One of Kentucky’s biggest question marks coming into season has turned into a bright spot

Jimmy Brumbaugh has become a sensei of sorts in the way he’s taken a young, inexperienced Kentucky defensive line and turned it into a physical force this season.

For the third straight year, UK’s defensive line coach has had to mold an almost entirely new group of players into a cohesive unit.

He makes the process for a defensive lineman sound almost elementary.

“It’s like going to get on that bike, you’re like ‘Uhhhhh, boom!” he described, wobbling back and forth before leaning heavily to one side for illustrative purposes.

“Then when you get on it, you’ve practiced, you’re smooth and you start jumping and doing tricks because now you feel like you can control it.”

There’s a similar simplicity to the way he explained the job to nose guard Naquez Pringle, who barely registered on the depth chart in the spring, and has worked his way into a starting spot now.

Brumbaugh urged the junior-college transfer to stop looking around and worrying about everything. “I tell him, ‘When you chase two rabbits, you get none. When you chase one, you’ve got an opportunity,’” the coach explained.

When the defensive line’s only regular returning starter from last season, Regie Meant, left the team unexpectedly at the start of training camp, there was much hand wringing over the defensive line.

Was there enough talent among the starters? Any usable depth behind them? Would UK be serviceable enough up front to get to any opposing quarterbacks or stop any running backs?

This group has answered a lot of those questions, defensive coordinator D.J. Eliot said.

“They’ve come a long way,” he said, adding: “These guys had to grow up fast. And they had to get their reps and learn from mistakes. I’m very proud of their effort and where they’ve come. And they’ve gotten a lot better. They played one of their better games, if not their best game, on Saturday.”

On Saturday at Missouri, Eliot saw a significant development from his defensive line: UK’s players knocking back Tigers offensive linemen, getting into their backfield.

He specifically mentioned a third-and-1 where Adrian Middleton got push, caused Missouri to lose 2 yards and forced a punt. Middleton, who was named Southeastern Conference defensive lineman of the week on Monday, had four tackles in the win.

“You saw him finishing some plays behind the line of scrimmage when earlier you saw him back there disrupting but not always finishing,” Coach Mark Stoops said of Middleton, who has 19 tackles this season, including two for a loss.

As a group, the line showed it could play at a higher level on Saturday versus Missouri and it will need to get even higher than that against Georgia this weekend at Commonwealth Stadium. The Bulldogs have two of the nation’s elite running backs in Nick Chubb and Sony Michel.

“They really played physical,” Eliot said of UK’s defensive line against Missouri. “And that came with playing with better technique and better understanding of what we’re doing. Our younger players played more.”

The defensive line went eight players deep against Missouri, and the more experience all of them get, the better UK will be.

“You’re starting to see our defensive line doing good things,” Stoops said. “I’m proud of them. I was very proud of their effort on Saturday.”

Against a Missouri team that thrives on tempo and wearing down opposing defenses, Kentucky was able to play a lot of players. They all came in and gave good effort.

That effort has been a key component in the Cats’ statistical turnaround defensively, which includes opponents averaging nearly 75 fewer yards on the ground and 100 fewer yards through the air in the past five games compared to the first three.

In those first three games, UK foes were averaging 528 yards of offense compared to 357.2 in the last five games.

But most importantly, Kentucky has allowed just 23.2 points a game instead of the 43.7 points it surrendered on average in the first three games.

A chunk of that credit goes to the interior defensive line, led by Pringle’s 24 tackles in seven games, followed by Courtney Miggins’ 21 tackles, including three for loss.

“He was very physical, very disruptive,” Stoops said of Pringle. “Doesn’t always pop up on the stat chart, but he commanded two guys to block him quite a bit and was very strong at the point of attack.”

Others like Alvonte Bell (19 tackles), T.J. Carter (six tackles), Tymere Dubose (five tackles) and Matt Elam (four tackles) are helping, too.

“We’ve developed some leadership at that position and they’re playing hard and executing their technique and assignment,” Eliot said. “It was a real concern going into this season and I’m pleased with where they are.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2016 at 2:59 PM with the headline "One of Kentucky’s biggest question marks coming into season has turned into a bright spot."