‘I just wanted to.’ Inconsequential final drive a sign of how far Kentucky has come.
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Game day: No. 1 Georgia 30, No. 11 Kentucky 13
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Georgia football game at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga.
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Kentucky last year traveled to play the No. 1 team in the country and left with a 60-point loss. Mark Stoops’ program is long past “moral victories” being meaningful, but it’s hard not to juxtapose this year’s showing against Georgia to that debacle at Alabama in 2020.
UK was short-staffed heading into Tuscaloosa; 10 of its players, including five starters and leading rusher Chris Rodriguez, were sidelined due to COVID-19 protocols. But it was humiliated by the Crimson Tide, which held the Wildcats to 179 total yards while racking up 509. The Wildcats didn’t look like they belonged on the same field as the eventual national champions.
That wasn’t the case this year. Georgia, the unanimous No. 1 team in the country, was better. Definitively. But UK was, too. The Wildcats were within a score at halftime after scoring the third touchdown given up by the Bulldogs’ defense this season, and imposed its own will defensively in spots. It wasn’t consistent enough in any phase to be in position to leave with a win, but it was more up to the challenge than many — including oddsmakers — believed it would be.
Bettors who took Georgia to cover at the closing spread — 22.5 points — had to be reeling as Mark Stoops opted to leave in most of his starters for a 22-play drive that resulted in six more points and a 30-13 final. It made Kentucky the only team this season to score two touchdowns against Georgia’s defense; a “moral win,” but one that could play a factor in postseason positioning.
After getting stopped twice at the Georgia 1-yard line on that final drive, Stoops called a timeout with seven seconds remaining in the game. That elicited boos from the Georgia faithful, who made up most of the 92,746 in attendance. Quarterback Will Levis dealt a touchdown throw to Wan’Dale Robinson out of the timeout, and more boos rained down as the Wildcats exited through their tunnel.
“I don’t know about the message, but I wanted to score,” Stoops said of the decision. “That’s a quality defense and you don’t know the way things are going to play out the rest of the year. We had an opportunity to score, so we did.”
Whatever one makes of the decision — there’s certainly a debate to be had about playing starters that deep with the game decided — it was representative of an attitude adjustment that Kentucky has undergone through Stoops’ tenure, and particularly from last year to this one. Talk of Atlanta and burying “the same old Kentucky” has been rampant in Lexington. While an SEC Championship Game appearance is more doubtful now than it was before Saturday’s result, the old Kentucky is deep in the ground. Old Kentucky wouldn’t have scored at all against the best defense in the country, and certainly wouldn’t have gutted it out for inconsequential points in the waning seconds of a game.
(Perhaps Stoops’ decision, too, was born of some frustration; on the preceding Georgia offensive possession he lost a challenge of a spot that, had it been called in his team’s favor, would have forced a Bulldogs punt. The drive instead ended in Georgia’s fourth and final touchdown.)
The final drive was a confidence-booster for the team, Levis said.
“That was probably our best drive of the game, and to finish a drive off with points feels better than not,” Levis said. “If anything, we’re gonna use it to get better from the film and use it as motivation, ‘Hey we can move the ball on teams like this.’”
At least one thing didn’t change between this year’s tussle with No. 1 and last year’s: Kentucky’s primary strength on offense — its run game — was effectively non-existent in both contests. The Wildcats came up with 51 rushing yards, spread across four ball-carriers. Rodriguez, the SEC’s leading rusher coming into the game, was limited to 7 yards on as many touches. Kavosiey Smoke led the way with 14 yards on five rushes.
“It was disappointing to not be effective at all in the run game,” Stoops said. “I think they have a lot to do with it. They are as good as I’ve seen them. They know we want to run the football. They’ve got some difference-makers at all levels.”
The Cats’ play on defense was up and down. It kept Georgia to its second-lowest yardage total of the year (416), but the Bulldogs were as efficient as they’ve been all year. They needed only 47 plays to rack up that yardage, an average of 8.8 yards, and had 10 plays (seven passes, three rushes) go for 20 yards or more.
UK forced Georgia punts on its first two defensive series but gave up consecutive touchdowns after short drives on offense. The first Bulldogs score of the game, made as the second quarter started, came about after they recovered a fumble for an 8-yard gain. Kentucky linebacker Jacquez Jones was near the ball, on the ground as a result of what looked like a pass breakup by Josh Paschal, but didn’t try to jump on top of it.
“It was kind of a funky play,” Paschal said. “I knew that I had hit his arm. As a defense, we talk, if it’s anything where it could be a fumble, you just jump on it regardless. That was a mental mistake we made and we’re gonna learn from that, too.”
Mental errors like that and a handful of penalties by the offense had to be at next-to-zero for Kentucky to pull off the biggest upset of the college football season. They weren’t, and Kentucky didn’t. But it kept battling to the final horn, literally. For its effort, a team that used to get laughed at was instead booed on its way out of the stadium.
Stoops would take that trade any day. Last year, the idea of having that opportunity against the No. 1 team was a pipe dream.
“I don’t think that it was ‘so important,’” Stoops later said when asked about his decision to go for it. “I just wanted to.”
Next game
Kentucky at Mississippi State
When: Oct. 30, time TBA
TV: TBA
This story was originally published October 16, 2021 at 9:15 PM.
