Mark Stoops gives Kentucky offense, OC Bush Hamdan vote of confidence after Florida loss
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Game day: Florida 48, Kentucky 20
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Florida football game at Gainesville, Florida.
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For a Kentucky football team that has posted widely variant results this season, there has been at least one constant.
The defense might look like one of the country’s best like it did against Georgia and Ole Miss or play so poorly that a freshman quarterback can see five of his seven completions go for at least 40 yards like Florida’s DJ Lagway did Saturday. The special teams can look stellar with arguably the best kickoff returner in SEC history and one of the steadiest kickers in the country at one moment then look incapable of even snapping and holding the next. For weeks Mark Stoops’ team can be among the least penalized in the country then draw flag after flag.
But through all that inconsistency the offense has looked much the same. And that is not a compliment.
“Each game, it’s like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” UK coach Mark Stoops said after a 48-20 loss to Florida on Saturday.
Kentucky’s normally stout defense faltered in Gainesville, giving up five completions of at least 40 yards on the way to 48 Florida points, but that failure only reinforced how thin the margin of error has been all season due to an offense that seems incapable of scoring consistently against SEC competition.
The Wildcats have scored no more than two offensive touchdowns in any SEC game. UK has scored just one touchdown in the first quarter of a game all season.
Even when the unit looks capable of moving the ball, piling up first downs, it too often stalls in the red zone. After failing to convert a fourth-and-1 at the 2-yard line Saturday, Kentucky has now gone back-to-back weeks with a possession that reached inside the opponent’s 5-yard line but still did not come away with any points.
“I think there’s gonna be some things we certainly left on the table, but overall, the consistency is the biggest issue,” offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan said. “It starts with me.”
For sure, a vocal portion of Kentucky fans on social media agree with that assessment and seem ready for Mark Stoops to call a redo on his hire of Hamdan last offseason.
But the constant turnover at offensive coordinator — UK has not had the same play-caller in consecutive seasons since 2020 — cannot be ignored in Kentucky’s current struggles.
“I have a lot of confidence in Bush,” Stoops said. “It’s tough. And so we’re not gonna point fingers or anything. Put it on me. We’ll go back to work.”
In the transfer portal era, constant turnover on the roster is commonplace, but even the handful of veterans Kentucky has kept around for multiple seasons have had little stability.
Junior wide receivers Dane Key and Barion Brown are playing for their third coordinator in three seasons in Lexington. They are catching passes from their third starting quarterback.
Hamdan has thus far been unable to duplicate his success at Boise State last season where his offense averaged 436 yards per game. UK is now averaging 320 yards through seven games.
The uptick in competition, moving from the Mountain West to the SEC, can explain part of that drop, but former coordinator Liam Coen’s decision to return to the NFL in February meant Hamdan was not even in Lexington until a couple weeks before spring practice started. Almost the entire offensive roster was recruited to play a different system.
Among the players Hamdan inherited was quarterback Brock Vandagriff, a former five-star recruit who barely played in three seasons at Georgia before transferring to Kentucky.
The players around Vandagriff continue to not give him much help, but he has not been doing much to impress either. He threw two interceptions Saturday, both of which bounced off the hands of Kentucky receivers, and completed just 12 of 26 passes for 165 yards.
“It’s not ever on one person,” Stoops said. “That’s certainly not on Brock. I think just this group. I think we could help him out and play a lot better.”
A quarterback change looks unlikely to be the solution either.
Backup Gavin Wimsatt, a former starter at Rutgers, continues to play in wildcat formations but has completed just 46.7% of passes in his career. Much-hyped freshman Cutter Boley made his college debut in Gainesville after the outcome was decided but threw a pick six on his first play, then overthrew multiple open receivers while going 0-for-6 through the air.
Ohio State running back transfer Chip Trayanum also played for the first time this season after working his way back from a hand injury. He showed the ability to help with 26 yards on seven carries but did little to add to the explosive plays the offense has missed all season.
Players and coaches continue to preach optimism that the offense is close to a breakout due to its ability to move the ball without scoring at times, but no quick fix appears likely.
“We have our moments and we have our peaks,” Trayanum said. “I feel like we just got to stay consistent.”
When a blowout loss follows a home defeat to Vanderbilt, it is understandable fans want change. Those calls will only increase if Kentucky fails to rally in time to keep its eight-year bowl streak alive.
But Stoops took a more pragmatic approach in the wake of the Florida loss. He knows constant turnover helped get Kentucky to this position, and he resisted the urge to promise another shakeup in order to fix it.
“We just stay the course,” he said.
This story was originally published October 20, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
