Terry Wilson (SEC Photo)
Let’s be realistic. Many UK fans thought this year’s experienced Kentucky team would overachieve and win eight games or more this season with a 12 game regular season. I was one of them. Unfortunately no one foresaw what the year 2020 would actually become.
No one saw the unfortunate circumstances that surround Chris Oats health before the season even started. No one foresaw a 10-game SEC only schedule. No one foresaw the difficult times created from the untimely passing of offensive line coach John Schlarman. No one can still comprehend the impact that event has had on this group of players and coaches. No one foresaw the Covid-19 outbreak and contact tracing that would cause Kentucky to be without 16-18 players and three staff members against the No. 1 and No. 6 teams in the country.
But let’s also be realistic in a different way. There are pieces of this UK football team that are broken this year. Special teams is one of those pieces. The offense is another.
It seems pretty obvious what’s wrong with special teams. There is no on-the-field coach and it has shown in almost every game this season. Breakdowns in kickoff and punt coverage, missed extra points and field goals, poor returns on kickoffs, fake punts gone awry and fake punts completed by opponents. There’s not much good to say about special teams.
The other broken piece is the offense. Coming into this season it appeared that UK would have an experienced quarterback that had won multiple games in the SEC, one of the best offensive lines in the country and a stable of running backs that had speed and power. No one envisioned that the quarterback was one-dimensional, couldn’t consistently throw the ball down the field accurately and didn’t seem to be very adept at reading the defense of the opponent.
Early in the season it looked like he was just shaking off some rust but here at the end of the season it looks more like he is a very good athlete that is trying to play quarterback. It’s just not working. Opponents don’t respect the pass, stack the box against the run and unfortunately UK has no ability with Terry Wilson in the game to stretch the field via vertical passes down the field.
But in defense of Terry Wilson, he has played well in some wins this season, most notably against Tennessee in a 34-7 win in Knoxville, and in stretches has been able to move the ball. But without the ability to throw the ball accurately and consistently over the middle of the field it’s almost impossible to win in the SEC. Players are too talented and coaches are too smart.
Terry Wilson runs well but he is not Lynn Bowden Jr. and without that type of playmaking ability an offense that runs the ball 80 percent of the time won’t work. It looks good with Benny Snell or Lynn Bowden but not so good with guys that are good athletes but not “once in a generation” type players.
It also appears that Eddie Gran is taking most of the heat for the 121st ranked offense in the country. And he deserves some of it. It’s his job to get the players ready to play. It’s his job to come up with an offensive scheme that puts his players in the best position to win. In his defense I believe he has tried to do that. He has tried to hide the weaknesses of his players by only asking them to do what they do well. The quarterback is not a consistently accurate passer so Gran tries to call easy throws that will allow him to get completions and mixes those in with a lot of runs.
He tries to play to UK’s strengths which are physical line play and, with Chris Rodriguez, a punishing runner to go with two speed backs. Earlier in the season that was more successful but as the season moved along SEC defensive coordinators game planned to take away the run and force UK to pass the ball. Unfortunately that’s not a strength of this team with this quarterback.
I know some of you are asking, “Why not switch quarterbacks?” That’s not as easy as it looks. Nether of the backups, Joey Gatewood and Beau Allen, have much, if any, experience playing college football. Gatewood had a few plays at Auburn as a freshman and Allen is a true freshman right out of high school. It’s almost impossible to win in the SEC with an inexperienced underclassman at the helm. Other SEC teams are proving that once again this year.
So Eddie Gran and Mark Stoops have a dilemma. Do they continue to play the experienced but limited Terry Wilson at quarterback hoping the defense and a limited offense can win game or do they take their lumps early on and go with Gatewood or Allen hoping they develop into a quarterback that can read defenses and pass accurately by mid-season? Also remember that Kentucky’s wide receivers have yet to prove that they can consistently get open and catch the ball against SEC defenses.
So, as the head coach and offensive coordinator, do you go with your upperclassmen for as long as you can hoping that eventually his experience will help carry the team and overcome his limited passing ability? Or do you go with a more talented but inexperienced quarterback knowing that inexperience could cost you games and with no guarantee that the quarterback will develop into a winning player by mid-season next year?
Mark Stoops decided to do the former. Stick with experience, give your senior quarterback the opportunity to try to win games and work to hide the weaknesses from defensive coordinators around the league. It worked for awhile. Kentucky picked up wins against Mississippi State and Tennessee by playing great defense and scoring points through field position and running the ball. But after adversity hit the team through John Schlarman’s death and COVID-19 the cracks started to show and the wheels fell off. The defense couldn’t carry all the load, especially being short of players and having to play much more than their share of the snaps due to the poor play of the offense.
Where should Stoops go from here? Ride the season out with Terry Wilson, honor his dedication to the program by letting him play the last game against South Carolina and any bowl game the Cats may play in hoping to somehow get a spark going or switch to Gatewood or Allen for the last two games knowing one of them will be the starter next season?
It’s a tough decision. If you go away from Terry Wilson and find out that neither Gatewood or Allen can move the ball either, then what do you do? Go back to Wilson? And if you do, has the team completely lost confidence by then? That’s the yo-yo strategy that Jeremy Pruitt has employed at Tennessee and so far they have won two games, with what is perennially a Top 15 recruiting class.
Stoops knows he has reached beyond the end of the rope. He said as much after the game. “It’s losing football. It’s not good enough. It’s not going to win games if you can’t get first downs. Not good enough,” Stoops said about his team’s current offensive execution.
He knows a change has to be made. But what change? He admitted that right now UK’s offense doesn’t measure up. He said, “We are just not good enough and that is on us. We have to get better.” But does that mean not talented enough or not willing to correctly execute the plays that are called? Does that mean wholesale changes in the coaching staff after the season or does that mean switching away from a run-oriented offense in favor of a play-action pocket passing type offense similar to the changes Alabama and Ohio State have made in recent years?
One thing is for sure, there is not a UK fan alive that wants to win more than Stoops. The other sure thing is that Stoops and Gran have earned some time to get this problem corrected. Being the second winningest coach in UK history earns you that.
Saturday’s game with South Carolina might give some hints about what changes are to come but I wouldn’t count on it. My guess is Stoops will continue to try to play close to the vest on offense against the Gamecocks and lean on the defense in hopes of eking out a fourth win and hoping to get to a bowl game for the extra couple of weeks of practice.
Stoops said Saturday, “That’s losing football” and it might be but so is throwing the ball down the field to the other team multiple times. There is no easy answer to the problem and that’s why we continue to see the staff stick with what they’ve been doing. Unfortunately for fans it’s getting less and less palatable with each week.
— Keith Peel, Contributing Writer
