Mark Stoops shares admiration for Kentucky's offensive line

After a dreadful season in 2022, Kentucky’s offensive line has rebounded for a much stronger start in 2023. However, there’s still plenty of room for improvement in the eyes of head coach Mark Stoops.

What was so odd about the ’22 season is that Stoops had turned Kentucky into a dominant program on the offensive line prior to that fall. In four straight NFL Drafts, from 2019-2022, Kentucky had O-lineman selected, something that had never come close to happening in the history of the program.

The unit powered a dominant run game over the last several seasons and is the No. 1 reason Kentucky burst through its previous ceiling to win 10 games for the first time in decades in both 2018 and 2021. Ball-carriers like Boom Williams, Benny Snell, Lynn Bowden and Chris Rodriguez — some of the best runners to ever play for the ‘Cats — accomplished such feats largely thanks to the unit up front.

So, after disaster struck in 2022, the primary focus for the offense this offseason was getting back to that standard, or at least close to it. Through two games, Stoops is pleased with the progress, but sees a ton of room to get better.

“The front’s doing good,” he reported at his press conference this week. However, he notes the unit is not playing perfect football just yet.

“Again, we got to continue to ID things and clean them up. We were better, but we weren’t perfect, and so, we need to continue as, you know, as competition continues to rise, then we need to continue to improve.”

In this past Saturday’s win over Eastern Kentucky, which was closer than it needed to be, the offensive line generally held up and blocked well. But some untimely penalties made life harder on a few third downs and ultimately helped lead to just a seven-point first half against an FCS school. That’s not what Stoops is looking for.

“Yeah, they have no excuse,” said Stoops of the penalties. Even last year’s group, which struggled to protect QB Will Levis all season long, was able to avoid pre-snap penalties in the early-going, especially in the road games vs. Florida and Ole Miss.

“If we can talk about it, last year, early in the season, going into hostile environments and executing at an extremely high level with things of that nature in a super intense situation on the road — why can’t we do it now? I think for us, it’s a heightened awareness of the discipline that it takes to always expect that from ourselves. Always. Not just against some opponents.”

The good news for Kentucky is that the blocking in both pass protection and in the run game is improved significantly. As Mark Stoops says, though, they just need to stop shooting themselves in the foot, because those mistakes can be ultra costly once SEC play begins.