After back-to-back losses, in embarrassing fashion as well, the bye week came at a favorable time for the Kentucky Wildcats. That said, the Wildcats will pick back up in the toughest stretch of their schedule and return to action against a No. 21 ranked Tennessee Volunteer team.
Looking at both teams, they are having somewhat similar seasons. In terms of record, both teams hold 5-2 overall records and 2-2 records in the conference. Big picture, both teams have fallen short of expectations. This Saturday, one team will become bowl-eligible and re-enter the top half of the SEC East.
Let’s take a closer look at the cross-border rivalry matchup and the keys of the game for Kentucky.
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Run Defense
One of the more disappointing things about this year’s Kentucky team has been the defense, especially the pass defense. After five straight seasons of top-5 SEC defenses, Kentucky is currently sitting 9th in the conference in team defense.
Giving up an average of 347 yards on the season, the Wildcats give up an average of 251 yards through the air, ranking only ahead of South Carolina and Vanderbilt. As bad as the pass defense has been, the run defense has been great. In fact, the Wildcats are one of just two teams in the SEC, joining Georgia, giving up under rushing 100 yards per game.
Tennessee’s offense may play into Kentucky’s hands. After getting more than sixty percent of their yards through the air last season, the Volunteer offense is much more focused on the run game. In fact, they run the ball 54 percent of the time, only behind Alabama and Ole Miss in the SEC. In each of their losses, the Vols have been held to under 140 rushing yards.
Will the Passing Game Start to Click after the Bye Week?
In 2013, Mark Stoops inherited one of the worst rosters in all of college football. Now, ten years later, he has raised the program to its highest point of the modern era. That said, there is still more room to grow, and according to Mark Stoops, that starts with the passing game.
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“We want to grow as a program,” Stoops said in his weekly press conference on Monday. “We can sit there and second guess ourselves and look at that last time we took the field and say, ‘Hey, we could sit there and run the ball maybe twenty more times and have a better chance to win the game, but are we really growing as an organization? Are we really winning and becoming that team that we want to become?’”
After investing heavily into the passing game last offseason – bringing back Liam Coen as offensive coordinator and a substantial NIL investment in bringing in Devin Leary and returning the receivers – it is beyond asking when there will be a return. With that said, a bye week could help refocus things, and there is no better time to get things than against your biggest conference rival.
Discipline
It is hard to win games in the SEC, but it is even harder to win games when you are constantly shooting yourself in the foot with penalties. On the season, Kentucky has 54 penalties for 479 yards. Interestingly, that is the second most in the SEC, behind only Tennesse who has 56 penalties for 470 yards.
Over the season, discipline has been an area that the staff has taken accountability for with the media. However, Kentucky’s most recent performance against Missouri was their most undisciplined of the season, with 14 penalties for 122 yards.
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Entering the bye week, the staff and players said multiple times that discipline was an area that “must improve.” Given that this is an intense rivalry, between the two most penalized teams in the SEC, this will be a good test to see if that improvement has taken place.
Time/Date: 7:00 pm ET on Saturday, October 28th, 2023 Location: Kroger Field in Lexington, KY TV Channel: ESPN Announcers: TBA Online Stream:WatchESPN, ESPN+, SEC Network+, or the ESPN app. Radio: Tom Leach and Jeff Piecoro have the UK radio network call on the UK Sports Radio Network. Satellite Radio: XM Channel 203, Sirius Channel 98, Internet Channel 966 Replay:WatchESPN and SEC Network (check local listings). Rosters:UK | UT Stats To Know: UK | UT
Odds: DraftKings Sportsbook has Kentucky listed as a 3.5-point underdog. ESPN’smatchup predictor puts Kentucky as a moderate underdog, giving the Wildcats just a 29.1% chance to win.
Predictions: TeamRankings has Tennessee coming away with a 27-24 win, with DRatings.com also picking the Volunteers in a 28-24 victory. Looking at history, the Wildcats have only beaten Tennessee three times since 1984. While on paper, it is possible, I am not one to pick Kentucky to beat Tennessee until it becomes more consistent. That said, I predict Tennessee to win 31-21.
Before he transferred to Kentucky, Jamon Dumas-Johnson was an All-American at Georgia, with waves to at least test the NFL draft after winning a National Championship. However, with the decision to play his last collegiate season as a Wildcat, Dumas-Johnson was a cornerstone piece for the Kentucky defense, finishing the season with 7.5 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks during his 11 starts for the team.
His athleticism spoke volumes at Kentucky football’s NFL pro day, where current NFL draft boards now list the linebacker as one of the best athletes at the position and has earned himself a “top 10” feel ahead of the draft. Before pro day, publications such as Bleacher Report had him listed as No. 13 at his position.
