Kentucky Prepared to Block Out Negative Noise

Negativity is not hard to find around Big Blue Nation. Kentucky has won two of its last 16 SEC games, and the last victory was more than a year ago. Even before the Cats fell behind 35-7 to Georgia in the third quarter, Kentucky football fans were pleading for a new head coach.

There seemed to be some sort of solution when speculation emerged from a story shared Friday that Mark Stoops sought out a buyout a year ago. The Kentucky head coach refuted that report after today’s loss. That won’t eradicate the negativity.

“At the end of the day, if you’re a grown man, you gotta realize nothing out of this locker room matters,” quarterback Cutter Boley said after the loss. “I feel like we got a lot of grown men on this team. Nothing else on Saturdays except these guys matters, literally nothing. I think all these guys know that, and we just gotta keep pushing and keep getting better individually.”

Kentucky has to get back to work

After the loss, Mark Stoops addressed the negativity when he spoke to the entire team. He reminded them that they aren’t the only ones facing an uphill battle.

“You think we’re the only ones? Nobody feels sorry for you in this league, throughout the country. You think we’re the only people (struggling)? I mean, that happens, and so you got to block it out, go back to work,” said Stoops.

“That’s what matters to me, and that’s what I told them. It’s about continuing to stay very positive. We’re not even halfway through this season yet. We played five, so we got seven games left.”

Those four words — get back to work — have been used so often by the head coach that they’re mocked by the fanbase. Even so, that’s the only way for Kentucky to get out of this mess, work hard and play better.

“We all signed up for this, and we’ve got to find a way to dig ourselves out of this,” said defensive coordinator Brad White. “All we can do is go back to work. It sounds really cliche, but I don’t know what else you can say.

“That’s the thing that I appreciate about this group more than maybe any that we’ve had, is that it’s not a finger pointing group. They just want to work, even guys that are dinged and hurt, and you take them out at the end. They didn’t want to, they wanted to finish it. They wanted to finish the game. They want to do it right. They take a lot of pride, and I want to make sure people understand. They take pride in wearing that uniform out there. That’s where I hurt. I hurt for them.”

The coaches believe the players have the right mindset and pride in their performance. Is that enough to improve and eliminate the poor play? After a bye week, this Kentucky football team has seven more games to prove it.