Pavia broke a Vandy record as Kentucky allowed 600+ yards for the third time under Stoops

Kentucky has faced a lot of good football teams under Mark Stoops. SEC gauntlets. Heisman winners. Alabama teams that looked like NFL rosters. Georgia teams built in a laboratory. High-powered Tennessee and Ole Miss offenses that they couldn’t stop. When you’re Kentucky in the SEC, you see it all.

Which is what makes today’s defensive performance at Vanderbilt so shocking. Vanderbilt may be a playoff contender this year, with arguably its best QB of all time in Diego Pavia, but it is still Vanderbilt. The Commodores were only a touchdown favorite at kickoff, but still blew Kentucky out of Nashville, winning 45-10. It was such a blowout that Pavia handed the ball off to his backup to finish the Senior Day game.

Kentucky gave up 604 total yards to the Commodores, which, according to friend of the program Corey Price, is the third-most yards allowed in the entire Stoops era. The only two games with more yards allowed came against Alabama in 2013 and Georgia in 2023.

Most total yards allowed by @UKFootball in a single game in the Mark Stoops era:

– 668 vs. Alabama (October 12th, 2013)

– 608 vs. Georgia (October 7th, 2023)

– 604 vs. Vanderbilt (November 22nd, 2025)

— Corey Price (@coreyp08) November 23, 2025

The passing numbers are somehow worse. Kentucky allowed 539 passing yards, including the most ever by a Vanderbilt quarterback. Pavia completed 33 of 39 passes for 484 yards and five touchdowns, breaking a 34-year-old record in Nashville. He also ran in a sixth touchdown on his Senior Day. Backup Blaze Berlowitz added another 55 passing yards off the bench.

For comparison, Kentucky gave up 387 passing yards total in the previous three games combined.

It was a complete meltdown for the Cats. Kentucky played with several injured defenders, and a true freshman was thrown into heavy snaps at cornerback. Vanderbilt saw those issues and attacked them at all three levels, especially deep. 12 different Vandy players caught a pass for an average of 14.6 yards per catch.

The frustrating part is how well the defense had been playing before this. They had rediscovered themselves during the three-game winning streak. Then Nashville happened, and the progress disappeared.

Six hundred and four yards allowed. Five hundred and thirty-nine through the air. No matter how you slice it, Kentucky gave up one of the worst defensive performances of the Stoops era.

Was Vanderbilt running it up?

After the game, UK defensive coordinator Brad White was asked if Pavia and Vanderbilt were padding stats late in the game. White replied, “If we don’t want them to score, we gotta get off the field. That’s our own damn fault.”