If that was Lynn Bowden’s Kroger Field farewell, what a show he put on
It was after “The Lynn Bowden Show” again played to boffo reviews.
It came after the Kentucky Wildcats’ “wide receiver playing quarterback” had sliced and diced an overmatched Louisville Cardinals defense with a whopping 284 yards rushing and four touchdowns while leading the Cats to a 45-13 pulverizing of the Cards.
It was after UK had retained the Governor’s Cup trophy — presented annually to the winner of our state’s marquee college football rivalry — for a second straight year and the third time in four seasons.
And it was after Bowden had been presented the “Howard Schnellenberger MVP Award,” given to the top player from the winning team in the UK-U of L football grudge-fest.
Bowden walked by himself to the “UK logo” that dots the center of Kroger Field and stood there, alone, looking upward.
“We’ve been through a lot, I’ve been through a lot since I’ve been here,” Bowden said. “This is just my home, my forever home. And I wanted to embrace that.”
It looked for all the world like Bowden was saying farewell.
If Saturday was Bowden’s final Kentucky home game — and, bear with me, I’ll share what he said about that — what a farewell gift he left Kentucky fans.
The 6-foot-1, 206-pound junior from gritty Youngstown, Ohio, ran through, around and over Louisville defenders in one of the top performances in the modern history of the Governor’s Cup rivalry.
Bowden scored on touchdown runs of 6, 60, 46 and 32 yards. He spearheaded a Kentucky rushing attack that set a school, single-game record, 517 yards, for the third straight week.
He did it all against the team that the majority of Kentucky fans most yearn to beat.
Bowden — pressed into QB duty as a desperation move seven games ago when UK’s top signal-callers all turned up injured — ended up leading the Wildcats (7-5) to five wins in seven games.
Said UK Coach Mark Stoops: “In our business, if you are going to be an Alpha dog, then you be an alpha dog (all the time), and that’s (Bowden). When you do it time and again and prove it and put your team on your back and say, ‘Let’s ride, let’s do this,’ you know, it’s remarkable.”
In his seven games as Kentucky QB, running the read option and variations off of it, Bowden has now rushed for 1,144 yards and 11 touchdowns.
“Once he gets an open field, it’s hard to tackle (him),” first-year Louisville coach Scott Satterfield said. “Once he gets to that point, he’s going back to his days as a receiver, a kick returner. He’s … a special player.”
Bowden is hardly the only one who deserved kudos for UK’s first win over U of L at the venue now known as Kroger Field since 2009.
In Stoops’ first season as Kentucky coach, 2013, the Wildcats finished 2-10 and Louisville went 12-1.
The reversal of fortune that the UK coach has orchestrated was most apparent Saturday in Kentucky’s dominance over U of L along both lines of scrimmage.
“Bottom line, we got wore down by their offensive line and their defensive line,” Satterfield said.
After quarterbacks Terry Wilson and Sawyer Smith were injured, UK offensive coordinator Eddie Gran had to abandon the conventional, drop-back passing game Kentucky was running. On the fly, Gran had to install an option attack built around a wide receiver who had not regularly played QB since his high schools days.
How much background with option football does Gran boast?
“I started about seven weeks ago,” he said with a smile. “Some of our other coaches, (had run option) a little bit.”
Mostly, a listing UK football season was righted and a fourth straight bowl trip earned thanks to the remarkable efforts of the guy wearing No. 1.
“One of the greatest, maybe the best I’ve ever had at that position,” Gran said of Bowden. “I told him that afterward.”
In terms of competitive will — and not, he emphasized, in overall acumen as a quarterback — Stoops said Bowden at QB has reminded him of a player Kentucky competed against not so long ago.
Lamar Jackson, the Heisman Trophy-winning former Louisville star.
“Lamar Jackson was probably the greatest player I ever competed against,” Stoops said. “But what I admire so much about him is how competitive he is. … Lynn, in that regard, is one of the most competitive people I’ve seen.”
If the announced crowd of 48,336 who braved yet another monsoon in this rainiest of football seasons to watch Cats-Cards saw Bowden’s final game in Lexington, they saw a performance they will talk about for eons.
“I’ve got a lot of thinking to do,” Bowden said about possibly entering the 2020 NFL Draft. “If this was my last time (playing at Kroger Field), I just wanted to leave a good mark here for for the fans, my teammates, everybody.”
That mission was more than accomplished.
This story was originally published November 30, 2019 at 6:07 PM.
