Why quick response to Tennessee blowout is essential for Kentucky football’s future
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Game day: No. 3 Tennessee 44, No. 19 Kentucky 6
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Tennessee football game at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville.
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This was supposed to be Kentucky.
A summer of hype for Mark Stoops’ program and its star quarterback cast the Wildcats as the SEC East team best poised to push defending national champion Georgia for the division title. Even if the Bulldogs won the division, Kentucky was supposed to be a legitimate contender for a New Year’s Six bowl game.
Instead, the latest in a long line of embarrassing results for Kentucky in its border rivalry with Tennessee proved the Wildcats were pretenders and the Volunteers were the actual “dark horse” SEC East team capable of mounting a playoff challenge.
With every Will Levis interception, wide-open Jalin Hyatt touchdown and chorus of “Rocky Top” from the Neyland Stadium sellout crowd in the Vols’ 44-6 blowout, the message became even clearer.
Kentucky’s lofty preseason goals are out the window. It is no exaggeration to say what happens next could define the trajectory of the program moving forward.
“The last time we lost a game, we lost two,” Stoops said. “One became two and we didn’t play our best effort after that loss.”
Stoops was referring to the Wildcats’ listless performance in a loss to South Carolina earlier this month, one week after Ole Miss handed Kentucky its first loss thanks to a series of self-inflicted mistakes.
He could have just as easily been talking about any number of situations in the last few seasons.
A year ago, Kentucky’s 6-0 start was stalled with a loss at No. 1 Georgia with the eyes of the college football world pointed at the game and ESPN’s “College GameDay” in town. Losses to Mississippi State and Tennessee followed.
In 2020, Kentucky lost back-to-back games three different times in a 10-game SEC season. In 2019, a heartbreaking loss to Florida was followed by losses at Mississippi State and South Carolina. A year before that, Kentucky dropped a winner-take-all game against Georgia for the SEC East title then posted its worst performance of the season a week later in a loss to a Tennessee team that finished the year with a losing record.
Now Kentucky faces a trip to Missouri, where Eliah Drinkwitz’s team suddenly has momentum after an upset of South Carolina on Saturday. The same South Carolina that already beat Kentucky.
Kentucky’s last two trips to Missouri featured stagnant offensive performances in a 20-10 loss in 2020 and a 15-14 win in 2018. Stagnant offensive performances have become the theme for Kentucky of late with the failure to hit the 20-point plateau in three of the last four games.
“There’s no hiding,” Stoops said. “… I just told the team that. If you’re going to be in this, you’re going to be in this league, you’re going to have some tough losses. You’re going to get hit right in the jaw. You have to respond and get back at it. Nobody is going to feel sorry for you.
“Missouri is hungry, I can guarantee you that. We got to go there and we better be ready to play.”
Based on the way Kentucky played against Tennessee, it is impossible to imagine a scenario where the Wildcats upset No. 1 Georgia in the SEC finale. Assuming a loss there, that leaves three other games in which Kentucky should be favored.
But now Missouri and Louisville, which blew out Wake Forest on Saturday, can no longer be considered sure things. The home matchup with Vanderbilt, currently on a four-game losing streak, should at least ensure the Wildcats get to six wins and bowl eligibility, but even the Commodores showed signs of life in their last game.
A season that once included hopes of reaching the Sugar, Orange or Cotton bowls suddenly looks more likely to end in the Las Vegas, Liberty or Birmingham bowls.
“There’s going to be times when you’re down low and you’ve got to pick yourself back up,” defensive coordinator Brad White said. “You’ve got to be a great teammate and you’ve got to pick up your other teammates. You’ve got to just keep chopping and you’ve got to keep coming to practice. It sounds cliché and it sounds like coach speak, but that’s life.”
There is reason to worry about more than a mid-tier bowl berth, too.
Kentucky’s offensive struggles likely make it harder to attract a top-level transfer quarterback to replace Levis when he leaves for the NFL Draft after the season. Without a top quarterback, Stoops and company will have to worry about other programs trying to poach their group of young playmaking receivers.
Tennessee has clearly passed Kentucky in the SEC East pecking order in year two of the Josh Heupel era. It’s not like Kentucky was able to fully take advantage of Tennessee’s down years anyway, but the Vols’ ascendance figures to make the future schedule even more difficult.
Meanwhile, Kentucky has yet to prove it can sustain its recent recruiting success as name, image and likeness deals become more important to high school prospects.
All those potential issues get magnified if the Tennessee embarrassment lingers at Missouri.
“It’s infectious when there’s a couple guys pointing fingers and there’s a couple guys down on themselves or down on others,” Levis said. “Other guys feel like it’s OK for them to start doing that. I just want to make sure that doesn’t happen, we keep a good mindset and we finish this season as strong as we possibly can.”
The best-case scenario for the final month looks like three more wins to finish at 8-5. Historically, eight win seasons have been difficult to come by for Kentucky, but that record will still be considered a disappointment when compared to the lofty summer goals.
But a 6-6 record with even more reason to worry about the future is still on the table, too. To avoid that scenario, Kentucky has to stop the bleeding quickly.
An upset of Georgia might be the only way to save the perception of this season, but all disappointments are not created equally. How Kentucky bounces back from Tennessee, starting at Missouri, has major implications for the future.
Next game
Kentucky at Missouri
When: Noon Saturday
TV: SEC Network
Records: Kentucky 5-3 (2-3 SEC), Missouri 4-4 (2-3)
This story was originally published October 30, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
