Fed Up with the "Messy" Offense and "Inexcusable" Mistakes, Stoops Made a Change at Halftime

In the late 90s, while sitting near the top of Section 226 at Commonwealth Stadium, an older, short-haired, grey-haired, short-tempered woman believed the players on the field could hear her screams. “TICK TOCK! CLOCK! SNAP THE BALL!” For a good chunk of Saturday’s game between Kentucky and Ole Miss, everyone in the stands was thinking and screaming the same thing.

Kentucky could not snap the football. Plays got in too slow. Wide receivers would flip what side of the field they were lined up on with only seconds left on the play clock. If they did get lined up in time, it probably wasn’t actually the case because there were still two or three more players that needed to go in motion.

The ugliest example happened during a change of possession. After an Ole Miss touchdown, tight end Henry Boyer ran onto the field with about 12 seconds on the play clock. The late substitution allowed Ole Miss to substitute. Kentucky had to call its third and final timeout to avoid a delay of game, following a kickoff.

During the final possession of the half, you could hear the collective sigh from the crowd as Kentucky attempted to get off plays during 2-minute offense. Mark Stoops could feel their frustration.

“It’s really inexcusable, to be totally honest with you,” Stoops said in his postgame press conference. “There’s things where we are trying to get the best personnel we can with certain plays and certain things. We’ve got to be better. We’ve just got to function better.”

You don’t have to be an expert lip-reader to know what the Kentucky quarterback was saying amid the messy chaos in the first half.

Not a great look. pic.twitter.com/Zhur47VVNx

— Tres Terrell (@TerrellTres) September 6, 2025

It didn’t help that Zach Calzada’s helmet communication system malfunctioned near the end of the half. That was just the cherry on top of the messy sundae.

Shortly after the ABC broadcasters blasted Kentucky’s offensive operation, Stoops had seen enough and made a change in the halftime locker room.

“That’s on us. Put it all together, and it was messy,” said Stoops. “Operationally, we’ve been very smooth. I think we’re trying to do too much with matching personnel and changing some people out. We talked about that at halftime, cleaned that up. That really pissed me off. We had a discussion with the offensive staff and got that rectified.”

I’m sure that discussion was calm and did not feature any expletives. Nevertheless, Bush Hamdan made changes, and those messy issues did not resurface in the second half.

“We limited the amount of shifting and motioning that we did do in the second half,” said the Kentucky offensive coordinator. “We felt a lot of that was going to have to be an advantage for us to be able to get off the press coverage and whatnot. It’s obviously something we’ll take a look at.”

Kentucky struggles to move the ball when it’s a smooth operation. For a good chunk of Saturday’s game against Ole Miss, they didn’t even give themselves a chance.