WATCH: Mark Stoops recaps Tennessee loss, previews Auburn

Despite the depressing loss to Tennessee, Mark Stoops said spirits were high at the Kentucky Football practice facility as the Cats got back to work to prepare for Auburn. The Cats are in a tough spot, riding a four-game losing streak to the Plains, but Stoops said he doesn't see them letting go of the rope with five games to go.

"These guys have had a very strong mindset, and their attitude has been right the entire time," Stoops said at his Monday press conference. "It is difficult. Let’s be honest. The guys have worked very hard, and that’s why we’re all disappointed, one way or another.

"A loss is a loss, and it doesn’t feel good, and your pride gets bruised and hurt, and you get battered up as the year goes on, but you have to pick yourself back up. You have to have a strong attitude and mindset, and you have to embrace the process, the week and how you go about it and engulf yourself in that and the preparations. As a coach, I know that makes you feel a heck of a lot better.”

I hope he's right. Other topics Stoops discussed include the offense's progress, the challenges Auburn presents, and the secondary's struggles. Auburn is not Tennessee in terms of throwing the ball, but Kentucky's defense has to shore up if the Cats have any chance of winning on the Plains. Getting Seth McGowan back would help, too. It's unclear whether or not McGowan will be able to go on Saturday, one of many injuries Stoops addressed during the 20-minute conversation. He also had some quotes about roster construction that will get folks talking.

Hit play to hear it all below, or keep scrolling for a transcript.

https://youtu.be/PsN7st1O2eY

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Transcript

Opening statement…

“Looking forward to getting back with our players today, as you can imagine, a very difficult day yesterday around the office. A lot of coaches and players that came through, not very pleased with how we played on Saturday, but today is the start of a new week with the players. Obviously, coaches were at it yesterday, but everybody’s in good spirits and working hard to try to go get a victory. 

“Playing Auburn, (a team) that has been very close this year. They’re four and four, and their losses have been very close, a couple very difficult losses for them. So they're very close to being a very, very good football team as far as the record goes. But a very big, very physical, very well coached team. Defensively, extremely impressive. D.J. Durkin, their defensive coordinator, I’ve known D.J. for a long time. He’s a Youngstown guy. Does a great job, very big, very physical, very aggressive. Offensively, again they have great size, a great running back, playing two quarterbacks right now. So we’ll have to be prepared for both. Elite athletes over there. So again, another difficult challenge, but we’re excited about it.”

On fear of the players letting go of the rope for the rest of the season…

“No, I really don’t.  These guys have had a very strong mindset and their attitude has been right the entire time. It is difficult. Let’s be honest. The guys have worked very hard, and that’s why we’re all disappointed, one way or another. A loss is a loss, and it doesn’t feel good, and your pride gets bruised and hurt, and you get battered up as the year goes on, but you have to pick yourself back up. You have to have a strong attitude and mindset, and you have to embrace the process, the week and how you go about it and engulf yourself in that and the preparations. As a coach, I know that makes you feel a heck of a lot better.”

On the offense, even without Seth McGowan…

“I thought offensively, we’re definitely making some strides. Turnovers are always an issue, you can't do that. But, you know, very impressed. I thought we had very good balance without Seth. JP (Jason Patterson) stepped up, both in the run game and the pass game. Cutter (Boley) took another step forward. I thought it was unfortunate on the tip with the pick. Tip passes are going to happen, went right back to him. But he's very resilient, picked himself right back up, went back out there and battled the entire game. I love the toughness that he's shown. I love the presence in the pocket. He's also throwing it on the move very efficiently. So we're definitely, I think, as I said postgame, I feel like with Cutter, with the way he's playing, he's elevating people around him.”

On changing the offense for Cutter Boley…

“I think it's just making sure we're doing things to help him have some success and get started. So we always look at everything, during those bye weeks. And, interestingly enough, I was just talking with the defense staff up this morning as we're in there. Sometimes you do things all off-season, whether it's fundamentals or techniques and all those things and what you're doing and then it kind of always comes back around, you know. So for us, there's many different ways we could do things defensively, but ultimately, it's about putting your players in a position to be successful where they can fundamentally do it and offensively, not much different. There's a lot of eye candy, a lot of presentation, but what are we doing well? How do we exploit that? How do we build on that?”

