Moving forward, the one thing Mark Stoops has to get fixed with Kentucky football
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Preview: Kentucky at No. 10 Louisville
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During Mark Stoops’ postgame radio show with Tom Leach on Saturday night following Kentucky’s mistake-filled 17-14 loss at South Carolina, the UK football coach sounded as dejected as I have ever heard him.
“We left so many plays on the field, it makes me sick,” Stoops said.
The loss came in a game that UK (6-5, 3-5 SEC) desperately needed to win.
For the Wildcats, a victory over an eminently mediocre South Carolina (5-6, 3-5 SEC) would have locked in a winning season, avoided a losing league mark and generated some positive momentum going into Saturday’s Governor’s Cup rivalry contest with No. 9 Louisville (10-1, 7-1 ACC).
Instead, the South Carolina outcome felt like the inevitable destination in what has now been two straight UK football seasons filled with Kentucky self-sabotage.
While South Carolina was putting UK in a 10-0 hole in Saturday night’s first quarter, the Kentucky offense undermined its first two drives with costly penalties. When UK had the chance to take control of the game in the second quarter, the Wildcats instead turned the ball over twice in Gamecocks territory, once in the South Carolina end zone.
Given a last-gasp chance from the 50-yard line down three with 2:10 left in the game, Kentucky quarterback Devin Leary turned the ball over on the first play.
The iconic NFL head coach, Bill Parcells, famously said, “You are what your record says you are.” My corollary to that is, “You are what the quality of play you consistently put on the field says you are,” too.
This is what UK’s recent record says it is:
Over the prior two seasons, Kentucky now stands at 13-11, 6-10 in SEC contests.
In spite of playing in front of two seasons of the consistently best home crowds — led by especially spirited student sections — I can ever remember for UK football, Stoops and troops have gone 2-6 combined in conference home games in 2022 and 2023.
From 2015 through 2021, Kentucky had a winning record in games decided by one score in six of seven seasons — and broke even in such games the other year. During UK’s 10-win seasons in 2018 and 2021, the Wildcats went a combined 8-2 in games decided by eight points or fewer.
Over the past two years, UK has gone 2-4 in close games.
The way Kentucky football schedules have long been constructed, the keys to success in the Wildcats program have been how UK fares against five teams it has been playing annually — Louisville, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina and Vanderbilt.
Unless UK can upset U of L Saturday, Stoops is about to turn in a losing record of 2-3 against the “Benchmark Five” for the first time since 2015.
Meanwhile, we are into our second straight season in which the quality of play Kentucky consistently puts on the field says the Wildcats are an unsound football team.
Last season, an offensive penalty took what almost certainly would have been the game-winning UK touchdown off the scoreboard in what became a three-point loss at Mississippi. A defensive penalty negated what would have been a game-clinching interception in what became a three-point loss to Vanderbilt.
UK tried to give away what became a four-point road win at Missouri last season, too, with a long snap over the punter’s head late in the game only to be bailed out by a Mizzou penalty.
This year, ill-timed penalties, dropped passes and the maddening inability by the Kentucky defense to get stops on third down-and-long plays have characterized a second straight season filled with self-inflicted wounds.
At South Carolina, the Kentucky defense gave up only 17 points, but UK’s puzzling failures to make plays in down-and-distance scenarios that should be advantageous persisted.
On Carolina’s opening drive Saturday night, the Kentucky “D” gave up first downs on a third-and-7 and a third-and-10 as Spencer Rattler marched the Gamecocks 69 yards for a touchdown.
During what became South Carolina’s game-winning TD drive, Kentucky surrendered a 28-yard pass on a third-and-15 and a 17-yard touchdown pass on third-and-9.
This came a week after UK gave up a 40-yard touchdown throw on a third-and-12 and a 30-yard pass on third-and-17 in a 49-21 loss to Alabama.
When Stoops was building Kentucky from its historic place near the bottom of the Southeastern Conference football hierarchy to a program that produced 10-win seasons in 2018 and 2021, there was a “chip on the shoulder” toughness to UK’s teams.
Players such as Benny Snell and Logan Stenberg, Josh Allen and Calvin Taylor, may not have been weighted down with recruiting “stars,” but they brought an “I’m going to show you” toughness that came to define the Kentucky program.
Over the past two seasons, that vibe seems to have gone missing from UK football.
Moving forward in an SEC that will only be tougher for Kentucky as the league adds Oklahoma and Texas and does away with division play, Stoops desperately needs to figure out how Wildcats football can get its “edge” back.
This story was originally published November 20, 2023 at 11:51 AM.
