Defense struggles, offense fails to finish drives in another blowout loss for Kentucky

Everyone knew the challenge would be difficult for Kentucky in Week 6. After a shocking blowout loss to South Carolina, the Cats drew a Georgia team coming off a loss to begin October. Odds were high that Kirby Smart would have his team locked in for this one. The Bulldogs met expectations.

Georgia went 75-plus yards on their first two drives of the game to take a 14-0 lead and never looked back on Saturday afternoon in Athens. Redshirt freshman quarterback Cutter Boley looked more comfortable in his fourth career start, but it was yet another game where UK scored two offensive touchdowns or less in a power conference game.

The Cats are now 0-3 in league play heading into the second bye week of the season. To say the fan base is getting restless with the direction of this program will be putting it lightly. What happens next? Only time will tell but, for now, we’re recapping what we witnessed from Sanford Stadium’s fancy new press box.

Kentucky appeared to take a step in the right direction on offense but there a real concerns about this defense moving forward entering the second bye week of the season.

Cutter Boley takes a step in the right direction

This season has gotten off the tracks early. Kentucky’s offense still has massive scoring issues and a winless season in conference action definitely feels possible. Getting to a bowl game feels impossible. That means everyone is or needs to shift into evaluation mode for the future. That is trickier in the transfer portal era.

That evaluation for the future officially started when Kentucky pressed the backup quarterback button in Week 3. Cutter Boley had a promising performance against Eastern Michigan before the wheels fell off against South Carolina. Add that in with the Louisville start last year, and there were some concerns about what things could look like for this offense long-term. But we saw some real improvement at Sanford Stadium.

Kentucky rushed for only 52 non-sack yards on 2.6 yards per rush, did not score on two red zone possessions, and was just 3-of-11 on third down. Yet, Boley took a massive step forward.

The redshirt freshman completed 25-of-41 passes for 225 yards and two touchdowns. With the traditional run game sputtering without Seth McGowan in the game for most of the second half, Kentucky asked a lot of the young quarterback. He delivered.

Boley did a terrific job with sack avoidance throughout the game, made good decisions with the football (only interception was on fourth down attempt), and connected on four completions of 20-plus yards. Offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan made a concerted effort to get the ball out of Boley’s hands quickly to begin this game and that led to the redshirt freshman playing with some confidence. After struggling against Louisville and South Carolina, Boley looked the part on Saturday. The former four-star recruit played like someone you can potentially build around. This program desperately needs someone it can rally around right now.

This was a step in the right direction. We also saw true freshman Cameron Miller (3 receptions for 41 yards) make some plays, the offensive line created clean pockets, and Kendrick Law (6 receptions for 64 yards) was explosive with the football in his hands.

The offense has issues. There is a lot riding on Boley’s development. Kentucky needs him to be good. They need him to be a playmaker. Saturday’s performance was a positive development for an offense that hasn’t had many positive developments since Liam Coen left.

Kentucky’s defense has more issues than expected

Kentucky wants to play a certain brand of football under Mark Stoops. That includes a run-heavy offense and a zone-heavy defense that masters in big-play prevention. The Cats want to come up big in situational football and shrink games. But this is a program that is defense-first and wants to be defense-first. That means the defense needs to be good. That means Kentucky needs to be a top-half SEC unit for this program to win games.

That is not the case right now.

Georgia scored 35 points in just nine non-kneel possessions on Saturday. The Bulldogs averaged 6.2 yards per play and finished the game with a 52.2 percent success rate. Kirby Smart even started pulling some of his starters before this game was over. The Cats have issues on defense.

Tackling remains a major concern, the third down defense was awful (9-of-12), and UK allowed five touchdowns in nine possessions despite creating two takeaways. There are just some real problems with this unit right now.

Kentucky is getting some good play from the front, but the back seven needs to play better. Georgia produced 12 explosive plays in the game, and many of them occurred after Kentucky missed a tackle or failed to leverage the football correctly.

Will some personnel changes be made soon? We saw true freshman EDGE CJ Works make some plays, Landyn Watson and Grant Godfrey received snaps with the ones at linebacker, and Cam Dooley played extended snaps at safety.

The big picture mission for Kentucky’s defense is to play zone, keep everything in front, and limit explosive plays. That style requires a defense to tackle well. Kentucky is not tackling well. That is leading to big plays and easy scores.

UK’s offense is receiving its fair share of blame for the program’s current slide, but the defense has to be better. Every SEC team has scored 30-plus points on UK this season. The South Carolina game falls more on the offense but the defense needs to create more stops. This team cannot win football games if every opponent is scoring near 30 points.

The noise is not going away

This really is the million-dollar question with this program right now. The season very much feels over with seven games left to play. Kentucky’s SEC losing streak is now at eight games. Kentucky’s power conference losing streak is now at nine games. The Wildcats are just 1-12 against power conference foes since beating Louisville to end the 2023 regular season. Literally every arrow with this program is pointing in the wrong direction.

The fan base is furious with the state of Kentucky football. A long season feels inevitable. Recruiting isn’t exactly going great. Kentucky’s style of play and overall program philosophy isn’t leading to realistic winning opportunities in SEC play.

After the game, Mark Stoops was asked about his future as Kentucky’s head coach. For the second time in two years, Stoops says there is “zero chance” that he is leaving this job with a contract that has six years left on it with millions guaranteed. That will create some angst.

The second bye week arrives at an interesting time. The noise is starting to get louder. Negative results continue to pile up. No one seems happy with where Kentucky is. That could lead to some tense situations over the next two months.

Does UK decide to acknowledge the noise this week or do they stay quiet like this entire past offseason? Basketball season officially starts next week. It would be very easy to hide at the moment, but the frustration and fan base’s anger with this program is not going away.

It feels like things could get uglier before they get better. With home games upcoming against Texas and Tennessee, that could present an opportunity for some fans to express their frustrations. The noise is not going away.