On message to the secondary before Auburn…

“You’ve just got to look at what happened and why did it happen and how do we perform better? You've seen that before earlier in the year with quick game turning into explosive plays. And kind of had some games where that got cleaned up, and then this one where they're just running by us. It is different. But yeah, you could very easily see that each and every week. Hasn't always been a problem for us. So we just got to get back to how we play, make sure we're playing effectively. You got to look at things schematically. We are injured at that position. And so, can we do the things we're asking them to do? And, look at some things that way, that could help them as well.”

On teams scoring before the end of the first half…

“I can’t put any one reason why. We've played two-minute situations well before. Our offense has been effective and moving it as well but giving them touchdowns is a real dagger for us. With this past week, kind of like the question before here. You may be doing something that may be trying to protect the one-on-one situation outside. And people have answers. These are very good teams we're playing, obviously, very skilled and very fast and playing at a very high level. So they put you in a bad situation. There’s no excuses, and we just have to step up and make plays, whether it's outside, inside, you name it, you can't always protect, there's not always a perfect call, you got to do the very best you can.”

On how Auburn changed with the new quarterback…

“They didn't change. Their offense is going to be their offense. Both guys are older, they've been around, experienced players. So they're going to do what they do.”

On Auburn running the ball well and how to manage that…

“Last year playing Auburn and you watch one film and then you see them in person, and sometimes you feel the presence a little bit more. I thought they were very big, very physical, across the board as a team. When you see (Jeremiah) Cobb run and the O-Line, they're very physical and he breaks a lot of tackles and is very talented. He has great vision, he has great balance, he has great strength and so he can run through some tackles. So to your point, I don't want to be sitting here next week talking about tackling. It's about team defense, being in great position, being very physical at the point of attack, and bringing your legs with you and wrapping it up. He's very talented. He makes a lot of people miss.”

On Steven Soles Jr. after he missed the game Saturday…

“Steven, hopefully – everything, all indications are that he'll be back at full strength this week.”

On Willie Rodriguez or Hardley Gilmore IV…

“Well see. I'll see how this week goes. We anticipate both will be back at some point this week.”

On Seth McGowan…

“It has to do with whether he is physically strong enough to hold the ball in certain locations where he is at.”

On the depth of the cornerback position…

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that, too.  We need more depth. To the question I answered postgame about the strength of the secondary. I felt like we had three really quality, three guys that we considered starters and now all of a sudden you get down two of them, it doesn’t help when you’re playing Tennessee and Auburn and so on with very talented wide receivers.”

On the changes in college athletics, having to reconsider big-picture roster construction decisions year by year …

“Definitely. We have some young guys at that position that have played well for us that we want to continue to bring along and develop. To your point, you need a solid two deep there at that position. You need four or five guys and a lot of times you can rotate a guy who may be your nickel once in a while as well. It definitely is year-to-year with building a roster. Not every year, I’ve said that before, that you’re going to go out and try to get 50 plus (players), you want to have some continuity and some guys carry over but it certainly is definitely year-to-year.”

On developing the young guys…

“I feel very good about that. I feel like the young guys – it’s tough. You sit here saying to go win against Tennessee or Auburn or someone as freshmen and they definitely can supplement; when you’re counting on a lot of them to help you do that it is difficult. But these guys have stepped up, we’re better because of them. We feel like we have a good group of both freshmen and redshirt freshmen or sophomores, the second-year guys. We feel like we have some good players in both of those classes.”

On player retention with revenue sharing…

“As I mentioned in the summer and leading up to the year, I feel like we have a chance to come out on the other side of that. I’ve said many times prior to the year. I know the year is very difficult, not fun on anybody, but I do feel like with the revenue sharing, you have a chance to both retain guys and be on somewhat of an equal playing field moving forward.”

On challenges with NIL…

“It does but everybody had that. We have our own, but everybody has challenges. This era that we’ve been in hasn’t been real fun for too many, except if you have a boatload of money, so that was fun for them. Everybody’s talked about it, we’ve beat a dead horse on that, with the transfer portal and completely wide-open NIL with no salary cap, as much money as you have, I don’t think anybody likes that unless you’re (the) five, six schools that have as much as they want. Coming out on the other side of that with somewhat of a cap, we can make sure we’re enforcing some of these rules on NIL and let the players earn what they can earn authentically and organically and then the rest of it being somewhat of a level playing field, I think we’re all looking forward to that.”

