if u guys wanna knw the real problem, its pretty simple...

[How Blue Can You Get?]

We need 2-3 deep SEC calibre linemen on both sides of the ball...something no coach in my lifetime has been able to fully achieve...Brooks came the closest. Theres nothing wrong with our qb' s, rb' s, receivers....they are at least serviceable if not better. The real fact is, we don' t have the kind of linemen we need...pair that with inexperienced coaching, and we have the disaster that is UK football .

How do we fix this? I don' t know. We need coaches that can recruit linemen, and then coach them to play to their abilities. Its been decades and it hasnt happened...Even worse, we can' t even seem to get linemen as talented as the Westerns, Easterns, southern miss' s of the world. I' m glad we won, as I feel for the talented players that are working their butts off for UK football, but we are just gonna get embarrased by conference opponents. Regardless, it all starts with lineplay and we have none.

 

[UKvisitor_rivals101449]

I'll line up for those thoughts.

 

[Kooky Kats_anon]

We had depth along our OLine. It all sucks. We have depth of underdeveloped incompetent boobs.

 

[K_TIME]

We need 2-3 deep SEC calibre linemen on both sides of the ball...something no coach in my lifetime has been able to fully achieve...Brooks came the closest. Theres nothing wrong with our qb' s, rb' s, receivers....they are at least serviceable if not better. The real fact is, we don' t have the kind of linemen we need...pair that with inexperienced coaching, and we have the disaster that is UK football .
.

I personally think it is more due to poor coaching than it is talent level of big guys in the trenches. I think we've seen with Joker and Stoops...it isn't just them as coaches, but both also went for assistants that are very inexperienced (i.e. some are just bad coaches) and both went for this ridiculous 3-4 scheme to boot. We have players' breaking down at all kind of positions.
- Our LBer play has been a fiasco for all of Stoops years. Love is a total mess , Flannigan was a joke all of his 2 years, Hatcher never developed an inch at UK, Ware is always out of position.
- DBs have taken a massive step back in blown assignments this year. Clinksdale looks like a problem in only 2 games I'll concede. But you can't argue all those DBs played last year and didn't look nearly this bad (and it isn't like we have a good front 7 in front of them in 2015)
- DId we really think the WR were well coached in the past 3 years? Drops galore, Dorian Baker has always been a garbage route runner.
- Did we even have a QB coach in past 3 years? We had Neal Brown go on record that he didn't have time to coach Towles on footwork and needed him to address that in offseason...really?

Outside of Gran and Hinsaw....I don't feel comfortable with any teaching ability on our staff. I think that has been UK's biggest issues is we need really good COACHES on staff and not just this recruiting focus. I'd argue we'd have been better off to let Marrow run as much recruiting as possible and hire teachers to develop the talent we bring in.

 

[BlueRaider22]

It's not the only problem but it is a large one. We all saw what happened last yr after Lewis went down. That was 1 guy.

 

[brianpoe]

NMSU had nine 3 stars total on their roster.

Not sure any were oline.

Didn't seem to bother them racking up miles of offense.

 

[Gene1864]

We need a Summers or a Heggins...the Schlarman and Brumbaugh hires just dumbfound me. Hey, at least we have the skill guys. Thousands of them.

 

[vhcat70]

We need 2-3 deep SEC calibre linemen on both sides of the ball...something no coach in my lifetime has been able to fully achieve...Brooks came the closest. Theres nothing wrong with our qb' s, rb' s, receivers....they are at least serviceable if not better. The real fact is, we don' t have the kind of linemen we need...pair that with inexperienced coaching, and we have the disaster that is UK football .

How do we fix this? I don' t know. We need coaches that can recruit linemen, and then coach them to play to their abilities. Its been decades and it hasnt happened..........
Regardless, it all starts with lineplay and we have none.

This can't be repeated often enough even though it's been stated here often.

