Will Joey Gatewood be UK’s quarterback against Georgia? Does it even matter?
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Game day: Missouri 20, Kentucky 10
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Could a shake-up at quarterback cure all that ailed the Kentucky offense at Missouri next week when the Wildcats host Georgia?
Who knows? Head coach Mark Stoops doesn’t yet, either, but a changing of the guard had to at least be on his mind whenever Joey Gatewood entered the game with 3:07 to play, the Cats trailing 20-10; it was incredibly unlikely, but they conceivably could have rallied to tie or win the game in that spot.
Terry Wilson, whom Gatewood replaced on that series and late in the first half for a couple of drives, led an improbable rally in Columbia once before. Why was his backup in the game?
“Just to get reps,” Stoops said of the call to put Gatewood in on what turned out to be the final drive. Asked what his plans were for the quarterbacks heading into next week, Stoops answered, “Not sure.”
Whoever starts at quarterback for the rest of the season might be irrelevant to a Kentucky offense that through five games has not proved it can consistently move the ball without a lot of help from its defense (or, in the case against Mississippi, a porous defense trotted out by the opponent).
Kentucky is 2-3 overall through five games, and 2-3 in games in which it failed to create a turnover, often giving the offense excellent field position or scoring itself. Auburn and Ole Miss are the only opponents against which UK has cracked 300 total yards of offense (it actually outgained both teams and lost), and since then has managed only to reach 200 total yards once (294 last week at Tennessee). At the midway point, Kentucky is averaging 307.8 yards per game; that would rank 13th in the conference, ahead of only Vanderbilt.
Now for the worse news: Georgia will be coming off a bye week after getting smacked down by Alabama, and entering this week it had allowed the fewest points (19.5) and second-fewest yards (318.5) per game of any Southeastern Conference school in 2020.
As the rest of the SEC piles up forward mileage, Kentucky all too often finds itself stalling out. Center Drake Jackson said there’s plenty of blame to go around, but it starts with his position group.
“We need to establish a rhythm on offense. That’s on all of us,” Jackson said. “That’s on every unit. ... We think it’s our job to spark the offense regardless of who’s back there, whether it’s Joey, Terry, whoever else, it starts with us. We have to give ‘em time to throw and we have to open up holes in the run game to make it easier for ‘em. Regardless of who’s back there, it doesn’t change our mindset.”
Kentucky’s defense wasn’t as effective as it was in the last two weeks. In addition to not coming up with a turnover, it allowed 421 yards, its second highest total this season. It also allowed 10 conversions on 20 third-down efforts, several of those on long-yardage plays; the Tigers also were 4-for-5 on fourth-down conversions.
“We needed to get off the field,” Stoops said. “We let ‘em push us too long. … We were getting pushed around from the beginning of the game. Even though they weren’t putting up a lot of points, they were controlling the game.”
Of course, UK’s listless offensive showing — 36 plays for 145 yards — contributed to Mizzou’s 92-play, 421-yard night. It’s tough to stop a team when you can barely get a breather, but that was only part of the issue, Stoops said.
“We just didn’t get off the field on third down,” said safety Yusuf Corker, who charted a career-high 18 tackles (16 solo, tying a single-game school record), including a sack and two tackles for loss. “One time I looked up at the clock and it said they had the ball for about 40 minutes. That’s on us.”
Perhaps, but the Cats’ defense stood tall in two big moments — Corker’s sack came on a fourth-down attempt that led to UK’s only touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, and UK forced its only three-and-out following that score — before a final three-and-out by the Kentucky offense (its fourth in nine total drives) stunted their momentum. Even after that, Kentucky held Mizzou to a field goal, giving it a prayer toward the end.
It needed more — a miracle — but instead was damned, a fumble by Josh Ali on a completion from Gatewood, fittingly, ending its trip with 2:56 still to play. That miscue, after Gatewood’s third attempt, was his only completion, but if he is handed the starting job against Georgia, it’s, objectively, a positive on which to build.
UK, regardless of who’s under center or how many stops the defense gets, needs to relish — and build on — any good developments that it can as it moves forward with five more SEC games in front of it.
“Every day we just gotta show up motivated and ready to work,” Corker said. “You can’t slack off against any team, especially in this conference.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2020 at 9:52 PM.
