Shannon Dawson is still the worst

It won't be long until the Kentucky Wildcats face Southern Miss to open the 2016 season.

One of the game's biggest storylines is new Golden Eagles offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson, who gets to face the same UK team he was the OC of just one year ago. It was a disastrous season that saw Dawson take over an offense Neal Brown had built into a strong unit, only to tear it down and make it one of the worst offenses of any Power 5 team.

But Dawson would like it if you didn't blame him for that. After all, his play-calling would have looked great if it actually worked, something that didn't happen often in 2015.

That's why Eddie Gran is now UK's OC and Dawson is coaching at Southern Miss, where he may have taken a subtle jab at the Wildcats' quarterbacks of a year ago during a recent interview.

"Typically, if I have a good quarterback, I’m a pretty good coach," Dawson said. "And typically, if I don’t, I’m not a very good coach."

UK's primary QB of that season was Patrick Towles, so of course, he tweeted a frowny-face in response, but the tweet has since been deleted.

That also led to Rivals.com's Justin Rowland dropping some nuggets as to how bad Dawson was as a coach last year.

I'm not going to go into details, but Shannon Dawson was totally unplugged from his players & families in an unacceptable way last year.

— Justin Rowland (@RowlandRIVALS) August 17, 2016

Just wanted to go in, coach some football, keep it at that. Think he's probably a solid football mind. Not sure a coach's personality.

— Justin Rowland (@RowlandRIVALS) August 17, 2016

Part of being a coach is having a strong personality. Dawson's hands off, 'just coach' negligence was single biggest cause of QB controversy

— Justin Rowland (@RowlandRIVALS) August 17, 2016

Well said.