With four games left, is there any way to salvage UK’s dead-in-the-water offense?
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Game day: Georgia 14, Kentucky 3
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Georgia football game at Kroger Field in Lexington, Ky.
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Fittingly, since it was Halloween, ghosts from the past took over Kroger Field on Saturday afternoon.
Mark Stoops and Kirby Smart produced a contest that would have done Jerry Claiborne and Vince Dooley — the coaching antagonists in the UK-UGa. series from the 1980s — proud.
The No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs (4-1 SEC) won an old-fashioned defense-first, run-the-football-on-offense head-knocker 14-3 over the Kentucky Wildcats (2-4 SEC).
“We’re playing physical enough on both sides of the line of scrimmage to win a game like that,” UK’s Stoops said afterward via Zoom. “... We’ve just got to figure out a way to create more explosive (offensive) plays.”
On a crisp, sunny afternoon, there were some inspirational points for Kentucky. UK center Drake Jackson switched from his normal No. 52 to wear the No. 65 that ailing Wildcats offensive line coach John Schlarman wore in his Cats’ playing days.
Junior linebacker Chris Oats, sidelined this season by a publicly undisclosed medical condition, was in Kroger Field for Saturday’s game. When shown on the giant video boards, Oats received a standing ovation from the socially distanced, announced crowd of 12,000.
Alas, for the second straight game, and for the seventh half out of the last eight Kentucky has played, there was nothing inspiring about the UK offense.
One week after settling for one touchdown in a dispiriting 20-10 loss at Missouri, UK managed just a field goal vs. the SEC’s best defense in Georgia.
The Cats finished with 229 yards of total offense. It is the fourth straight game in which Kentucky failed to reach 300 yards in a game. One must go back to 2012, when Joker Phillips’ final team was headed toward a 2-10 slog, to find the last time UK went four straight games below 300 yards.
“We have to be able to create some opportunities for big plays,” Stoops succinctly summed up.
With only four games left, is there any realistic way for Stoops and his offensive brain trust of Eddie Gran and Darin Hinshaw to get some life back into Kentucky’s listless attack?
For all the focus on Kentucky’s quarterback play as Terry Wilson has produced a highly inconsistent senior season, QB may not be the root of the Cats’ problems.
With Wilson sidelined Saturday by a hand/wrist injury, Auburn transfer Joey Gatewood made his first college start.
“Obviously, it was really exciting for me, my first start,” Gatewood said afterward via Zoom.
The 6-foot-4, 221-pound redshirt sophomore completed 15 of 25 passes but for a meager 91 yards. On the ground, Gatewood rushed 16 times for 23 yards (a figure impacted by the four times he was sacked).
Reputed to have a bazooka for a throwing arm, Gatewood did not get a chance to show it off. The Kentucky offensive game plan — showing wariness of Georgia’s fierce pass rush — had the QB getting the ball out quickly on a series of short, safe passes.
That persisted into the fourth quarter, when Kentucky, down two scores in a game where possessions were precious, needed big plays.
“We tried,” Stoops said of calling longer pass plays. “Sometimes they were covered and (UK) went to check downs, so it looks like a 3-yard gain when in fact we had something called down the field. ... So it’s not like we didn’t have those plays called. We did. We need to create them.”
A knock on Wilson this year, too, has been not driving the ball down the field in the passing game.
If two quarterbacks in game action perform as if they don’t have open receivers to throw to, maybe the QBs are less the issue than the players who are supposed to be getting free in the secondary.
Perhaps UK can use its impending open week before it next plays Vanderbilt on Nov. 14 to develop new receiving options such as true freshmen Michael Drennen and Izayah Cummings.
In recruiting, Kentucky desperately needs to add playmakers who can stress high-level SEC defenses.
One offensive question where Kentucky has its answer is that redshirt sophomore Christopher Rodriguez should be UK’s featured back.
Against his home-state school, the 5-11, 224-pound product of McDonough, Ga., went for 108 yards on 20 carries while running like he had a point to prove.
Georgia, Rodriguez told the UK Radio Network after the game, would have been his first recruiting choice — had the Bulldogs offered.
“I never got that offer, so I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder,” Rodriguez said.
Quarterback is a puzzle.
Gatewood was making his first career start against, arguably, the nation’s best defense.
He certainly didn’t dazzle. But, other than the shoot-out loss against Mississippi, Wilson hasn’t dazzled this season, either.
At some point, if there is not much separation between Wilson and the younger QBs, Kentucky should probably play the player with more years remaining in the program.
“We have to create explosive plays in the pass game,” Stoops said. “And we’ve got to be creative. We do have to take more shots. I mean, Eddie (Gran) knows that.”
