Tennessee’s 2024 opponents at a glance: Kent State (2024)

After an uptick in success under Sean Lewis, Kent State returned to the cellar of the MAC with a miserable first season under head coach Kenni Burns. There is literally nowhere to go but up for the Flashes after a 1-11 campaign in 2023. Picked to finish last in the MAC’s East Division, Kent State did not win a conference game and did not beat an FBS opponent, and the average margin of defeat in those 11 losses … 24 points.

Kent State was putrid on offense, averaging an FBS-worst 14.7 points – yes, even lower than Iowa – and ranking 131st nationally in total offense (270.4 yards per game). The other side of the football was miles better by comparison as the Flashes ranked 82nd nationally in total defense (390.6 yards per game) and even cracked the top 100 in yards per play (6.05) allowed. Kent State wasn’t a heavily penalized team and was just minus-3 in turnover margin, but more or less couldn’t move the football or stop the other team from moving it.

After a 56-6 season-opening loss at UCF, Kent State kept its SEC buy game respectable in a 28-6 loss at Arkansas. The Razorbacks led just 7-6 well into the second quarter before scoring just before the break and twice more in the second half. The Flashes then rounded out non-conference play by beating Central Connecticut State (38-10) and losing at 2022 Mountain West Conference champion Fresno State (53-10).

Kent State opened MAC play by scoring just three points in a 20-point loss to Miami (Ohio), then was unable to keep up as Ohio pulled away with a 42-17 win, let Eastern Michigan score the first 28 points of an eventual two-touchdown win and saw Buffalo rip off 24 unanswered after actually leading 6-0 in the first quarter. The closest the Flashes came to a win was a 31-27 loss to also-lowly Akron – Kent State blew a 27-10 lead entering the fourth quarter and gave up the winning touchdown pass with 26 seconds left to go. The harrowing Wednesday night loss was followed up by blowouts by Bowling Green (49-19) and Ball State (34-3).

The Flashes were competitive in the season finale, leading 17-10 at halftime and going up 27-24 with 10 minutes to go against Northern Illinois. The Huskies went on a long touchdown drive to take the lead and held on from there, forcing a fourth-down stop after Kent State drove inside the 40 and getting a defensive touchdown on a fumble on the final play of the game. The 37-27 final score was misleading, but of little solace to Kent State, which went winless in a league where every team but Akron won at least three conference games.

The Mid-American Conference is typically one of the more turbulent and unpredictable leagues in college football. There have been four different champions over the past four seasons and six programs have a league title in the past 10 years. Kent State is not one of them, though, and its lone MAC championship game all the way back in 1972.

The Flashes have played in the MAC Championship Game twice recently with appearances in Detroit in 2012 under Darrell Hazell (lost in double overtime to Northern Illinois) and in 2021 under Sean Lewis(lost again to the Huskies). Those two coaches also are responsible for three of the five bowl appearances in program history, too. Kent State went between its 1972 MAC title and its 11-win 2012 season, which included a win at then-No. 18 Rutgers, an unbeaten regular-season run through the MAC and a climb into the AP Poll, without making a single bowl game and had .500 or better records just three times in 31 years before 2019.

Outside of the tenures of Hazell and Lewis, success for Kent State has been pretty barren. Hazell took over for Doug Martin, who had six losing seasons and a 29-53 overall record (21-35 in the MAC) in seven seasons, and went 5-7 in his first season before that 11-1 breakthrough season that ended on a downer with losses in the MAC Championship Game and to Arkansas State in the GoDaddy.com Bowl. Hazell stuck around to coach that game after taking the Purdue job – he went 9-33 with the Boilermakers and was canned midway through his fourth season – but a certain Gus Malzahn on the other side did not, bolting Jonesboro for Auburn after winning the Sun Belt title in his one and only season.

Between Hazell and Lewis was Paul Haynes, who went 14-45 overall and 9-30 in the MAC in his five seasons (2013-17), during which Kent State never finished higher than fifth in the MAC East.

Lewis worked for Dino Babers at Eastern Illinois, Bowling Green and Syracuse before Kent State hired him before the 2018 season, and he guided the Flashes to a bowl game and the program’s first-ever bowl win (against Utah State in the Frisco Bowl) in his second season. Kent State started out 3-1 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and scored 62 and 69 points in two of the wins before Covid-19 issues canceled the final two games on a six-game schedule. Lewis got Kent State back to the MAC Championship Game in 2021 with a thrilling overtime win against Miami (Ohio) – the Flashes stopped a game-winning two-point try in the extra session of the regular-season finale to clinch the division – but then lost it and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl to Wyoming.

