Mark Stoops constructs mighty defenses everywhere he goes. What is UK coach’s secret?
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UK in the 2019 Belk Bowl
The University of Kentucky will play Virginia Tech in the 2019 Belk Bowl on Dec. 31. Read more about the Wildcats’ opponent and destination.
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The Southeastern Conference began playing football in 1933. You need only nine fingers to count the number of times Kentucky has finished with a top-20 scoring defense, nationally, in the 86 years that have followed.
One of those instances was last year, when Kentucky finished sixth in the country after allowing 16.8 points per game. Barring some statistical dynamite courtesy of Virginia Tech, Kentucky this season should finish with a top-20 scoring defense for just the 10th time in school history, and do it in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1976 and 1977. The Wildcats have surrendered 18.4 points per game, 12th nationally, ahead of the Belk Bowl.
Scoring defense is just one of many statistics in college football, and its significance can mean a lot or little depending on who’s talking, but in 2019, at least, it was a slightly more reliable indicator of success than scoring offense: only five top-60 teams in scoring defense failed to become bowl-eligible this year while eight top-60 teams in scoring offense failed to do so (note: neither stat includes TCU, which finished 5-7 despite being a top-60 club in both categories).
Both of Mark Stoops’ first two bowl-eligible teams at Kentucky gave up more points per game than they scored and didn’t sniff the top 60, let alone the top 20. The defensive leap Kentucky made in 2018 was crucial to it contending for an SEC championship and playing in a New Year’s Day bowl; maintaining that level of play helped it mitigate the loss of two starting quarterbacks to injury and compliment Lynn Bowden as he grew into the collegiate signal-caller that captained one of the more improbable turnarounds in UK history.
“I’m a firm believer that the coaching job he did this year was exponentially even better than the historic season that they had last year because of all those question marks,” ESPN analyst Peter Burns said. “I think we lose track of that in our world. It takes time to build something, to build a foundation, to build a culture, and there’s not many programs across the country in college football that have shown that they can build something like Mark Stoops has done in Lexington.”
Concern
Prior to Terry Wilson’s injury in the seventh quarter of UK’s season, the biggest concern about this year’s team was its defense. Specifically, the secondary.
Losing Josh Allen, the seventh overall pick in the NFL Draft, mattered, but more worrisome was the graduation of five defensive backs with a lot of snaps under their belts. Distress heightened when Davonte Robinson suffered a season-ending injury before fall camp started.
Pro Football Focus, a film and scouting service that supplies data to 70 FBS teams (UK among them) and all 32 NFL clubs, values the quarterback position most highly of any on the field. It follows then that coverage of that position — not limited to but largely involving defensive backs — would be the next-most valuable information set to track, says Cam Mellor, the lead college football analyst for PFF.
“For them to be able to limit coverage, I think that speaks to the seven wins as much as Lynn’s emergence as well as Terry’s victories at the beginning of the season,” Mellor said.
Mellor spoke particularly highly of Cedrick Dort and Brandin Echols, UK’s starting cornerbacks through much of the season. Between them they recorded just one interception, and UK’s eight as a team tied for a ranking of 84th in the country, but Kentucky also gave up 172.7 yards per game through the air — fourth in the nation behind Ohio State, Clemson and Notre Dame. Kentucky gave up seven total passing touchdowns — its 0.6 per-game average tied for second with Clemson (behind Ohio State’s 0.5).
“It gets lost when you have a zero in the interception column as a cornerback, and in my opinion, for lack of better terms, I think that’s stupid and ignorant,” Mellor said. “Because if you watch, it’s not just interceptions. Sacks are noisy and interceptions are relatively noisy. I’d much rather have a guy that’s breaking up 20 passes a year than intercepts five or six, ‘cause likely he’s selling out for those five or six and selling out for five or six more that are touchdowns. So break ’em up, go with the safe play and live to fight another down and keep sticky coverage.”
Dort is a sophomore who would have seen some action last season if not for an injury. Echols transferred from a junior college. Their paths to Kentucky were different, but both — along with all of UK’s defensive backs — have benefited from a simplification of the verbiage used in practice and during games.
“It’s kind of hard to get guys to play hard, physical and be aggressive and violent if they’re constantly thinking,” said Steve Clinkscale, Kentucky’s defensive backs coach. “It’s hard to tell a player who’s just unsure or he doesn’t know what to do from a player who just doesn’t want to stick it in there. ... In order to find out what they can do, we really wanted to simplify it and give the guys the opportunity to showcase their talent.”
Mentality
Clinkscale is the longest-tenured defensive assistant on Stoops’ coaching staff — he’s about to complete his fourth season as UK’s defensive backs coach. He was into year two before he got completely comfortable with what Stoops, himself a DBs specialist, expects of him and his guys.
“At this juncture, I already know what he’s gonna say before he says it. I better either get it done before he comes and tries to fix it, or he’ll come and make sure it’s correct,” Clinkscale said with a grin. “He’s very wise. He sees things. I’ve been a ‘D’ coordinator before as well, and the head coach sees things that you don’t see. You listen to ’em and take that advice and put it where it needs to be placed and execute it.”
There are “no egos” in the defensive staff meetings, Clinkscale said. That includes Stoops, who came to Kentucky as a highly touted defensive coordinator from Florida State. From 2010-2012 — Stoops’ three years in charge of the Seminoles’ score-stopping — FSU finished as a top-20 scoring defense each year (in order: 20th, fourth, sixth). Talent-wise, the cupboard was a bit thinner when he arrived in Lexington, but his attitude was no different in Tallahassee as it is here — “blue collar” and “old school” are the (admitted) clichés favored by those outside the program when discussing his coaching philosophy.
