Joey Gatewood (SEC Photo)
Georgia has owned Kentucky in football. The Bulldogs have won the last 10 games and have six straight wins in Lexington, including 2018 when UK had a chance to win to take the SEC East crown and was no match at all for Georgia. The two teams play again Saturday at noon at Kroger Field with UK coming off a horrendous 20-10 loss at Missouri that has Kentucky coach Mark Stoops at least contemplating a quarterback change.
Georgia obviously has to prepare for both starter Terry Wilson and backup Joey Gatewood. Even if Kentucky coach Mark Stoops did say that true freshman Beau Allen was also in the quarterback mix, I doubt Smart is working on a game plan to defend Allen.
Smart said Monday it really did not make that big a difference whether UK went with Wilson or Gatewood.
“They both have a running element. They really fit the style of offense that Eddie (Gran) has been using for a while—really well in terms of what they want to do and how they dictate the run-game to you,” Smart said.
That’s because Smart knows what kind of offensive line UK has had in front of the quarterback.
“When you look across the last couple of years, if you ask anybody across our league, not statistically, not looking in terms of what you guys would look at in terms of numbers, their physicality up front has been very evident,” Smith said. “When you go back and watch our last couple of games against them, just us individually, their offensive line is extremely physical and we haven’t tackled well.
“I don’t know if you give them credit for that, the athletes they’ve had, whether it was Lynn Bowden or Terry the year before or just the fact they block you and get a lot of one-on-one tackles. They have done a really good job in terms of being physical at the line of scrimmage.
“Both of those quarterbacks present issues in terms of contain, how you play people outside when you are playing against them. They’ve always done a good job of that.”
Consider that CoachSpeak unless Smart did not watch the film of how Mississippi State and Missouri overwhelmed UK’s offense because neither had any fear of UK’s passing game.
Considering Georgia will have the best defense UK has faced, odds are the Dogs won’t have much trouble extending their dominance over UK this week.