Kent State went 5-7 under Lewis in 2022 and he bounced to become the offensive coordinator for Deion Sanders at Colorado – he’s now the head coach at San Diego State.

The “Cradle of Coaches” moniker belongs to Miami (Ohio), but the list of coaches associated with Kent State football is very impressive, too:

• Lou Holtz never coached for the Golden Flashes, but played linebacker for them before going on to a Hall of Fame career with stops at Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame and South Carolina.
• Hall of Fame Toledo and Missouri coach Gary Pinkel played tight end at Kent State and started his coaching career as a graduate assistant there in the 1970s.
• One of Pinkel’s Kent State teammates was none other than Nick Saban. He played defensive back for the Flashes and spent four seasons at the start of his coaching career at his alma mater, first as a graduate assistant and then as a linebackers coach. We know plenty well what he went on to do at Michigan State, LSU and Alabama before retiring in January.
• Both Pinkel and Saban played and worked for Don James, another Hall of Famer who won 178 games over 22 seasons at Kent State (1971-74) and Washington (1975-1992), where he won a share of the national championship in 1991.
• Eventual veteran NFL defensive coordinator Dean Pees is a former Kent State head coach, going 17-51 in six seasons with the Flashes (1998-2003).

The list of former Kent State players also includes some guys who went on to become huge successes in the NFL:

• Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert was a six-time All-Pro and four-time Super Bowl winner with the Steelers – Kent State retired his No. 99.
• Joshua Cribbs was a trailblazing dual-threat quarterback at Kent State, which retired his No. 9 jersey after he left as the program’s all-time leader in total offense (10,839 yards), rushing touchdowns (38) and passing yards (7,169). At the time he was one of eight players to have multiple seasons of 1,000 rushing yards and 1,000 passing yards and one of four quarterbacks in NCAA history to rush for 3,500 yards and throw for 7,000 yards in a career. In the NFL, he owned the kickoff-return touchdowns record (until Cordarrelle Patterson broke it in 2022) and was a member of the NFL 2000s All-Decade Team as a kickoff returner.
• Before he was a three-time Super Bowl winner (and a Super Bowl MVP) as a Patriots wide receiver, Julian Edelman was a three-year starting quarterback at Kent State.

• James Harrison started out at Kent State as a walk-on before becoming a three-year starter and then a star with the Steelers in the NFL. The menacing linebacker made five Pro Bowls, won two Super Bowls and was the 2008 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, credentials that will soon have him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame soon. In his last game at Kent State in 2001, Harrison racked up four sacks against a redshirt freshman quarterback named Ben Roethlisberger.
• Tight end O.J. Santiago was a third-round pick out of Kent State who is credited with creating the “Dirty Birds” dance of the late-1990s Falcons (and also played in a Super Bowl while in Atlanta).
• Defensive end Andy Harmon was an All-Pro who racked up 39.5 sacks in seven seasons with the Eagles in the 1990s, and you also have Super Bowl winners like offensive lineman Josh Kline (2014 Patriots) and safety Usama Young (2009 Saints) and 1980s “New York Sack Exchange” member Abdul Salaam.
• Antonio Gates, another soon-to-be Pro Football Hall of Famer, played basketball at Kent State and led the Flashes to the Elite Eight in 2002 before becoming a star tight end for the Chargers.

In hiring Kenni Burns after the 2022 season, Kent State tapped into the tree of a former MAC coaching protege in hopes of competing toward the top half of the league. He played running back at Indiana before starting his coaching career at Division II Millersville – three years before Vols running back coach De’Rail Sims made a stop there. Burns experienced a ton of success at the Football Championship Subdivision level, first with conference titles in both seasons at Southern Illinois and then as the wide receivers coach for three straight North Dakota State national titles (2011-13) and a 43-2 four-year run under Craig Bohl.

P.J. Fleck hired him to his Western Michigan staff in 2016, when Broncos ran the table through the regular season, won the MAC title and lost to Penn State in the Cotton Bowl, before taking him to Minnesota. Burns was on Fleck’s staff for six seasons with the Golden Gophers as the running backs coach and was the assistant head coach for four years. Minnesota won 11 games and notched a top-10 finish in 2019 and won nine games in 2021 and 2022, and the Gophers were almost always good at running the football with the likes of Rodney Smith and Mohamed Ibrahim – Burns landed fourth-round NFL Draft pick Bucky Irving at Minnesota, too.

