- Jun 12, 2014
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UK Coach Jerry Claiborne has been gone for 21 years now. He was alive and well and coaching the Wildcats in 1986, the last time they beat the Gators at home. 35 years. The streak, as all streaks do, had to end sometime. Why tonight? I think that if you were to poll our fans, you’d get several answers: penalties, couldn’t run it when we needed to, still can’t stretch the field with the passing game, couldn’t stop their run when we needed to, OL had their toughest test so far and had trouble with UK’s front, loud crowd made it difficult to hear, Stoops influenced the officials, Grantham, Mullen…
It really doesn’t have to be said, but losing sucks. Particularly to a team you have pretty much owned for 30 years. It also sucks that your goal to win the SEC East and make it into the Championship game is over, barring a win in Jax over the Dawgs and them losing another conference game. Could happen. Has happened before. Hard to have to keep relying on good fortune in that scenario. It’s still a long season. So, we’re playing with an eye toward that while working to get better, playing the team on the schedule each week, for pride and several other cliches. But it’s absolutely got to be worth playing for.
*UK came into this game 4-0 with a stout defense (thus far), yielding only 87.5 rushing yds/gm and 172.5 passing yds/gm. Tonight, we rushed for 171, almost twice what they allow, and passed for 211. Their most important defensive stat was that they only allowed us into the end zone once. And that was good enough.
*15 penalties for 115 yds was way too much to overcome. There were some questionable calls, one and perhaps two of the holdings and at least one of the false starts were killers. I’m not a Stoops fan by any means, but he was obviously successful in his lobby after an interference no-call. He had a TV timeout to chew that Zebra @ss after the change of possession and made the most of it. I begrudgingly applaude that aspect of his coaching. Wouldn’t mind seeing it our way sometime ;)
*We probably played good enough defensively to have won tonight (had our offense been able to score more than one TD). Kentucky has averaged 204.5 rushing this season and 238.5 passing. We held them to 137 rushing and 87 passing. “Third and Grantham” was not the culprit tonight, as we allowed only 1 conversion in 9 attempts and stuffed their only 4th down attempt. Unfortunately, it was after that turnover on downs, a sure-fire momentum swinger, that we turned it right back over to them on a short field. The ensuing TD wound up being more than we could overcome.
*Richardson returned to not a lot of fanfare. Not a lot of snaps, so-so results (25 yds rushing on 5 carries, 1/1 passing for 8 yds). Could he have made a difference? Maybe, but UK’s defense was much better than what he’d seen this year and it was clear his part in the play was cameo only. Hammy still an issue
His upside is certainly still there, but how much we see through the course of the season remains to be seen.*Two pretty good fronts on the field tonight. Their #4 (Paschal) was a grown man. Gouriage was not much of a match and our OL had their hands full. Our DL for the most part held their own against the UK OL that always seems large and talented. The one offensive score that really killed us came right after we gave it right back to them after a 4th down stop. Conversely, they kept us out of the end zone for the final three quarters.
*Having a FG attempt blocked is bad enough, but having it returned for a score was ridiculous. Championship teams don’t allow that to happen. Spurrier can vouch for that!
*The announcers talked incessantly about the crowd noise and how it affected our line calls and cadence. We play at BHG. We wrote the book on loud. That should have had little to no effect on us.
*I won’t harp on the secondary this evening. They’re still not great, but they were serviceable and made some plays and seemed to tackle better. They delivered a couple of hard hits, too. I’m not sure the LBs played as consistently as we needed them to. One play that stood out was on UK’s last TD when Moon mysteriously false-keyed inside to allow Rodriguez to walk in untouched.
*Emory is a great kid and a fine athlete. His strength is his running ability, accelerating through the smallest of creases and making tacklers miss. He throws the short routes pretty well and there’s some evidence that he’s improving his “eye game” if not reading the route progressions. Mullen has a lot of confidence in him. But as several on this site have forecast, he will likely have trouble against teams with strong Ds that force us to have to pass. The inability to stretch the secondary compresses the field, already small when progressions are most often limited. He was a little better tonight, but not good enough to turn the tide. In fairness, had Copeland kept his balance on that last drive, it might be a moot point or at least deferred for another week.
*I’m a homer. I admit it. But by George give Pierce some more carries! He’s usually our best back in terms of per carry avg and runs strong. Tonight was a night he needed about twice as many touches. Could have helped make a difference.
*Their three scores were TDs. Our three scores were one TD and two FGs. All the stats I spewed previously are pretty much meaningless by comparison :) Football is really simpler than we make it.
The plan to win was not executed. Simply put, we were not quite good enough to pull it off. The players played hard, but weren’t quite consistent enough in all phases, though there were some good plays, good moments. The same can be said of the coaches. That part starts at the top. Nobody will remember that we out-gained them in yardage, particularly on the ground, nor that we stopped eight series on third down. They will remember that our winning streak in Kentucky is over and our detractors, grinning and briskly rubbing their hands together, will cheerfully proclaim “They ain’t back!” and maybe “They ain’t coming back!” They’ve always said things like that about us. We’ve responded. I hope Dan’s listening. There are expectations waiting to be fulfilled. Go Gators!
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