Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 44-6 loss to Tennessee
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Game day: No. 3 Tennessee 44, No. 19 Kentucky 6
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Tennessee football game at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville.
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Five things you need to know from No. 19 Kentucky’s 44-6 loss to No. 3 Tennessee in an SEC football game at Neyland Stadium:
1. Kentucky offense no-shows. Given a marquee stage on ESPN against the nation’s “buzz team,” the UK offense proved not worthy of prime time.
Everything Kentucky could not do offensively in this game to have a chance, the Cats did.
UK dropped a pass on a play that had a chance to go for a touchdown. Had Tayvion Robinson made the catch on UK’s first drive of the second quarter and taken it to the house, Kentucky would have had the game tied at 13.
The Wildcats turned the ball over. Will Levis threw three interceptions. The first one, on an attempted pass to Dane Key that was broken up by Tennessee’s Doneiko Slaughter and intercepted Juwan Mitchell, came in the red zone. It is the fifth red-zone turnover by Levis in 2022 (not that this one, or even the majority of them, have been the quarterback’s fault).
After playing its best game of the season in UK’s win over Mississippi State two weeks ago, the Kentucky offensive line surrendered four quarterback sacks and seven tackles for loss.
For Rich Scangarello’s unit, it has been a disjointed season.
2. More special teams follies. As has been another theme of UK’s 2022 season, Kentucky’s kicking game struggled.
Matt Ruffolo’s PAT attempt when the Wildcats had a chance to tie the game at 7 was blocked.
On a Kentucky punt attempt, a high snap and an unblocked rusher harried Colin Goodfellow into an 18-yard punt that gave UT the ball at the Wildcats’ 35-yard line with 37 seconds left in the first half.
That set up a 31-yard TD pass from Hendon Hooker to Jaylin Hyatt that put the Volunteers ahead 27-6 at halftime and essentially put the game out of reach.
UT’s final TD was set up by a 34-yard punt return that gave Tennessee the ball at the Cats’ 13.
At Kentucky, you don’t have the margin of error against high-level SEC competition to have bad special teams.
UK missed a field goal and failed on two extra points in a loss at Mississippi.
The Cats had a punt blocked vs. South Carolina.
Barion Brown’s kickoff returns have been dynamic, but otherwise UK special teams have been anything but.
3. Hooker for Heisman? Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker did nothing to damage his Heisman Trophy aspirations.
The 6-foot-4, 218-pound product of Greensboro, N.C., completed 19 of 25 passes for 245 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions.
Entering the 2022 game with Kentucky, the Virginia Tech transfer was 27-of-44 passing for 426 yards with six TD tosses and no interceptions in his career against the Cats.
In his two seasons at Tennessee, Hooker has now thrown 52 touchdown passes and only four interceptions.
4. “C-Rod” watch. Kentucky running back Christopher Rodriguez ran for 64 yards on 15 carries.
He now has 3,199 career yards and needs 134 yards to pass Moe Williams (3,333) for third place on Kentucky’s all-time rushing list.
5. Fifty-eight years and counting. Having pasted Tennessee 34-7 at Neyland Stadium in 2020, Kentucky was going for its first back-to-back victories over the Volunteers in Knoxville in 58 years.
Instead, Coach Charlie Bradshaw’s teams of 1962 (12-10 winners at UT) and 1964 (12-7) remain the most recent Wildcats to win at Tennessee on consecutive visits.
Fashion police
For its eighth game of 2022, Kentucky wore blue helmets with white jerseys with blue letters and numbers and white pants.
It is the fifth time in eight games this season that UK has worn blue helmets. The Cats are now 4-1 in them.
This story was originally published October 29, 2022 at 10:45 PM.