His first season as a head coach went very poorly as Kent State finished dead last in the FBS in the final SP+ rankings for the 2023 season. Burns was in a tough spot as the Flashes went into last season with the least returning production in the FBS thanks to the portal losses of quarterback Colin Schlee (UCLA), 1,300-yard rusher Marquez Cooper (Ball State), stud receivers Devontez Walker (North Carolina) and Dante Cephas (Penn State), the three starting offensive linemen whose eligibility didn’t expire (two went to Colorado with Lewis and their position coach and an All-MAC selection to UCF) and a four-star transfer cornerback in Montre Miller (West Virginia). That’s just too much quality for any first-year coaching staff to replace, particularly at a MAC program.

Kent State’s athletic director even dropped a “Year Zero” reference in his quote in the release announcing a one-year contract extension for Burns.

The Flashes are actually up four spots to No. 129 out of 134 teams in the post-spring SP+ projections, so it may not be a bad thing that only 56% of the production from a one-win team returns. Kent State will hope some continuity helps the offense improve (68% production returns, No. 42 nationally per ESPN), while the defense has more to replace (just 45% production is back). The SP+ projected win total is 3.8 (2.8 in the MAC plus a Week 3 game against FCS St. Francis).

WRs Chrishon McCray and Luke Floriea. Kent State’s 131th-ranked offense still produced an All-MAC first-team selection in McCray, which should tell you he’s pretty good. As a redshirt freshman, he led the Flashes in catches (41) and receiving yards (610) while averaging 14.8 yards per catch, hauling in four touchdowns and notching two 100-yard games and two two-touchdown games. Floriea, another 5-foot-10 wideout, chipped in 39 catches for 413 yards and four touchdowns to earn All-MAC third-team offense, and he and McCray are a good starting point on offense if Kent State can find a capable quarterback – the offseason competition is between returning juniors Tommy Ulatowski and Devin Kargman and Troy transfer J.D. Sherrod, a 2023 three-star recruit who played at Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis.

K Andrew Glass. The All-MAC second-team kicker in 2023 was perhaps Kent State’s most reliable player, making 15 of 17 field goals on the season to rank second in the conference in field goal percentage. Glass is 53 of 71 on field goals in his Flashes career. He also handles kickoffs.

RB Ky Thomas. Kent State is the third school for the former four-star recruit, who signed with Minnesota to play for Burns out of high school. Thomas rushed for 824 yards and six touchdowns as a redshirt freshman for the Golden Gophers in 2021 before transferring to Kansas. He had just 162 yards and two scores on 53 carries for the Jayhawks in 2022, and didn’t play last season as one of the final casualties of the NCAA’s now-deceased transfer waiver process.

CB Dallas Branch. The San Diego State transfer was a pretty good portal get for Kent State. The 5-foot-11, 180-pound defensive back spent three-plus seasons with the Aztecs, totaling 68 tackles, seven tackles for loss and five interceptions, before entering the portal after four appearances last season. Branch was All-Mountain West Honorable Mention in 2022 and brings starting experience and ball production to Kent State’s secondary, which has to replace the top cornerback tandem of D.J. Miller Jr. (UDFA signing by the Chiefs) and Capone Blue (Wake Forest) transfer.

LB Nicholas Giacolone. After notching 80 tackles in three seasons at New Mexico State, Giacolone transferred to Kent State and was an instant hit last season. He racked up 54 tackles, second-most on the team, and added 4.5 tackles for loss with some playmaking ability (an interception against UCF and forced fumble against Bowling Green). The Venice, Fla., native racked up a dozen tackles plus a TFL and pass breakup in that outstanding performance against the Falcons.

DL Stephen Daley. Kent State’s biggest portal loss this offseason was the post-spring departure of All-MAC defensive lineman C.J. West to Indiana, so Daley will be counted on even more this season. The 6-foot-2, 258-pounder is a single-digit-wearing defensive lineman who saw his role and production explode as a sophom*ore after a four-tackle freshman season. Daley was fifth on the team in tackles (48) and also had 5.5 tackles for loss, one sack, seven hurries and an interception.