How much better is Kentucky’s defense now? How did it happen? Can it continue?

What’s that old saying?

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Or the slightly less aggressive: Keep It Simple, Silly.

It’s the simplistic principle that the most basic systems often are the most effective systems.

The process of fixing Kentucky’s struggling defense, which gave up 44 points in the opener to Southern Miss and 45 points to Florida in the next game, was anything but simple.

But simplifying certainly was part of the solution.

“It’s getting a little bit confusing to them, even though we’re trying to be simple,” Kentucky Coach Mark Stoops said after the New Mexico State game, the third straight game in which his defense had given up 500 or more yards.

“We’ve got to figure out how to get them to play better. We got to coach them up.”

In a lot of ways that coaching cliché turned into a coaching clinic since Sept. 17.

The statistics certainly show a successful switch for Kentucky’s defense.

In the first two games, UK opponents were averaging 44.5 points against the Swiss cheese defense, but in the last three games, which included a game at top-ranked Alabama, Cats opponents are managing just 19 points a game.

Take out the two scoop-and-score fumbles for Alabama and Vanderbilt and Kentucky’s defense looks even more impressive, allowing an average of just 14 points a game in its last three games.

The 1,084 yards of total offense amassed by Florida and Southern Miss is 46 more yards than the UK defense has allowed in the last three games combined.

“It’s been a tough start, but our guys have stayed the course,” Stoops said of the defense. “We have gotten better. I told you we were getting better, and we certainly have. There’s no doubt defensively we have.”

Perhaps cornerback Derrick Baity summed up the turnaround best: “We’re miles away from week one.”

‘We can fix that’

In the last game against Vanderbilt, Kentucky’s front seven on defense consisted of six players who didn’t start a single game last season.

Defensive end Denzil Ware, the only one with a start last season, said there has been a bit of a learning curve. That meant the more “multiple” UK’s defense tried to be early in the season, the less players seemed to know where they needed to be.

Stoops noted it himself after the third game of the season against the Aggies.

“When we’re playing both fronts and we’re playing the Okie front and then the over front, we’re searching right now,” he said. “We got guys that are — it gets difficult with fits and so on. I don’t want to get too complex.”

The problem was it was too complex, though. So the week before the South Carolina game, the Kentucky coaches tried to figure out what all of the top defensive players understood and could execute well.

Those would be the Cats’ key packages.

Despite the defensive duds in the first three games, it wasn’t difficult to keep the players motivated and optimistic, defensive coordinator D.J. Eliot said.

If the film went up on the big screen in the defensive meeting rooms and the coaches had said the opponents were just better than us then their “confidence would have gone in the tank pretty quick,” Eliot said.

Coaches said the opposite.

“We said, ‘Look, it’s nothing he did, it’s what you did. You gave him that play, you didn’t play this properly, you didn’t line up right, you didn’t communicate, you didn’t play the technique. We can fix that,’” Eliot said. “That’s an easy fix, and when we do that you’ll start being a lot more successful.”

There was some finger pointing early, some guys feeling like they had to make up for deficiencies of others and that was creating even more breakdowns for the defense as a whole, said linebacker Josh Allen, fourth on the team in tackles with 32, including 5.5 for loss and 4.5 sacks.

“Then we started seeing the bigger picture,” Allen said. “People started to realize this is a team effort. We’re all a unit. We’ve all got to stick together, and that’s when we started communicating more and playing together, and that’s how we got better.”

The light started to come on when the players saw that it was fixable, that they could be a better defense.

“We don’t need Superman on the field” was the message, Baity said. “Just play your game. And do your job and the defense will be OK.”

There was a lot of work on fundamentals. Players started to feel better about the basics. And about each other.

“We’ve just really focused on being enthused, a lot of energy getting to the ball,” said middle linebacker Courtney Love, third on the team in tackles with 34. “Just trusting the people to the left and right of you.”

It wasn’t an overnight thing, Love’s backup said. It’s been a gradual evolution starting with a particularly physical practice to open the week of the South Carolina game.

“We came out Monday (after New Mexico State) and had a great practice, then Tuesday and Wednesday,” Kash Daniel said. “We felt really confident going into that game. We were calm; we were confident; we were ready to roll.”

And that’s when they started their roll.

Little things like getting more push from the middle of the defensive line helped create opportunities for the players on the perimeter like Allen and Ware.

Kentucky needs just three more sacks to equal the UK sacks total a season ago.

“We simplified things and we built on things each week,” Stoops said after the Vanderbilt game when asked about UK’s improved pressure. “We really built on it and we had some nice new pressures tonight.”

UK opponents are averaging just 135 yards rushing in the last three games, some 118 yards fewer than Kentucky foes Southern Miss and Florida averaged in the first two games of the season.

Plays on third down have been key for Kentucky, whose opponents converted on third downs 62.2 percent of the time in the first two games, but have done it just 38.5 percent of the time in the last three games.

UK foes made all but one of their three fourth-down tries in the first two games, but haven’t made one in their four attempts starting with the South Carolina game.

“We’re playing hard and we’re executing and the kids are rallying and that’s encouraging,” said Eliot, whose group was on the field 38:59 the first two games of the season and then a much more manageable 28:08 in the past three games. “We’ve still got a long way to go until the end of the year.”

Bumpier roads ahead?

That “long way to go” comment by Eliot seemed to foreshadow the six weeks ahead.

And the defense is still a long way from getting fixed. The impressive showings have been against two of the three worst offenses in the Southeastern Conference in South Carolina and Vanderbilt. The third game, a loss, was against the league’s top-scoring offense (Alabama).

In this next span of three key games, UK’s defense will learn how far it has come and how far it still has to go.

The Cats will face two offenses in Mississippi State (25.6 ppg) and Georgia (26.7) that are in the middle of the SEC pack.

They will go on the road to meet Missouri, which is fourth in the league in scoring offense at 37 points per game. But the Tigers’ numbers are a little off kilter. Against fellow Power Five defenses, Missouri is averaging just 15 points a game.

And far off in the distance are road games against the nation’s top-rated offense (Louisville) and a top 50 offense in Tennessee.

Pending games against those teams would’ve made coaches lose hair and develop ulcers in the weeks leading up to them.

But after the past three weeks, the players and their coaches feel better about where they’re going.

“We knew this road was going to be bumpy, that it wasn’t going to be easy, but I think we stayed optimistic,” Ware said.

“Everything isn’t going to be perfect, but every day we get a chance to work on it and come out here and perfect our plan.”

This story was originally published October 15, 2016 at 3:57 PM with the headline "How much better is Kentucky’s defense now? How did it happen? Can it continue?."