Kentucky Responds to Criticism with a Question: "Who's Soft Now?"
Roman Harper ignited a fire under the Kentucky football team, fueling the Wildcats’ 26-16 win over No. 12 Florida.
Ahead of the highly-anticipated primetime showdown in The Swamp, the SEC Network analyst joined The Paul Finebaum Show and predicted a “dominant” win by the Gators after the Wildcats looked “soft” in week one.
“You were a little soft up front last week,” Harper said. “That is not what I’m used to seeing out of a Kentucky offensive line.”
The network tried to keep it quiet — they didn’t even include Harper’s appearance in the podcast description — but the comments still found their way to Mark Stoops. The Kentucky head coach did not take the criticism lightly.
“One thing we’re not is soft. I think you all can understand that. We may be a lot of things, but we’re not that,” Stoops told the media in his postgame press conference.
“You’ve gotta be a tough son of b, to come into this environment and win, and we all understand that. We know this team is built that way. We’ve shown in through the years. That’s who we are. We’re going to be a tough, hard-nosed football team and we’re going to win tough games, no matter what they look like. We may win, we may lose, but by God we’re going to be tough and we showed that tonight.”
His comments were less reserved to his team. In the locker room he asked his players one question: “Who’s soft now?”
Ahead of the game Mark Stoops publicly downplayed the significance of any outside noise. Privately, he made sure every person on that team took it personally.
“That was a big part of the motivation,” said cornerback Keidron Smith. “Ain’t nobody on this team soft. I’ve been here for a couple months, and I’ll tell you, nobody on this team is soft. That was a big motivation, especially coming from Coach Stoops. He did not like that at all.“
The Kentucky defense certainly was not soft. The Cats contained Anthony Richardson, holding the top-flight rusher to only four rushing yards while pitching a shutout in the second half. The Wildcats had two fourth down stops, giving the offense enough momentum to eat the game away on the ground. Kentucky averaged 5.7 yards per carry in the second half and Kavosiey Smoke tallied four runs of 10+ yards.
“They can say what they want to say,” Smoke said enthusiastically. “We know what we are. Soft? Ask em, what we are now? Ask them if we’re soft.”
Entering this matchup the national media billed this as a duel between two top NFL Draft quarterback prospects, Will Levis and Richardson. Kentucky’s quarterback paid that talk no mind, but the soft comments? That’s a different story.
“The only really thing that I took from the media this week was people calling us soft, which none of us can really take,” said Levis. “That’s one thing I definitely did hear about and use it as motivation, but all that other stuff, not as much.”
Following the week one win over Miami, Mark Stoops described the team’s energy as “mundane.” The outside noise ensured the Wildcats’ energy was amplified in The Swamp. Before the team hit the road, Stoops had a good feeling about this game. He knew his team was prepared to win.
“I think it just set up well for us. I knew we weren’t far off in game one. We looked at it and I tell you guys the truth. I talked to you on Monday and there was very fixable things there. There’s things we still need to improve on and we will. We’re not a finished product at all,” he said. “I know our guys. They don’t flinch. They knew they would come down here and play, be tough and grind it out.”
Kentucky took on the personality of its head coach and played with a chip on their shoulder in Gainesville. The road win over the Top 25 team gives Kentucky early season momentum, likely launching them up in the polls.
“We must jump in the top 10 I guess, right? I’m just saying,” said Stoops. “I see other people jumping 20 spots.”
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