Has Kentucky football become its own worst enemy

Kentucky students enjoyed the win over Missouri. (Vicky Graff Photo)

In 1970 cartoonist Walt Kelly published a quote in his daily newspaper cartoon strip “Pogo” that has stuck with me since that time. In the cartoon Pogo (a possum) is having a difficult time walking through the Okefenokee Swamp (his home) because of all the trash that men have dumped on the ground there.

His friend Porkypine says, “Walking in the forest primeval gets me in the heart.” Pogo, stepping on all the broken bottles, cans and trash says, “It gets me in the feet.” Porkypine then says in the next panel, while looking at all the trash, “It is hard walking on all this stuff.” Pogo answers with his classic line, ” Yep son, we have met the enemy and he is us.” 

That line sums up for me the first two games of the UK football season. This team has a tremendous wealth of talent. The offensive line is stacked. They have three or four excellent running backs capped off by All-American candidate Chris Rodriguez. At least two go-to receivers in Josh Ali and Wan’Dale Robinson along with several excellent tight ends. Match that up with a quarterback in Will Levis that can accurately throw the long ball or run it out of the pocket and one has the makings of an excellent offense.

The same holds true on defense. Excellent experience and talent in the secondary, great linebacking corps headlined by D’Andre Square and Jacquez Jones, and a defensive line that features Marquan McCall in the middle to go with Josh Paschal on the outside and a trio of good defensive tackles on the inside.

On special teams, they have a senior placekicker in Matt Ruffolo who has been very accurate kicking field goals.

But, like Pogo in the comic strip, they seem to be their own worst enemies. While defeating a hapless foe in  Louisiana Monroe the first week they managed to throw an interception and fumble the ball three times, two of which they lost for a total of three turnovers for the game. ULM did not turn the ball over at all. Of course, UK won the game 45-10 but the number of costly errors in that game was cause for concern.

In week two against what I think will be a very good Missouri Tiger team, Kentucky proceeded to go down the same path.  Coach Mark Stoops in the postgame press conference said this about how the game could have been over earlier had UK not been its own worst enemy, “We had opportunities to pull away. We have to clean that up. We have to get better, and we will. You know, once again, there’s no excuse for fumbling the ball on the 6-inch line. No excuse to get a field goal blocked. You know, would I have liked to have gone for it there, but if we make the extra point — you know, make the field goal, you know, essentially ice the game. And it’s been a while since we had one blocked, I believe. So we got to get that fixed.”

Fumbling the ball at the 6-inch line, which Chris Rodriguez did twice in the game, and having a field goal blocked that would have put the game out of reach in the fourth quarter are inexcusable errors. Had the ball bounced a little differently on the blocked field goal Missouri could have scooped the ball and had smooth sailing all the way to the Kroger Field end zone which would have tied the game and turned all the momentum toward the visiting Tigers with only a few minutes left in the game.

Now don’t get me wrong, there was plenty to like in this game for Kentucky fans. Rodriguez’s 207 yards on the ground with two touchdowns and an additional receiving touchdown is phenomenal. So was the 101-yard receiving day for Wan’Dale Robinson to go along with his 73 yards on the ground. It was nice to see Justin Rigg and Izayah Cummings each have a catch in the game.

It was also nice to see the defense step up in critical situations to get big stops and none was bigger than Carrington Valentine’s pass breakup on 4th and 13 with 1:30 to go in the game. That allowed the Kentucky offense to run out the clock.

As Mark Stoops has said in the past, “I will never apologize for a win”, and I agree with him, but he also said after losing a two-touchdown lead three times in the game, ‘It is my job to get it a little cleaner. We have to finish teams.” And they do have to finish teams.

There are 10 games left on the schedule but no opponent not named Georgia should be any tougher to finish off than these Missouri Tigers. So Kentucky fans can take solace in the fact that even on a night when a lot of things went wrong, the most important thing went right.

A win is a win is a win and when it comes against an SEC East opponent it is that much sweeter.