​LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky football coach Will Stein sat in front of a room full of cameras and reporters Monday and said something that, from most first-year head coaches, would sound like a dodge. There are no starters. Not yet. Maybe not for weeks.”There really are still no starters,” Stein said. “We can project out where we feel like this team is going to be, but I want this team to be as competitive as possible from top down with the roster.”Coming from Stein, it isn’t a dodge. It’s the thesis of his entire first season in Lexington. Everybody remembers the soundbite from media days: “because of me,” the four words that turned into a national headline before Stein had coached a single down at Kentucky. He isn’t surprised it traveled the way it did. He’s also not particularly interested in relitigating it.”I know more than anything it’s about the people in our organization, and that’s really important to me, more than me,” Stein said.That’s the real story here, and it’s a far more interesting one than a quote taken out of context. Stein isn’t building a program around his own résumé, the Oregon pedigree, or the offenses that have traveled with him from stop to stop. He’s building it around numbers. Multiple numbers, at every position, all competing for the same job.”We have to have strength in numbers,” Stein said. “That, to me, is a key component to play winning football, especially in October and November, where championships happen.”You can see that philosophy in how Kentucky has attacked the roster all offseason: high school recruiting, the portal, junior college, all of it, all at once. Stein added two JuCo running backs to a room that already features Kentucky’s returning uncertainty at the position, and he wasn’t shy about why.”Both those players, if they would have been able to come out in January, would have had a multitude of offers throughout the entire country,” Stein said. “We wanted to exhaust everything that we can to keep enhancing this roster, regardless of availability of players.”Martels Carter has been fully installed at running back. The quarterback room got an extra arm added after spring practice, a decision Stein made with the bluntness of a coach who’s been burned before.”I’ve been in situations where you don’t have a guy that’s necessarily ready to go into the game and then you look up and you’re in a bad position,” he said. “So we added people there.”The headline job, of course, belongs to Kenny Minchey, and Stein’s description of him reads like a checklist for the modern quarterback: accurate, on-time thrower, good feet, mobile, high football IQ. But Minchey isn’t getting a coronation. He’s getting a competition, with Callum Wither, Matt Ponatoski, Brennen Ward, and JacQai Long all in the room behind him.”There’s been nothing given in that room,” Stein said, “so we’re excited about those guys to go out there and compete.”Health-wise, the early injury report is more maintenance than alarm. Nic Anderson and Jovant