Kentucky needs Chip Trayanum back, but 'we'll be OK' at RB

Kentucky quarterback Brock Vandagriff hands it off to running back Chip Trayanum - Mont Dawson, Kentucky Sports Radio

If there was a position group that really couldn’t afford any depth hits for Kentucky football, it was running back. Then Chip Trayanum, the prized transfer addition from Ohio State, went down with a broken hand to take him out the remainder of fall camp and the start of the regular season.

That leaves the Wildcats with just one upperclassman in Demie Sumo-Karngbaye to go with redshirt freshman Jamarion Wilcox and true freshman Jason Patterson while true freshman Tovani Mizell is a wildcard after missing his senior season in high school with a torn ACL — healthy, but probably not someone you want to lean on too heavily right away.

Point being, Kentucky is thin. Really, really thin, especially now with Trayanum potentially out the first two weeks of the season with the Georgia Bulldogs coming to town in week three.

How concerned is Mark Stoops about his running back room, specifically to start the season? For starters, there is zero concern in Sumo-Karngbaye holding down the fort until Trayanum is ready to return.

“Demie has been really good,” Stoops said Saturday. “… We have a ton of confidence in Demie and where he’s at.”

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That’s to be expected — and not really the question for the Cats. It’s the guys behind Sumo-Karngbaye who need to prove themselves as difference makers, starting with Wilcox.

“Jamarion, you know — he’s got to push. He’s got the talent,” Stoops said. “Jamarion is a guy that has some juice, he has some talents. He’s getting more and more reps, he just needs to be very consistent.”

From there, it’d be helpful for one of the young playmakers to step up ahead of schedule.

“The young guys are really good, you’ve heard us talking about them since the spring,” he added.

The Kentucky head coach feels there’s enough ammunition for the Wildcats to get by early. It’d just be a whole lot easier with the Doak Walker Award candidate in the backfield sooner rather than later.

“We’ll be OK,” Stoops said. “We’ve just got to get Chip back when we can.”