Kentucky’s offense delivers feel-good victory, but defense takes a step back
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Game day: Kentucky 38, Vanderbilt 35
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Vanderbilt football game at Kroger Field in Lexington, Ky.
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It started unusually — with hole on the offensive line, purposefully put there out of tribute to the late John Schlarman, and finished likewise — with an onside kick recovery, the result of a porous defensive effort — but by mid-afternoon Kentucky’s game against Vanderbilt ended the way it had to in order to keep the 2020 season from falling off the rails, and the way Schlarman’s players and peers deserved: in victory.
Kentucky held off the Commodores 38-35 to improve to 3-4 in 2020. The Cats piled up 458 total yards, the first time they’ve exceeded 300 since a 42-41 overtime loss to Mississippi and just the third time this season. They rushed for 308 yards, their second highest total this year, and averaged a season-best 8.8 yards per carry.
The offensive line, Schlarman’s unit, did not allow a single sack or tackle for loss despite missing starting left guard Kenneth Horsey for the entirety of the game and right guard Luke Fortner for the bulk of it.
“It was extremely important for us to come away with a victory today,” UK head coach Mark Stoops said. “It was extremely important for us to play well for (Schlarman’s wife) LeeAnne, for coach John Schlarman, his family, his kids, and I was really proud of the team to get this victory. It wasn’t easy. It was an emotional week.”
For all the offensive strides Kentucky seemed to make since its last game, a 14-3 loss to Georgia on Oct. 31, this was the the latest demonstration of its inability to string together four quarters of consistent play from both sides of the ball. The defense ceded 407 total yards to a Vanderbilt team that has recently proved itself offensively potent but that also fielded just 58 scholarship players Saturday; some of that was attributable to some letdown by backups inserted with the Cats holding a 17-point lead in the third quarter, but after storming out to a 14-0 advantage in the first quarter, Kentucky never seemed capable of holding the Commodores at bay.
It also did not force a turnover for the second time in three games. UK escaped with its first win this season despite not creating an extra possession (0-3 in the others).
“It just seemed like to me that it was one of those games where they wanted everybody else to make the play but not them,” Stoops said. “That’s just how I felt. We’ll see. I’m sure there were some guys that played very hard, but to me, we were just out there oozing, just lining up expecting somebody to make a call for ‘em, to stop somebody instead of making plays and trying to stop people. I thought that was evident. We made very few competitive plays.”
Outside of their victory at Tennessee, the Wildcats have been unable to get a full half, let alone an entire game, out of both the offense and defense in 2020. With just three contests left in the regular season — two of them road trips against top-five teams Alabama and Florida — and the constant threat of COVID-19 disrupting the roster, how things have been might just be how they will be the rest of the way. If the Wildcats can reliably match (or exceed) the kind of offensive production they achieved against Vanderbilt, though, it could make those trips, as well as their scheduled home finale against South Carolina, much more compelling regardless of which UK defense — the one from Saturday or the one that racked up a bounty of turnovers in a two-week span last month — comes to play.
Stoops wanted to see even more of what the offense could do against the Commodores.
“I felt like there were a lot more plays out there,” Stoops said. “I’m disappointed. We had only 55 plays again but we did have 458 yards, y’know, which is great. Very explosive. I wish we’d had more opportunities and again, that comes back to the defense getting off the field and giving us more opportunities and letting those guys have a little bit of fun, cause they’ve worked extremely hard.”
Notes
▪ Stoops hit multiple UK coaching milestones on Saturday. With his 47th career victory he matched Fran Curci for second place all-time. He also is now second all-time with 23 Southeastern Conference wins.
It was Stoops’ 34th win at home, passing Paul “Bear” Bryant for the school record.
▪ Kentucky was without specialists Max Duffy and Matt Ruffolo. Horsey was injured against Georgia while Duffy and Ruffolo were unavailable for undisclosed reasons.
“You can probably read between the lines on that,” Stoops said. “I can’t comment on that.”
Additionally, DeAndre Square didn’t start due to injury but was available “in case of emergency,” according to the UK Sports Network during the pre-game radio show. Marquez Bembry started in his place, but Square played late in the game as Vanderbilt mounted its rally.
▪ Chris Rodriguez became the 39th player in school history to pass 1,000 career rushing yards. He rushed for a career-high 149 yards, which included a career-long 74 yard rush for a touchdown, the Cats’ final score of the game.
▪ Jamin Davis posted 15 tackles, his fifth straight game with double-digit tackles. He’s the first UK player to do that since Danny Trevathan.
Next game
Kentucky at No. 1 Alabama
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
Records: UK 3-4; Alabama 6-0
TV: SEC
This story was originally published November 14, 2020 at 5:25 PM.
