

the quote unquote social media user, the New York Post, pictured with, with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey the other day. But yeah, maybe that's what it is. Maybe this is karma. I think Taylor's got a song about that.

So she does. But this is a big win for Kentucky. This is why you did what you did. Because look, Kentucky had to make a huge investment. It was a big decision to decide to firemark stoops. Now, he gave him the discount, which isn't really a discount, but he at least let him pay the buyout on an installment plan. But you had to swallow hard when you decided to firemark stoops because you knew that was going to be tough.

By the way, you also may have to do something. about your basketball coach next year. So they know it's going to cost them some money. But guess what? They didn't turn around and invested in the roster in a way that Kentucky hadn't been. And I think that tells you they want to win. They want and they remember everybody else is hiring sitting head coaches. They hired the hot coordinator.

They did things a little bit differently. They sure did. And I think that they're probably one of the. I don't know. Like, if you think about Indiana, like this, I don't even think this is fair because Kentucky's been pretty good. I don't want to, like, erase Bob, I mean, Mark Stoops' memory of, like, what he did. He made them relevant. He was a pretty good coach for a long time.

But Indiana was just the worst college football program in the country. But when you think about, like, traditional basketball schools that are not really that far away from each other that play in ultra-competitive leagues with teams that are super bought into football, like, is there any lesson that Kentucky can directly learn? It's not just Kentucky, but everybody can. directly learn from investing in football, giving the coach and hiring the right coach what they need to succeed in what that can do for your university, your football program, and frankly, your athletic department and boosters. There's so much to gain from this. So, like, I'm happy to see that Kentucky's on the right track. I know that people in Lexington are going to be fired up tonight. And you know what? When you invest in something and you make the right moves, there's dividends for that.

And this is a dividend of that. Yeah. This is going to be exciting to watch going forward for Kentucky. Yeah. Now, we got more to watch because this day started off weird, has continued to be weird. I suspect tonight's going to be even weirder. We'll talk to you soon.