First Scouting Report: At Florida, UK football will try for another breakthrough
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Game day: Kentucky 37, Miami (Ohio) 13
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Miami (Ohio) football game at Kroger Field in Lexington.
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An early look ahead to the Kentucky Wildcats’ next football game:
The opponent
No. 20 Kentucky (1-0, 0-0 SEC) will play Florida (1-0, 0-0 SEC) on Saturday (Sept. 10) at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium(seating capacity 88,548) in Gainesville, Fla.
The game will kick off at 7 p.m and will be telecast by ESPN.
Coach Billy Napier’s Gators upset No. 7 Utah 29-26 Saturday night in “The Swamp.”
Series history
Florida leads 53-19 and has won 33 of the past 35 meetings. Kentucky, however, is 2-2 vs. the Gators in the past four games.
In the Mark Stoops coaching era at UK, the margin of the Kentucky-Florida game has been decided by eight points or less in five of nine games.
Most recent meeting
Christopher Rodriguez ran for 99 yards and a touchdown, Trevin Wallace returned a blocked field goal 76 yards for a TD and Jacquez Jones broke up a Florida pass at the goal line with 18 seconds left in the game as UK upset the No. 10 Gators 20-13 at Kroger Field.
It was Kentucky’s first victory over Florida in Lexington since a 10-3 win in 1986.
A raucous Kroger Field crowd of 61,632 seemed to rattle a Florida offense that was called for a whopping eight illegal procedure penalties.
UK has not beaten Florida in back-to-back seasons since 1976 (a 28-9 UK win in Lexington) and 1977 (a 14-7 Cats victory in Gainesville).
Know your foe
1. New Gators head man Billy Napier made his coaching name as head man at Louisiana from 2018-2021. Napier went 40-12 leading the Ragin’ Cajuns. After starting 7-7 in 2018, Napier went 33-5 in his last three seasons at Louisiana.
A former quarterback at Furman, Napier comes out of the Nick Saban coaching line. Napier worked as an offensive analyst at Alabama in 2011 and coached the wide receivers for the Crimson Tide from 2013-16.
Napier also has ties to the Clemson program, having worked as tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator under Tommy Bowden (2006-08) and offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach under Dabo Swinney (2009-10).
Swinney fired Napier as offensive coordinator after the 2010 season.
2. Florida fans seem energized by the fact Napier has turned the Gators offense over to home-grown sophomore quarterback Anthony Richardson. A 6-foot-4, 232-pound Gainesville product, Richardson wears No. 15 in honor of Tim Tebow.
ESPN college football analyst Dan Orlovsky told the SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum on Friday that “Richardson is the most-talented quarterback Florida has had since Tim Tebow. I absolutely think he’s the most intriguing prospect at that position in all of college football this year.”
There figures to be ample national curiosity in the quarterback showdown between Richardson and UK’s Will Levis.
3. If Christopher Rodriguez is not available to play for Kentucky in “The Swamp,” that would remove a huge weapon from the UK attack. Rodriguez, who ran for 1,378 yards in 2021, did not play in Kentucky’s season opener against Miami (Ohio) due to an undisclosed reason.
Mark Stoops said last week that he expected to have and reveal more information on C-Rod’s playing status during the coming week.
When Kentucky ended a 31-game losing streak vs. Florida by beating the Gators 27-16 in Gainesville in 2018, UK rode a relentless, 175-yards rushing performance from running back Benny Snell.
If Rodriguez is not available to go vs. Florida, it is not apparent that Kentucky will have a similar capacity to impose its will on the Gators with a punishing run game.
Defensive tackle Gervon Dexter, linebacker Brenton Cox and safety Trey Dean are projected to lead the Florida defense.
This story was originally published September 3, 2022 at 10:30 PM.