“A lot of defensive coaches’ mentality, even when it comes to communicating with the offensive coordinator, is to attack,” said Marcus Spears, a former college All-American and NFL star who’s now an ESPN analyst. “One of the examples is what (former defensive line coach Ed Orgeron) has done at LSU as far as his offense. He wants to put 50 on the board and I think that’s just part of the mentality.
“And then toughness. Having tough football teams. I’m not saying offensive guys don’t want teams to be tough, but that’s a very important piece of having success on the defensive side of the ball, is physicality, toughness, being able to force the issue. I think that bodes well for (Stoops) and the way they run their program.”
Kentucky’s run of bowl appearances — it’s up to four straight, just the second time the program has built a streak that long — began in 2016, four years into Stoops’ tenure. UK finished with a losing ledger the first three seasons.
Both Burns and Spears believe Mitch Barnhart’s willingness to see things out with Stoops, instead of showing him the door, was a defining moment for the Wildcats’ football program.
“Mitch Barnhart is all in, bro,” Spears said. “He’s one of the greatest athletic directors in college we have. A part of that is making sure that you support the coach and the things that he wants to do, and he’s done that for Stoops. And Stoops has proven that if you do that, you can have dividends.”
Former UK player Jon Sumrall is the newest member of the Wildcats’ coaching staff. Sumrall last offseason left Troy, where he was the defensive coordinator, to coach UK’s inside linebackers.
He admires the foundation Stoops has helped build at his alma mater. Coaches and players will come and go, but there’s a sense of continuity within the program that’s invaluable — it was on display this year with what looked like a seamless transition from Matt House (2018) to Brad White (2019) as the team’s defensive coordinator.
“I think a lot of people associate Coach Stoops with passion, energy, enthusiasm and being fiery. Which, he is, but he’s also extremely knowledgeable and extremely intelligent,” Sumrall said. “And has a really good grasp of the entire game — offense, defense and special teams. I think to be the type of head coach he’s been and won the way he’s won here, you have to understand how to play complimentary football in all three phases to give yourself the best chance to win. ...
“When I got here, my thing was I just wanted to make sure I was getting in line with how they do things. I don’t want to take away, I want to add and make sure I’m helping them make this thing better.”
The future
UK’s development of less- or non-heralded high school players — most recently, see Calvin Taylor Jr. — has been crucial to getting it to the point where it could finish with a top-20 recruiting class in 2020. It must continue to be a hallmark — Stoops and co. will need to regularly send former four-star recruits to NFL training camps to keep ’em coming — but the consistency they’ve shown the last few years is an encouraging sign, particularly on defense.
X’s and O’s can take you far, but not as far as Jimmies and Joes. Assistant head coach Vince Marrow, also Kentucky’s director of recruiting and tight ends coach, on the first day of this year’s early signing period told reporters that Kentucky looks like a complete SEC team when it gets off the bus these days. That wasn’t the case early in his and Stoops’ tenure.
“At this point, this is everybody he’s hand-stamped and hand-picked,” Mellor said. “Overall, these have been his two best years and I think that’s gotta be one of the bigger reasons why. … It’s such an under-reported and underestimated approach to college football, is that, sure, there’s 12 Saturdays that there’s a football game, but there’s countless other days and hours that these guys are picking their rosters from 35,000 high school students out there.”
Burns and Spears were aboard UK’s bandwagon early in the 2018 season, the school’s most successful campaign in four decades, and haven’t been surprised to see that momentum through 2019 in spite of the quarterback turmoil that unfolded in the early part of the season.
UK’s players coming into the year talked a lot about haters; senior linebacker Kash Daniel memorably said that the only person who ever picks Kentucky to win was “my man Paul Finebaum.” Stoops isn’t as quotable, but he too has occasionally noted Kentucky’s lack of preseason fanfare.
How that plays out in 2020 will be fascinating — Kentucky is projected to return 17 starters (eight offense, seven defense and two specialists) — from a team that, arguably, was inches a way from a second straight nine-win regular season. If UK’s defense maintains the level of play it has over the last two seasons, another banner campaign could be there for the taking despite what any “haters” might have to say about it.
“Why he’s always going to have success is he feeds off the doubters,” Burns said of Stoops. “ ... I just think that there are certain guys in our industry that create this fake chip on the shoulder. I think for Coach Stoops it’s real, and his players, the fan base and the coaches feed off that. If you combine talent, which they’re getting, with that kind of dedication? That is a damn strong one-two punch.”
Belk Bowl
Kentucky vs. Virginia Tech
When: Noon Tuesday, Dec. 31
Where: Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C.
Records: UK 7-5; Virginia Tech 8-4
TV: ESPN
Top-20 scoring defenses
Here is a listing of every year that UK’s football team finished with a top-20 scoring defense, along with the points per game allowed, where that ranked in college football and the team’s final record:
2018: 16.8, 6th, 10-3
1993: 17.4, 17th, 6-6
1977: 10.1, 5th, 10-1
1976: 12.6, 18th, 8-4
1960: 8.1, 15th, 5-4-1
1950: 5.8, 2nd, 11-1
1949: 6.2, 1st, 9-3
1947: 6.6, 7th, 8-3
1946: 9.0, 20th, 7-3
