Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 35-14 loss at No. 12 Georgia
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Gameday: No. 12 Georgia 35, Kentucky 14
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Georgia football game at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga.
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After latest UK loss, Mark Stoops vows, ‘There’s zero chance I’m walking away’
In UK’s sea of negativity, Cutter Boley provides a sliver of hope
Kentucky football’s downward spiral continues with blowout loss at Georgia
Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 35-14 loss at No. 12 Georgia
Cutter Boley’s passing can’t save UK football. See stats from Cats’ loss at Georgia
Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 35-14 loss at No. 12 Georgia:
1. Another embarrassing SEC losing streak rolls on. Georgia’s victory was its 16th straight over Kentucky.
UK’s most recent win over the Bulldogs remains a 34-27 victory at Sanford Stadium in 2009.
This is the third losing streak of at least 16 games to a SEC opponent that the Kentucky football program has had during this century.
UK lost 26 in a row to Tennessee from 1984 through 2010.
The Cats lost 31 in a row to Florida from 1986 through 2017.
Now the Georgia losing streak is old enough to get its driver’s license.
As we learned during UK’s protracted stretches of futility against Tennessee and Florida, epic losing streaks to league rivals are a major anchor on the perception of a football program.
2. Where are the touchdowns? Kentucky scored two offensive touchdowns at Georgia.
Going back to UK’s 17-14 loss at South Carolina in 2023’s SEC finale, Kentucky (2-3, 0-3 SEC) has now gone 12 SEC games in a row — and 13 straight vs. power conference teams overall — without scoring more than two offensive TDs in any contest.
When a football team has almost no hope of scoring, watching its games becomes arduous.
3. Georgia cooked the Kentucky defense on third down. The Bulldogs converted nine of their first 10 third-down conversion attempts Saturday.
Speaking to the UK Sports Network at halftime, Mark Stoops described the UK defense’s inability to get third-down stops as “aggravating.”
Of those first nine third-down conversions, the Dawgs faced distances of 5 yards or fewer seven times.
So even though the third-down number was grim, it was what was happening before third down on drives to give Georgia such short yardages needed to gain that was the main problem.
For the game, Georgia finished 9-for-12 on third-down tries.
4. The negative numbers are mounting. Kentucky is now 3-17 in its past 20 games against power conference foes.
UK has now lost eight SEC games in a row and 12 of its past 13.
Since going 5-3 in SEC games in 2021, Kentucky has gone 7-20 in league contests.
From the start of the 2023 season, UK is 9-23 against power conference opposition.
5. Boley was a bright spot. The play of redshirt freshman quarterback Cutter Boley was one of the few reasons for Kentucky optimism.
Coming off a rough go in which he turned the ball over three times in the second quarter of a 35-13 loss at South Carolina last week, Boley played a mostly-clean game Saturday.
With Kentucky utilizing a “safe” game plan featuring a lot of short passes and screens to get the ball out of Boley’s hand quickly, the former Lexington Christian Academy star completed 25 of 41 passes for 225 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.
The pick came on a fourth-down play with 4:02 left in the game when Boley, rather than take a sack, correctly chose to throw the ball into the end zone and hope for the best.
The Georgia defensive front is not as disruptive as the one Boley faced last week at South Carolina. The UK QB was sacked twice Saturday after being sacked six times in Columbia.
For the most part, the young QB seemed to show greater poise in the pocket and appeared to make mostly good decisions.
With a UK program that is pretty close to desperate for positives, Boley’s play Saturday was one.
Fashion police
For its fifth game of 2025, Kentucky wore blue helmets, white jerseys with blue letters and numbers and blue pants.
Since the start of the 2020 season, UK is now 1-5 in blue-white-blue.
This story was originally published October 4, 2025 at 3:27 PM.
