Kentucky football stock watch: Tayvion Robinson is making a strong early impression
READ MORE
Preview: Akron at Kentucky
Click below to read more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s preview coverage ahead of Saturday’s Kentucky-Akron football game at 7:30 p.m. at Kroger Field.
Expand All
Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops saw at least one area of improvement in a second consecutive middling performance against lesser competition to open the 2023 season.
“We find a way in difficult circumstances to kind of complement each other,” Stoops said after the Wildcats’ 28-17 win over FCS Eastern Kentucky.
To Stoops’ point, when Kentucky’s offense struggled in the first half, failing to score points on its first six drives, the defense held firm, only surrendering points on a short field created by a blocked punt. Star returner Barion Brown gave the Wildcats a special teams spark again when his 36-yard punt return set up UK’s first score.
When the defense buckled in the second half, Kentucky’s offense finally found some momentum, scoring touchdowns on four consecutive drives to secure the win.
“When the offense was struggling, the defense played really well,” Stoops said. “And then the defense gave up points, the offense goes down and scores. When we are both struggling, the special teams got the seven points. The bottom line is winning.”
Still, Stoops acknowledged there was plenty of room for improvement after UK’s 2-0 start.
Who is trending up and down for the Wildcats in advance of a game against Akron? The Herald-Leader’s weekly stock report takes a deeper look.
RISING
Tayvion Robinson: Sophomores Brown and Dane Key garnered most of the offseason attention in Kentucky’s wide receivers room, but super senior Tayvion Robinson has offered a clear reminder through two games there are at least three playmakers at the position.
“He is explosive,” Stoops said of Robinson after the former Virginia Tech transfer caught six passes for 136 yards and two touchdowns against EKU. “… He is showing better leadership and just playing really hard. And within this offense, most guys just have to continue to grind and some days they pop up with statistics, and other days they are not.”
Robinson started the 2022 season on a high note after transferring to Kentucky with at least six catches in three of his first four games as a Wildcat, but his production dropped dramatically in SEC play. As more passes were directed to Brown and Key, Robinson did not respond the way coaches wanted.
During spring practice, Robinson acknowledged his effort was not up to standard for part of last season. UK coaches challenged him to step up on and off the field after Liam Coen, the offensive coordinator who originally recruited Robinson to UK, returned to Lexington.
“I was great to see him respond,” Coen said Saturday. “He has been responding. The beautiful thing is in training camp, in practice, he’s been responding. He’s been practicing that way.
“The nice thing about him is when you get into a live situation when people do have to tackle him, he shows some of his missability and ability to win in space. I was really happy for Tay today.”
Return units: We already knew Brown was a dynamic kickoff returner before the season started, but two games have further shined the light on how his talent can change games.
Against Ball State, Brown returned a kickoff for a touchdown. Against EKU, he made a cameo as the punt returner just before halftime and set up Kentucky’s first touchdown with his 36-yard return to the EKU 24-yard line.
Perhaps most impressively, it seems Brown’s mere presence on the field as punt returner led to a miscue from the EKU punt unit.
“I wanted to run the time down,” EKU coach Walt Wells said. “They had no timeouts left. I was gonna run it down to one and call a timeout. It was supposed to be punted out of bounds.
“You know it’s funny, you go to practice, and they punt them out of bounds all day and we come here, and you come out here and they kick it right down the middle. We kicked it straight to Barion and he made sure to tell me about it after the game. That’s on us, we have to do a better job at communicating because that can’t happen.”
Wells joked before the game he was going to kidnap Brown from the Cat Walk in order to ensure he did not have a kickoff return opportunity. While he did not take that drastic measure, Wells did have his kicker kick short and away from Brown throughout the game.
SEC opponents will be better equipped to limit Brown’s return opportunities, but he needs just one mistake to make them pay. That’s a valuable weapon to have when your offense is struggling to score points.
FALLING
First-half offense: Through two games, Kentucky has scored just two touchdowns in the first half. The Wildcats’ opponents (Ball State and EKU) combined to surrender 10 first-half touchdowns in their other games this season.
So, why the slow starts for UK’s offense?
“We can’t waste four or five possessions in the first half and expect to go win (an SEC) football game,” Coen said. “It’s not going to happen. It’s players, it’s coaches, it’s all of us making sure when we come out we’re ready to play because it wasn’t like we came in and made a whole ton of adjustments (at halftime).
“We got on the perimeter a little bit more, but it wasn’t like we came up with a bunch of new plays. We just called some stuff we hadn’t called in the first half. If we execute in the first half as well as we execute in the second half, maybe we’re having a little bit of a different conversation.”
Penalties were part of the problem against EKU.
A third-and-1 on UK’s opening drive turned into third-and-6 due to a false start. Two drives stalled due in part to holding penalties that negated long Ray Davis runs.
Quarterback Devin Leary missed multiple open receivers early against the Colonels. When he was more accurate, receivers dropped multiple passes.
The fact that the offense has performed far better in the second half of both games speaks to the potential of the unit, but eventually this team will find itself in too big a hole to dig out from. Finding the solution is critical in the next two weeks.
“It’s about our standard,” Coen said. “We didn’t even talk too much about EKU this week. It’s all about our execution, our communication and us trying to get better. I don’t think that they came out and took this team lightly. I really don’t believe that.
“I think that we had some execution issues in the first half, a couple penalties that really derailed us. Ultimately we came back in the second half and went bang, bang, bang the way we were hopeful to do all through.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2023 at 6:30 AM.