 

[CB3UK]

You're spot on OP, though I do believe we have some guys who are more than serviceable on the lines. Toth is solid. Elam seems to be a microcosm of the issues we've had. Highly touted, comes in and just doesn't improve year to year. I could totally blame him for self discipline except there are so many other cases like this on the team. We have a real problem developing talent, and that is on coaching.

 

[theoledog]

I personally think it is more due to poor coaching than it is talent level of big guys in the trenches. I think we've seen with Joker and Stoops...it isn't just them as coaches, but both also went for assistants that are very inexperienced (i.e. some are just bad coaches) and both went for this ridiculous 3-4 scheme to boot. We have players' breaking down at all kind of positions.
- Our LBer play has been a fiasco for all of Stoops years. Love is a total mess , Flannigan was a joke all of his 2 years, Hatcher never developed an inch at UK, Ware is always out of position.
- DBs have taken a massive step back in blown assignments this year. Clinksdale looks like a problem in only 2 games I'll concede. But you can't argue all those DBs played last year and didn't look nearly this bad (and it isn't like we have a good front 7 in front of them in 2015)
- DId we really think the WR were well coached in the past 3 years? Drops galore, Dorian Baker has always been a garbage route runner.
- Did we even have a QB coach in past 3 years? We had Neal Brown go on record that he didn't have time to coach Towles on footwork and needed him to address that in offseason...really?

Outside of Gran and Hinsaw....I don't feel comfortable with any teaching ability on our staff. I think that has been UK's biggest issues is we need really good COACHES on staff and not just this recruiting focus. I'd argue we'd have been better off to let Marrow run as much recruiting as possible and hire teachers to develop the talent we bring in.

I agree with you K-Time about coaches but I also think that good leadership starts at the top and at Kentucky that leadership has lacked vision on the football side.... I also think, for us to suck so bad for so long, says more about a "mission statement" type thing than it does about coaches... We've had many different coaches but end up with the same results... I think we're getting exactly what UK wants... Kentucky has rewarded administrators for this hot mess...
Think on that... Smells like some sort of scam you read about on the Drudge Report. If WKU and Louisville can beat us, and they are........... Raises some interesting questions.... While the coaches might not be the best at teaching the problem with this football program goes deep....

 

[UKUGA]

Serious question: if you took Alabama's third string o line and d line and replaced our starters, what happens?

 

[Gene1864]

Serious question: if you took Alabama's third string o line and d line and replaced our starters, what happens?

Nothing...they would be out of condition and under coached.

 

[LadyCaytIL]

I liked some of the things our D line did today... Especially without Elam ...... But our schemes are horrid....... we dont have the talent to play a bend but dont break defense because the opponents just bend us in circles until we break off head deep into our own asses. .... We've gotta take risks all game.... its the only chance we have of stopping anyone.

 

[LadyCaytIL]

Serious question: if you took Alabama's third string o line and d line and replaced our starters, what happens?

They immediately transfer back to Alabama and get the hell away from the train wreck.

but seriously............they'd be more talented and better coached ...by far

 

[DelkBowl]

We need 2-3 deep SEC calibre linemen on both sides of the ball...something no coach in my lifetime has been able to fully achieve...Brooks came the closest. Theres nothing wrong with our qb' s, rb' s, receivers....they are at least serviceable if not better. The real fact is, we don' t have the kind of linemen we need...pair that with inexperienced coaching, and we have the disaster that is UK football .

How do we fix this? I don' t know. We need coaches that can recruit linemen, and then coach them to play to their abilities. Its been decades and it hasnt happened...Even worse, we can' t even seem to get linemen as talented as the Westerns, Easterns, southern miss' s of the world. I' m glad we won, as I feel for the talented players that are working their butts off for UK football, but we are just gonna get embarrased by conference opponents. Regardless, it all starts with lineplay and we have none.

We need to start with one SEC caliber lineman first.

