In this lost Kentucky football season, UK needs to start figuring out its future
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Game day: Auburn 24, Kentucky 10
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Auburn football game in Lexington.
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Let’s be blunt: For Kentucky, this has become a lost football season.
Offensively, the Wildcats have not clicked all season. After Auburn added another discouraging home loss to the Kentucky season Saturday night with a 24-10 beating of the Cats, UK (3-5, 1-5 SEC) is through six Southeastern Conference games and has scored seven offensive touchdowns in league play.
Defensively, the stout UK unit that held Georgia to 262 total yards and limited Mississippi to 17 points has become a shell of its former self. Beaten up physically and appearing worn down by the burden placed on it by the punchless Wildcats offense, the Kentucky “D” made Auburn running back Jarquez Hunter look like Bo Jackson.
Hunter rumbled for 278 yards and two touchdowns on 23 carries. As a team, Auburn (3-5, 1-4 SEC) ran for a robust 326 yards on UK. Over its past three games, the Kentucky defense has surrendered an average of 222.7 rushing yards a contest.
“I really don’t have much to say,” UK coach Mark Stoops said after his team finished its SEC home schedule with an 0-4 mark. “You know, just hit the repeat button. I think you all get tired of hearing the same thing. It’s more of the same.”
With four games remaining — at No. 7 Tennessee; vs. FCS foe Murray State; at No. 5 Texas; and vs. archrival Louisville — Kentucky needs three more wins to extend its bowl streak to nine years.
While mathematically possible, that seems all but impossible based on how UK has played while being outscored a combined 92-43 during losses to Vanderbilt, Florida and Auburn.
Given that reality, what UK needs to do is use these final four contests of 2024 to answer questions that are vital to the future of Wildcats’ football program.
Start with: Is Kentucky’s starting quarterback for 2025 currently on the roster?
After what has been, at best, an up-and-down season from Georgia transfer Brock Vandagriff, the UK brain trust went with former Owensboro High School star Gavin Wimsatt at QB in the second half versus Auburn.
Given Wimsatt’s “combination of size, speed, athleticism, (we) wanted to see if that was going to provide a spark for us,” UK offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan said. “We’re at that point, we just felt like we needed to do something.”
Alas, Wimsatt, the former Rutgers starting quarterback, finished 3-of-10 passing for 34 yards. The 6-foot-3, 227-pound junior rushed 10 times for a net 16 yards. The three second-half drives Wimsatt directed ended in two quick punts and an interception — thrown on fourth-and-goal from the Auburn 3-yard line — that extinguished a 14-play, 66-yard march.
Said Stoops: “Bottom line is we are not playing winning football on the offensive side.”
At the end of the next four games, Kentucky needs to feel convicted that Vandagriff, Wimsatt or even true freshman Cutter Boley is ready to play winning football at the quarterback position in 2025. If that feeling is not in place, the Wildcats need to dip back into the transfer portal to find a QB who can do that.
UK also needs to utilize these final four games to launch an evaluation of which young players are ready to step into starting assignments in 2025. Against Auburn, injuries to regular starters meant that freshmen running backs Jamarion Wilcox (redshirt) and Jason Patterson (true) and redshirt frosh offensive tackle Malachi Wood played prominent roles for Kentucky.
Facing a rugged Auburn defensive front, the freshman backs found the going tough. Patterson finished with 38 yards on six carries, while Wilcox gained 25 yards and UK’s sole touchdown on seven rushes.
As for Madison Central alumnus Wood, who started at right tackle, Hamdan said, “I’ve been proud of Malachi. I know last week (at Flordia), I thought he battled extremely hard.”
The other question that needs to be resolved for Kentucky football over the final four games is coaching. Given the product UK has put on the field in 2024, it’s hardly a surprise that the jackals are braying in the direction of Stoops.
Those talking of Kentucky firing Stoops, however, are wasting their breath. UK isn’t going to dismiss its all-time winningest coach off of one bad season. Even if UK wanted to oust its head man, the size of Stoops’ contract buyout, some $45 million, makes that option unfeasible.
At age 57, Stoops needs to decide, however, if he has the fire to do what it will take to again rebuild Kentucky.
The SEC has already announced that the league schedule in 2025 will be the same for each conference school as 2024 — except the venues will be reversed.
For Kentucky, that means a repeat run next season against this year’s brutal league schedule. On paper, next year’s four home games — Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas — look daunting.
If Curt Cignetti at Indiana and Diego Pavia at Vanderbilt have proven anything in 2024, it is that, in the current college football landscape, major turnarounds can be achieved quickly.
That’s why the other big goal for Kentucky in the final four games of this lost season is to try to put on display something of sufficient appeal that difference-making transfer portal recruits will see value in coming to play next year for UK.
This story was originally published October 27, 2024 at 3:28 AM.