Dumas-Johnson proved himself with the highest vertical jump (37.5) and the longest broad jump (10.60) out of the Wildcats who competed in said events, and ran an impressive best 4.50 40-yard dash. At 245 pounds, he also managed to press 16 reps of 225, which could technically be “better” compared to NFL standards, but is impressive nonetheless in hindsight.
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At 23 years old, this linebacker exploits explosiveness, agility and can hawk down any playmaker on the field. Out the 31 NFL teams that attended the event (a Cleveland Browns representative did not attend), one will be getting a prize steal of the draft with Dumas-Johnson.
Alex Raynor had an illustrious season for Kentucky last year, being named to First-Team All-SEC, as a finalist for the Lou Groza award and as SEC Special Teams Player of the Year.
As the record holder for the longest field goal in program history, and arguably one of, if not the, most consistent kickers to ever be a Wildcat, Raynor now looks to the NFL Draft in the next chapter of his book.
Recently, at Kentucky football’s NFL Pro Day on Tuesday, March 11, Raynor kicked off the event with his workout.
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Although he would miss a routine kick for him inside of the 45, he would continue to move back, nailing a 55-yard kick and nearly making a 60-yard kick.
The best moments of his workout came when Raynor would line up behind the UK logo inside of Nutter Field House and would nail a 65-yard field goal.
After charting a 4-8 record in the 2023-24 season, including a 1-7, second-to-last finish in the SEC, Kentucky Football looks lost for the first time in a long time.
It can be argued that the program never really broke through to the “higher echelon” of college football in the first place, but even then, they’ve been consistently better than they were historically known to be. Until now.
With that aforementioned .333 record, the Cats weren’t able to earn a bowl game. That marks the first time since the 2015 season that Kentucky Football won’t appear in postseason competition, and, excluding the 2020 season (for COVID-related reasons,) it’s also the only time the Wildcats have finished under .500 since then.
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What about the last time the team had less than five wins? 2013, in Stoops’ first season. The deeper you dig, the worse it appears.
Losing to Louisville in blowout fashion at the end of last month felt like the straw that broke the Cats’ back. It was clear that whatever would happen next wouldn’t be simply transitional, and thus far, the early offseason has evidenced that.
The Big Move
It began with an exodus. Star wideout Barion Brown elected to transfer to LSU for his senior season. His receiver running mate, Dane Key, left for Nebraska. In addition to the team’s two primary deep threats, Chip Trayanum, the promising back and former Buckeye who spent much of this year battling injuries, took his talents to Toledo.
In total, the Cats have lost nearly two dozen players to the transfer portal, and that’s not even counting the guys headed to the NFL draft (like Deone Walker and Maxwell Hairston,) as well as the graduates.
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To put it bluntly, next year’s team will share little more with the players from this past season than the blue and white on their jerseys. It’s a brutal overhaul, though one Coach Stoops and his staff are trying to get the jump on, to their credit.
Fresh Faces
Among a growing list of incoming transfers, a few names in particular stand out. Chief among them is Zach Calzada, a quarterback whose upcoming season at Kentucky will mark his fifth year playing football in his third different jersey.
The journeyman spent this past season at Incarnate Word, where he threw for 35 touchdowns and only nine interceptions. He completed 344 passes on the year, almost doubling that of his previous two.
Before his two-year stint at IW, Calzada spent the beginnings of his college career at Texas A&M where, among a mixture of steadily improving statistics, he led the Aggies to an impressive home win over the still Saban-led Alabama Crimson Tide. Whether or not his recent success in the Southland Conference will translate back to the SEC is yet to be seen, but, at least on paper, this pickup makes sense for Kentucky following a year of unsparing QB play across the board.
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Along with Calzada, the Cats have hauled in J.J. Hester, a 6 ‘4 senior receiver from Oklahoma, Dante Dowdell, a power back coming off a 12-touchdown season for Nebraska, and Sam Greene, a defensive end transferring in from USC, among a handful of others. We’ll have a team.
Though, even considering the roster turnover, that wasn’t the question. That still remains, “what will that team do?”
Potential vs. Progress
Kentucky is 18-25 in their last three seasons of football; a steady decline that has been made worse by the fact that the program’s outlier 10-3 finish in the 2021 season has since been disqualified by the NCAA due to a rule violation. All in all, the last half-decade has been, at best, barely getting by.
How long will this trend continue? The only thing we know for sure is that nobody is sure. Answering that question requires the analysis and knowing of many moving parts, not all of which are at widespread disposal.
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But this much is clear: the longtime variable nature of Kentucky Football came to a head this year, and the product we’re about to see is going to have to be radically different from the one we’ve just seen in order to right this ship.
For better or worse, the 2024-25 season will likely go down as the most important yet in the Stoops era at UK.