 

[arobapr]

summers wanted to stay here after joker got fired his whole family is in lexington but instead idiot stoops brings in schlarman and now summers is o line coach at florida. If he is good enough to coach oline at florida would think he would be improvement over schralman

 

[ukgolfnut36]

I agree with all our O line an Dline are relay bad,ive said for 2 yrs that the oline coach an dline coach are not getting the job done,if Stoops gets another year he has to replace several coaches

 

[wildcatdon]

They immediately transfer back to Alabama and get the hell away from the train wreck.

but seriously............they'd be more talented and better coached ...by far

You sure have a lot of anger and hatred and animosity within you. Why don't you take a break from this board and give all of your vitriol a rest..It gets old.

 

[docholiday51]

We had depth along our OLine. It all sucks. We have depth of underdeveloped incompetent boobs.

Unlike the strip joint I was in the other day,the boobs there were fully developed

 

[nssdigitalchumps]

I think our offense has improved dramatically from last year. I'm not sure I have any complaints on that side of the ball, outside of Drew Barker still needing experience (he is a work in progress).

Defense is the core issue here. If we had half the defense we had last year, we would have certainly taken out our first opponent and potentially given Florida a true run for its money. If we can't fix our defense or make them decent, then we will have a lot of trouble winning more than three games -- and that's pushing it right now.

Our offense is carrying us. When/if that fails, we'll be powerless against teams.

 

[Comebakatz3]

So how is it that Western and So. Miss. have linemen as good or better than ours? Have our coaches always been so poor that they should be at Mac schools? Even on pure talent alone we should be beating these guys and not allowing them to rack up so many yards. It really just blows my mind.

 

[K-Town Kat]

I think our offense has improved dramatically from last year. I'm not sure I have any complaints on that side of the ball, outside of Drew Barker still needing experience (he is a work in progress).

Defense is the core issue here. If we had half the defense we had last year, we would have certainly taken out our first opponent and potentially given Florida a true run for its money. If we can't fix our defense or make them decent, then we will have a lot of trouble winning more than three games -- and that's pushing it right now.

Our offense is carrying us. When/if that fails, we'll be powerless against teams.

We scored 1 TD in 6 quarters (against UF's JV team) prior to playing an atrocious defense.

Can't say they've improved "dramatically" in any area.

 

[WildCard]

I personally think it is more due to poor coaching than it is talent level of big guys in the trenches. I think we've seen with Joker and Stoops...it isn't just them as coaches, but both also went for assistants that are very inexperienced (i.e. some are just bad coaches) and both went for this ridiculous 3-4 scheme to boot. We have players' breaking down at all kind of positions.
- Our LBer play has been a fiasco for all of Stoops years. Love is a total mess , Flannigan was a joke all of his 2 years, Hatcher never developed an inch at UK, Ware is always out of position.
- DBs have taken a massive step back in blown assignments this year. Clinksdale looks like a problem in only 2 games I'll concede. But you can't argue all those DBs played last year and didn't look nearly this bad (and it isn't like we have a good front 7 in front of them in 2015)
- DId we really think the WR were well coached in the past 3 years? Drops galore, Dorian Baker has always been a garbage route runner.
- Did we even have a QB coach in past 3 years? We had Neal Brown go on record that he didn't have time to coach Towles on footwork and needed him to address that in offseason...really?

Outside of Gran and Hinsaw....I don't feel comfortable with any teaching ability on our staff. I think that has been UK's biggest issues is we need really good COACHES on staff and not just this recruiting focus. I'd argue we'd have been better off to let Marrow run as much recruiting as possible and hire teachers to develop the talent we bring in.

I'm inclined to agree here but I'm going to wait one more game. No matter how you "measure talent" I just cannot believe NMSU has more talent than UK. And now USM loses at Troy.

I only saw the 2nd half and the tackling was awful; just awful (both teams). I can't imagine what it was like in the first half. I can cut NMSU a tiny bit of slack as they apparently came in with a bit of a high risk defensive game plan based on blitzing a pocket passer. JMO.

Peace

 

[nssdigitalchumps]

We scored 1 TD in 6 quarters (against UF's JV team) prior to playing an atrocious defense.

Can't say they've improved "dramatically" in any area.

