Tommy Mainord and Shannon Dawson no longer part of Kentucky Football

The Kentucky Wildcats will have several news coaches on offense when the 2016 college football season opens.

The school confirmed Friday that offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson and wide receivers coach Tommy Mainord were no longer part of the program. It's unclear what the future holds for those two, but they won't be in Lexington going into 2016 following another disastrous finish for UK football.

Despite having most of the 2014 starting offense return in 2015, UK took a step back in almost every statistical category this season under Dawson, finishing 10th in scoring in the SEC while averaging just 24.7 points a game, down from 29.2 last season.

"No hard feelings," said Dawson of his departure, via Kentucky.com. "I support Mark and will root for them to be great next year. I appreciated the opportunity."

There is already a report out that Cincinnati's Eddie Gran is UK's top candidate to replace Dawson as OC. However, by law, UK most post its opening for an OC position and leave it up for at least seven days before a possible announcement on a new hire can be made.

As for Mainord, he came to UK as part of former offensive coordinator Neal Brown's staff back in 2012-13. Mainord previously served as Texas Tech's outside receivers coach after being the offensive coordinator at Lamar from 2008-09. Neither coach was expected to return following UK's second straight 5-7 season.

While Kentucky struggled in nearly every area on offense, defense and special teams, it was the offensive woes that were really costly this season for the Cats. Given how much talent UK had there, especially at receiver, there had to be changes made after few players on that side of the ball found any level of consistency in 2015. Drops, missed blocks and poor effort going across the middle of the field plagued the receiving corps. more and more as the season wore on, and it ultimately cost Mainord his job.