Kentucky Defense Made Day One Mistakes Against Eastern Michigan

After Kentucky’s win over Eastern Michigan, Brad White was biting his tongue. The Kentucky defensive coordinator was as frustrated as we’ve ever seen him after a game during his eight years in Lexington.

“There were mistakes that were made today that are day one install mistakes. It was everything from communication to simple things about getting the call, things that have never happened or occurred here,” said White.

“That will get addressed and that will get fixed. Having the bye week will be good, but they better be ready to strap it up and let’s go. This is not an easy bye week, happy-go-lucky scenario. We have to freaking redial-in, get back to the standard we play with and that was anything but tonight.”

The Cats got off to a hot start, but they slowly started leaking yards left and right. Eastern Michigan racked up 290 yards of offense in the first half, and finished the night averaging 6.3 yards per play.

The defense had a couple of injuries in the secondary, and they rotated in twos regularly to give them meaningful reps. White can live with those mistakes. They’re learning lessons. That’s not what had him fired up.

“Our older guys, our starters have to play better. If those guys don’t play well, we’re going to be in trouble. You saw it tonight… We came out with juice. Held up on the next series. Then it just became series after series of somebody raising their hand. ‘That was my bad. That was my miscue. I didn’t get the call.’ It was just every single person rose their hand on a different play. When that happens, bad things happen.”

White continued: “We got after them at halftime and I thought they responded in the second half, but it — that’s not us. It starts with me and I promise you I will get that fixed.”

Kentucky’s defense dominated Toledo in week one. Things got a little hairy against Ole Miss. Tonight was far from the standard they need to play at to compete in the SEC.

“It’s about to get really real, so we’ve got to do way better than the performance we put out there today.”

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