Third Down and Play-Calling: Mark Stoops Confident Kentucky Will Respond

Kentucky is 2-0 after a couple of home games at Kroger Field, but the Wildcats are far from a polished product. A week ago Mark Stoops arrived at the podium with a stern sense of urgency. This week he was a bit more relaxed as he provided updates ahead of Saturday night’s game against Akron.

“The sky is not falling,” Stoops said. “There were there were a lot of things that that were good. There’s plenty of areas we know we have to improve and I’m very confident that we will.”

Kentucky Defense on Third Down

At times the Kentucky defense has looked dominant, particularly in the trenches. That has not been the case on third down. UK opponents have converted 15-of-29 (51.7%) third downs, ranking No. 123 nationally out of 132 FBS teams. What gives?

Mark Stoops doesn’t want to share excuses. On one third down two Wildcats went the wrong way. On another a player missed the signal from the sideline. EKU was gifted a short field after a punt blocked and Kentucky had a chance to force a field goal, but there was an identification error.

“I don’t want to say miscommunication because everybody blows that out of control. You know what I mean? Like, one guy read something wrong and went the wrong way. Then we give up that third down, but again, it can’t happen,” said Stoops. “As competition improves, we gotta get off right there. We had a chance to stop that.”

Brad White attempted to remedy the situation by playing more aggressive, and it worked temporarily. Then in the second half the Cats missed some tackles that turned into big plays and extended drives.

“When we’re in position, that’s when you that’s when you look clean,” said the Kentucky head coach. “That’s when you look really good. When you have great position on the ball, you have a tendency to really make good tackles.”

Faster Play-Calls on Offense

Aside from third downs, the number of plays by the Kentucky offense has been a hot topic of conversation around the BBN. Only four college football teams have ran fewer plays than Kentucky. Scores from the defense and special teams are partly to blame, as well as the porous third down defense. With new clock rules, Kentucky is also looking at how they call offensive plays to get ball snapped quicker.

“Offensively we’re pro-style. We are looking at things still to expediate the play-calling, the operation and getting out there,” said Stoops. “Liam (Coen), he’s harder on himself than anybody is. He’s always been that way. His first go round here, there’s many times early and people think I’m high strung, you know what I mean? I’m like dude, we’re gonna be okay. Just stay the course, stay with it, stay positive because he’s very hard on himself. I think it’s different with the clock and play-calling and with us being pro-style, sometimes the game can go quick.”

In order to run more plays, the chains need to move. Penalties in the EKU game (10 for 70 yards) played a role in killing drives. Kentucky has shown flashes of brilliance through two weeks, yet they’re still working through early season problems. Stoops is confident the BBN will see those improvements on the field.

“I expect our team to respond. They did last week, we did in practice. There were certain things on film that did show up,” said the Kentucky head coach. “The drive-stalling things cannot happen. We know that. We got to get those things cleaned up. They’re gonna jump up and hurt us if we don’t get them corrected. But I’m confident that we will. I’m confident that we will continue to grow and get better.”

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