Starting with a fourth-down ‘decision,’ UK’s offense made progress against LSU
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Game day: Kentucky 42, LSU 21
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday night’s Kentucky-LSU football game at Kroger Field in Lexington, Ky.
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After recovering its first forced fumble of the season and driving to LSU’s 3-yard line, Kentucky was faced with a decision: go for it on fourth down or attempt a chip-shot field goal for a “guaranteed” lead early in the first quarter.
Except, it wasn’t much of a decision for head coach Mark Stoops and his assistants.
“That was something we talked about this morning as a staff,” offensive coordinator Liam Coen said. “’What were our go-to calls?’ Last week, going for it on fourth down was more of a conversation call. This time we knew exactly what we wanted to get to. Coach Stoops says we’re going for it, and we knew what play we were going to.”
The play saw Chris Rodriguez get loose for a wide-open touchdown pass from Will Levis in the front-right corner of the end zone. Kentucky went up 7-0 with 6:17 left in the first quarter, setting the tone for what would end up as a 42-21 win that pushed the Wildcats 6-0 for the first time since 1950.
“Starting the game with a turnover and having great position, I wanted to play aggressive,” Stoops said. “I wanted to score. And if we didn’t, I felt like we could keep ‘em backed up there.”
That aggression bred confidence in an offensive unit that, over the last three games, had struggled to get into much of a rhythm. Kentucky put up 400-plus yards for the first time since its win over Missouri in week two, and it nearly reached the 500-yard mark it did against the Tigers and Louisiana Monroe in week one. Its 330 net rushing yards were the second-most in a game this season.
Rodriguez led the way with 147 yards and counted another score among his 16 carries. Early in the game he became the ninth player in Kentucky history to reach 2,000 career rushing yards. Kavosiey Smoke rushed for 104 yards, his first time reaching the century mark, on 12 rushes. Levis chipped in 75 yards and two touchdowns on 11 carries, one of them a 33-yard scurry on a busted play.
“I got to the second level and tried to do a little spin move,” Levis said with a laugh. “I don’t know if I’ve ever done a spin move on anybody but it worked out pretty well, I guess.”
Levis was efficient: 14 of 17 with three touchdown passes and, for the first time this season, without an interception. UK was just 2-for-7 on third down but 5-for-5 in the red zone. Following their first score, all of the Wildcats’ touchdowns came on first- or second-down plays.
Winning this game was priority No. 1 for Kentucky. It made it bowl eligible for a school-record sixth straight season — Bowl Season representatives handed out shirts adorned with UK imagery to the team following the game — and left UK, along with Georgia, as one of only two unbeaten teams in the Southeastern Conference; No. 1 Alabama lost at Texas A&M on a buzzer-beating field goal soon after the Wildcats’ game was decided.
But being able to see the offense operate at the level it did against LSU was valuable, Coen said, as he and the Cats prepare to match wits with what many believe is the nation’s best defense.
“Huge,” Coen said. “Especially coming off a little bit of a lackluster performance last week. Confidence, momentum, this game is built so much around that. When you don’t have confidence and you don’t have momentum, sometimes you start looking around like, ‘What do we do next?’ I felt like tonight our players knew what we were trying to accomplish, and what we were going to hang our hat on tonight.”
Coen deployed more outside-zone concepts this week than in previous weeks, and UK was able to connect on some of the wheel routes and bootlegs that had eluded it to date. While the passing yardage doesn’t pop off the page — Levis finished with 145 yards — it was accumulated mostly via short completions rather than bombs downfield to Wan’Dale Robinson (who still finished with team highs of 60 yards and eight receptions, one for a TD). His longest pass of the night, for 34 yards, was a 12-yard completion to Justin Rigg, who took advantage of ample running room after making the catch.
Georgia’s opponents are averaging 203.5 yards per game, and just 66.5 yards a game on the ground. Kentucky’s defense had already proved itself coming into Saturday, and while the offense isn’t without warts, it grew this week. Building on that will be essential if the Wildcats are to have any chance of pulling off what would be one of the biggest upsets in college football this season.
It might take a couple more “decisions” on fourth down, too.
“Everybody is clued into what we want to do,” Rodriguez said. “Everybody wants to win, and I think it’s just about us. … Every game, Coach is like, ‘We’re this close.’ And we’re still not even to our full potential. We still have to go work, and we’re ready for it.”
Saturday
No. 11 Kentucky at No. 1 Georgia
When: 3:30 p.m.
Records: UK 6-0 (4-0 SEC); Georgia 6-0 (4-0 SEC)
TV: CBS-27
This story was originally published October 10, 2021 at 1:52 AM.