We scored 62 points yesterday. It's a dramatic improvement from last year. We did that with a backup quarterback. We had a balanced attack. We didn't have that at all last year and we had an experienced QB in charge.

 

[LadyCaytIL]

You sure have a lot of anger and hatred and animosity within you. Why don't you take a break from this board and give all of your vitriol a rest..It gets old.

I'm sorry........ was this the sunshine and roses only board?

"dont make jokes about UK being awful... it hurts my feelings" ... well maybe you should stay off the boards for a while until UK does something successful in football because until then... its gonna be full of frustration and venting................ Its what fans do

 

[How Blue Can You Get?]

So how is it that Western and So. Miss. have linemen as good or better than ours? Have our coaches always been so poor that they should be at Mac schools? Even on pure talent alone we should be beating these guys and not allowing them to rack up so many yards. It really just blows my mind.

Thank You! Most people don't understand lineplay and what they are watching. If the QB gets rid of the ball fast, they think the line did their job. Most don't realize that UK's QB is being rushed and pressured on almost every play! I recommend some of our fans watching Lamar Jackson yesterday, and counting the time he had to stand in the pocket against the #2 team in the country, and then re-watching our game against new mexico st and counting how long our QB had to make a decision. GO back and do the same for games against Western and Eastern etc. The truth should be obvious.

 

[nssdigitalchumps]

We scored 1 TD in 6 quarters (against UF's JV team) prior to playing an atrocious defense.

Can't say they've improved "dramatically" in any area.

Oh, and by the way, I see what you're saying. You're not wrong. If we can do what we did yesterday, even just half of what we did against better competition, then I think it would be safe to say we're better offensively than we were last year.

As it stands, the offense looks better when it's kicking on all cylinders. The receivers look a heckuva lot better and the RBs look good, when they can find the hole.

 

[jnewc2_rivals30628]

We need 2-3 deep SEC calibre linemen on both sides of the ball...something no coach in my lifetime has been able to fully achieve...Brooks came the closest. Theres nothing wrong with our qb' s, rb' s, receivers....they are at least serviceable if not better. The real fact is, we don' t have the kind of linemen we need...pair that with inexperienced coaching, and we have the disaster that is UK football .

How do we fix this? I don' t know. We need coaches that can recruit linemen, and then coach them to play to their abilities. Its been decades and it hasnt happened...Even worse, we can' t even seem to get linemen as talented as the Westerns, Easterns, southern miss' s of the world. I' m glad we won, as I feel for the talented players that are working their butts off for UK football, but we are just gonna get embarrased by conference opponents. Regardless, it all starts with lineplay and we have none.

We don't have the most talented offensive and defensive line, but when you're getting manhandled by Southern Miss and New Mexico State, the problem isn't whether your players are SEC caliber, it's whether your coaches are division one caliber

 

[buckkiller]

Coaching

 

[megablue]

Skill players are easier to recruit simply because there are more of them.
Skillful and talented linemen, on both sides of the ball, are essential to winning football games at the highest levels. We've never had them in adequate numbers and may never, as much as I hate to say it.

 

[KendallCat]

I will take a different POV and state that QB play is by far the most important thing in football at any level. Look at the majority of your top teams in the NFL, college, and even HS and that is the common denominator - strong QB play. Good QB's can help negate poor line play by getting rid of the ball quickly, finding where the pressure is coming from and move away from it, fins the open receiver, check into a run or pass play.... Great examples are everywhere - Rams with our without Warner, Dolphins with or without Marino, Packers and Favre/Rodgers or without him, Panthers without Cam, UK with Woodson beats #1 LSU and then had Dusty and Randall and went to bowl games, and without good QB play we have struggled for 5 years.

Better yet look at the best oline in football with Dallas, and when Romo went down they only won one game without him last year IIRC. You need a strong oline, but oline is about all 5 guys being on the same page with protection and understanding what the guy on your left and right is doing. Without a QB it does not matter.

 

[Katwatcher]

Serious question: if you took Alabama's third string o line and d line and replaced our starters, what happens?