On distributing the budget…

“I think you can see, I hope you can, and everybody can see we are most definitely better in certain areas. I understand we’re not complete and you look at our record, I’m not naive to that but we are definitely better and making strides and it definitely helped. We’re far better although the record may not indicate that but you see the progress, you see the young guys, and so we did as good as we could. Definitely, for this last year this team had more resources, I’m grateful for it. I wish that the results would be better but I know we are better, but you’re not going to do it in one year either. You have to build a roster over the course of at least two, three (years). Yes, you look at it every year and evaluate it every year and you hopefully just patch a couple holes, you don’t have to patch all of the holes.”

On Jager Burton this season…

“I’m very impressed and very pleased with the way Jager is playing. He’s been a great leader for us, a very solid player, and then taken it to another level this year at center. Lot of stress on him and a lot of pressure and he’s done very well in anchoring that offensive line, so he’s been very good.”

On the portal and the new offensive tackles…

“Definitely playing a lot better. It’s hard, I think we all know it’s a challenge, blocking some of these guys we block, but it’s letting us operate as you can see. It’s been much better.”

On playing younger offensive linemen during the fourth quarter…

“Yeah, definitely been thinking about that and talking about that with the staff as well, just for the development. I will say, again I’ve talked about it, three or four of those guys we feel very solid, very confident about, and they’re working extremely hard. I know you’re not seeing them on game day, and we do need to get them some game reps, because there’s nothing like replacing game reps. Some of these guys have played already and definitely need to get them a few more snaps, but working the heck out of them in practice, and they’re definitely getting better. We’re very confident in those guys.”

Aside from the points and yards, on Coach Hamdan’s creativity such as the receiver pass and end-around call, if that was his best game as a playcaller … 

“I think in some of those instances and situationally, I think it’s fair. I don’t want to put those exact words because that will be a quote, but I think all of us as a staff, you have to look at those things. We had been good in short yardage; the week before, in critical situations, we weren’t. We went back at it last week and improved. We gave them some different things to look at and evaluate. I think it’s fair, we’re all of us working at those things. There are the ‘big rocks,’ the big things, and then there are the little things that sometimes define whether you win or lose.”

On DJ Miller coming back after his injuries…

“I think it’s a process.  With DJ, when you have injuries, as I mentioned a couple times and you come back, sometimes players … He has a very calm, cool demeanor about him. Cutter is very much like that. Cutter gets competitive and emotional, which is great, but he’s generally very even and very cool. DJ (is) the same way. When you’re coming back from injury, you’re trying to learn all the nuances and new wrinkles. It’s not day one, day two or day three install anymore. When you get in season, there are a lot of wrinkles, and as a young guy, you have to be able to pick all those things up. I think the urgency of practicing and the confidence you have to present during the week have improved. We’re pushing a lot of our guys that way.”

On DJ Miller catch in the end zone, not being the primary receiver…

“There was another play in the game, same thing, one of his other catches came off a broken play and off-schedule. When you're running fast and working hard, the ball will find you, and that’s what happened to him this past week.”

On if Cutter Boley has surprised you in game situations…

“I’ve been very pleased with him, let’s put it at that. I don’t know if I’d say surprised because I’ve seen it before, but it’s been very good to see. I guess you could say that, in some ways.  When he gets out of a couple of those traps, it’s great to see, because I’ve coached a lot of defense in my days, and when that happens to you, you’re very frustrated, you’re mad. So when you get out of something like that and create plays down the field after it looks like you’re getting a sack, it’s been fun to watch. I’ll also say again, he’s been very impressive on the run, on the move, very accurate, and very good decisions under some serious duress.”

On balancing protecting defensive players vs. trying to force turnovers…

“You saw that Saturday, pressure. We did two out of the first three, two of them were three and outs. We had back-to-back three and outs, which is hard to do against that offense, but obviously didn’t sustain it. One of them wasn’t a pressure, later tried to pressure again in a critical third down and they made us pay. So we tried to mix it up, much like the week before, there were simulated pressures in there, all-out pressures, coverage, we tried it all and continue to try it all. I think Tennessee is definitely different. As I mentioned, they kind of force you to show your hand, and then you have to be able to win.”

On goals for Saturday, what you want to see from the team other than the obvious goal of winning the game…

“You want to see growth and continue to build on the good things we're doing. Ultimately, it's a bottom line business. We want to get the win at all costs. Whatever it takes to win the game is what we're hunting. But you're not going to do that unless you make progress and make growth in all these areas and put it all together.”