After two straight wins that gave this season some life and made us fans excited, the Cats took five huge steps back today and ended a five-game win streak as they got completely embarrassed by Missouri, 20-10.

Now, 20-10 doesn’t seems like an embarrassing margin, but it was on paper. The Tigers out-gained Kentucky by 276 yards offensively, got 18 more first-downs than the Cats, and possessed the ball for 43:10 compared to Kentucky’s 16:50. That’s flat out embarrassing. Especially when it’s against a team you have beaten five straight years.

In the past three years, Kentucky has played three games where nothing worked. This one, two years ago against Texas A&M, and two years ago against Missouri. Both games the offense looked horrible and you somehow won one of them.

Before I really get going, let me point one thing out. Kentucky came into this season with a ton of preseason hype and threw up a clunker to Auburn. After two straight big wins, Kentucky started to earn some more hype and then failed to show up against Missouri.

Keep in mind, this same thing has happened before in the Stoops era. Going all the way back to 2014, Kentucky gained some national hype after starting the season 5-1, with the only loss being an OT thriller in Gainesville. The Cats went to Baton Rouge for a prime-time showdown with LSU, and got their teeth kicked in. Same thing against Texas A&M two years ago. started 5-0, earned some national attention, and then Kentucky looked lost on the field in College Station.

Just thought I’d point that out. Anyway, today’s game was a complete embarrassment all the way around.

It was pretty obvious early on that the offense wasn’t in-sync and wasn’t having any success. Terry Wilson and Joey Gatewood only completed four passes in 13 attempts for 47 yards. However the passing game did produce the only touchdown for the Cats today.

The running game started to work, especially in the second half with Chris Rodriguez. The offense had been stagnant the whole game, but the Cats started moving the ball when Eddie Gran called Rodriguez’s numbers. After the Cats scored, Kentucky had a chance to tie it up. The biggest possession of the game and Chris Rodriguez didn’t see the field. How does that happen?

It was pretty clear to all of us that Chris Rodriguez was the only thing working today and he only got nine carries. ONLY NINE. Larry Roundtree was killing Kentucky all game and got 37 CARRIES. I honestly have no idea what Eddie Gran is thinking on the sideline. Why does he refuse to play Chris Rodriguez? Especially on the most important possession of the game?

When asked about who the QB will be next week, Stoops said he didn’t know. It’s not rocket science. Just hand the ball to Chris Rodriguez until the other team shows the ability to stop him, because guess what, the only guy that has shown the ability to consistently stop Rodriguez is Eddie Gran.

Benny Snell and Lynn Bowden covered up a lot of the offensive issues the past couple of years and now they are showing. Big time. They have the answer sitting on the sideline in Rodriguez, but refuse to play him.

It may not be this easy, but if Eddie Gran will just hand the ball off consistently, I swear it will open up the offense and make it easier on Terry Wilson or whoever is back there. It’s called mixing things up. Something Eddie Gran doesn’t know how to do.

If Eddie Gran keeps running this offense into the ground, I don’t know what WR will want to play here.

We are Bubble-screen, QB-draw, and an AJ Rose run for two yards university right now.

Now let’s go get pounded by Georgia.