You would not see probably enough difference to even notice. However, if you took Alabama's second stringers, you would see immediate improvement.

I think our line coaches both offensive and defensive are not getting a fair shake. There is no doubt, you have to have the talent to compete especially in SEC.

You also have to be two deep at every position. Some years we can have a decent line but the QB has no experience, or the defensive backs are all young. you have to have a complete roster with talent and we do not have that now.

Usually its a line coach that is going to be first blamed for not developing players, but they are gone in three years and their work goes unnoticed. And the cycle starts all over. QB coach follows with receivers coach next in line..
All of our coaches played high school and most
played college ball, they know what its about. I doubt if half of the fans really watch the linemen during game. Occasionally, a line coach comes along with the right personality, work ethic that makes for a good coach and resonates with the players

If the rating of the line coaches come down to recruiting or developing players, I would take the best recruiter. just my opinion.

 

[kentuckyrld]

We need 2-3 deep SEC calibre linemen on both sides of the ball...something no coach in my lifetime has been able to fully achieve...Brooks came the closest. Theres nothing wrong with our qb' s, rb' s, receivers....they are at least serviceable if not better. The real fact is, we don' t have the kind of linemen we need...pair that with inexperienced coaching, and we have the disaster that is UK football .

How do we fix this? I don' t know. We need coaches that can recruit linemen, and then coach them to play to their abilities. Its been decades and it hasnt happened...Even worse, we can' t even seem to get linemen as talented as the Westerns, Easterns, southern miss' s of the world. I' m glad we won, as I feel for the talented players that are working their butts off for UK football, but we are just gonna get embarrased by conference opponents. Regardless, it all starts with lineplay and we have none.

You shouldn't need such depth to beat a team like Southern Mississippi. The real problem(s) lie elsewhere.

 

[BigBlueTuckian]

Getting the raw talent isn't enough. Linemen have to be coached and developed. Technique and conditioning are paramount to the positions.

 

[vhcat70]

Getting the raw talent isn't enough. Linemen have to be coached and developed. Technique and conditioning are paramount to the positions.

Raw talent is paramount. No amount of technique overcomes it. Conditioning is a given, talent or not.

You think Landon Young is playing due to technique?

 

[KendallCat]

Raw talent is paramount. No amount of technique overcomes it. Conditioning is a given, talent or not.

You think Landon Young is playing due to technique?

+1

You think Tunsil at Ole Miss played as a frosh because of his conditioning or the fact he was 315 lbs and had the feet of dancing bear. Will let you decide.

 

[Dore95]

Having talent on the line is obviously important in football. But it is not the only thing; otherwise, those schools that recruit the most 4 and 5 star offensive linemen would beat everyone else. There are obviously other factors (coaching, development, scheme, etc.) that allow teams with "lesser" players to excel. Take U of L for example, who starts a former walk on (Hughley) at center. He looked (better than) fine against FSU's stud linemen.

 

[John Henry]

No matter what, it all falls on the coaching staff. When you line up in the wrong formation and have trouble making adjustments during the game no amount of talent will solve this. Our defense oriented head coach is anything but.

 

[ekywildcat_rivals26726]

So how is it that Western and So. Miss. have linemen as good or better than ours? Have our coaches always been so poor that they should be at Mac schools? Even on pure talent alone we should be beating these guys and not allowing them to rack up so many yards. It really just blows my mind.

These are pretty much my thoughts as well. Best I can remember our lineman had decent ratings and offers, so what happened? Did they forget how to play or is the coaching at fault? I never played football, so I don't know how much difference a coach can make.

 

[docholiday51]

These are pretty much my thoughts as well. Best I can remember our lineman had decent ratings and offers, so what happened? Did they forget how to play or is the coaching at fault? I never played football, so I don't know how much difference a coach can make.

It is attention to detail and carrying out your assignment,as for coaching it is how much emphasis the coach puts on those two things and how well he communicates that to the player.Our guys have enough talent to be better than what they have shown so far,it appears to me it is an attention to detail and communication issue to a great degree.