‘Build a wall.’ How three words have transformed Kentucky’s defense.
Derrick LeBlanc doesn’t want to say it too loudly because he doesn’t want his sophomore nose guard to hear him.
“It’s almost like you don’t have to coach the kid,” Kentucky’s defensive line coach said of Quinton Bohanna. “The kid’s freaking coachable. What’s good about Q is you correct him and the next play is fixed. That’s a pleasure to have.”
And even though the 6-foot-4, 340-pounder from Cordova, Tenn., is only in his second season on campus, he’s become almost a second coach in the defensive line room.
“He loves to play football and he’s a smart kid,” LeBlanc said. “He has a knack for football knowledge.”
As the team watches tape each week, Bohanna is “almost at a point now where he’s finishing sentences before I get them out of my mouth.”
Studying football has been a good distraction for the player nicknamed “Big Bo” as he’s had to fight back through another ankle injury that has slowed him some this season.
He battled through one as a true freshman starter last season and then rolled the other ankle in the UK opener this season. Starting at around the Missouri game, Bohanna has started to feel more like himself, and he sees the progress on tape.
Versus Vanderbilt, he had a forced fumble at a key time.
“Coach tells us to put the center in the backfield,” Bohanna said. “In the process, I saw a running back popping through and I thought, ‘I gotta try to lay him out.’ And I just so happened to put my hand on the ball.”
When Bohanna is feeling and looking better “our entire defense looks better,” LeBlanc said.
“He’s 6-5, 350 and he runs like he’s 6-5, 270. He can run. Very athletic guy who adds movement to the middle, where we didn’t have it before.”
Bohanna is the “core” of Kentucky’s defense, LeBlanc said, which means opposing teams have to account for him, which frees up players like linebackers Jordan Jones, Kash Daniel, Josh Allen and Boogie Watson to go make plays.
It also helps that this season, the linebackers aren’t the only ones making plays. The Kentucky defensive line, which features a regular rotation of eight different players has become a collective play-maker.
Between those eight interior defensive linemen — Bohanna, Phil Hoskins, Calvin Taylor, Kordell Looney, T.J. Carter, Tymere Dubose, Adrian Middleton and Marquan McCall — Kentucky has gotten more push and more disruption than in years past.
With two games still to go in the season, including a game at Louisville on Saturday, the Cats’ interior defensive line already has nine more tackles for loss than a season ago and 3.5 more quarterback sacks than all of last year.
“Having all of that productivity up front means a lot of pressure off myself and all the other guys around me,” Allen said of the improved defensive line play, which has combined for 20 tackles for loss and eight quarterback sacks this season.
Taylor leads the way with 21 tackles, including four for loss and a sack. Hoskins has a defensive line-best three sacks along with 20 tackles and 3.5 for loss.
Bohanna has 16 tackles, including 3.5 for loss and his first career sack a week ago against Middle Tennessee.
“We take in pride in that,” Bohanna said of making plays that set an offense back. “That’s our job. … Our job is to clog up the middle. Coach LeBlanc says ‘build a wall,’ so we love that.”
UK’s interior line will be facing a Cardinals offense that has allowed more sacks this season (41) than only one other team in the country. Louisville has surrendered 85 tackles for loss, which is among the most in the country as well.
Kentucky’s defensive line would love to help those numbers continue to go up this weekend.
“We’re playing so much better as a defensive front as a whole is because we just get it and we know the defense isn’t going to go if we don’t go,” Bohanna said. “That clicks for everybody in our room.”
Saturday
No. 15 Kentucky at Louisville
When: 7 p.m.
TV: ESPN2