Stoops prasies Brock Vandagriff's progress, resiliency: "He's competing his tail off"

Kentucky’s issues on offense, particularly with the passing game, have been well noted this season. After back-to-back losses in which the Cats failed to score a touchdown, the offense finally showed some life on Saturday vs. Ohio.

Brock Vandagriff completed 17 of 24 pass attempts for 237 yards, both career highs, and ran seven times for 21 yards in the 41-6 victory. The Cats totaled scored five touchdowns and amassed almost 500 yards of total offense. Although the Bobcats’ defense is one of the easier units Kentucky will face this year, Mark Stoops was just happy to see some progress, especially from his starting quarterback.

“He’s getting better, and I feel like he’s getting more comfortable with every rep,” Stoops said at today’s press conference. “He’s competing his tail off. I mean, it was evident this past week, and each and every week.”

Vandagriff began the game a perfect 7-7 for 69 yards. Four of those passes were for 15+ yards, the final one to Dane Key at the one-yard line. Demie Sumo-Karngbaye scored on the next play, snapping Kentucky’s nine-quarter streak without a touchdown. Vandagriff and Key connected seven times on Saturday for 145 yards, both grading in the top ten in their position groups among Power Four players on Pro Football Focus. Although Kentucky led Ohio comfortably most of the game, the Cats continued to throw it instead of milking the clock on the ground.

“I wanted to improve,” Stoops said. “I wanted to get better. I wanted to start throwing the ball. Sometimes in the past, you’ve seen us just grind it out, just bleed out the clock, and just get on to the next game but we clearly have work to do.”

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Pass protection continues to be an issue. The Big Blue Wall allowed two sacks on Saturday, one of which killed a scoring opportunity. There were also five quarterback hits and seven tackles for loss. The fact that Vandagriff put up the numbers he did was impressive given how much he scrambled and worked outside of the pocket. With SEC play picking back up on Saturday at No. 6 Ole Miss, which has the No. 1 scoring defense in the country (5.5 allowed points per game), that may not last. Stoops praised his quarterback for how he’s handled the offensive line’s leaky play thus far.

“Whether it’s Georgia, Ohio, or anybody, it doesn’t affect him. Some quarterbacks will get very frustrated with the lack of time that he’s had, but he deals with it and he’s a competitor. That part of it doesn’t faze him, as far as the frustration. He’s ready to get right back out there and get back in the mix. You’ve got to love that about him.”

After the Ohio game, Vandagriff likened dealing with pressure from defenders to sensing colors.

“It’s tough at times, because you’re keying your safeties downfield or whoever you want to key, trying to see the coverage, trying to see what routes are going to be there against what coverage that is,” Vandagriff said. “It’s kind of a feel thing, you’re feeling color. As you’re doing your dropback, you’re not looking dead in front of you at the rush, you can’t look at the rush. That’s some of the stuff I’ve tried to do, being able to — maybe as a wide rush, I’m able to step up.

“But if there’s push in front of you, you’re just sensing color, sensing pressure, and just trying to get out of there.”

Stoops said he was pleased with Vandagriff’s decision-making under pressure on Saturday, singling out the 36-yard completion to Dane Key on 4th and seven in the second quarter.

“I thought we hit some the other day,” Stoops said of throws out of the pocket. “Had a huge completion to Dane (Key). Thought we missed one, to your point, where the receiver could have came back, and maybe that was Dane on one where he could’ve came back at him, may have been a penalty anyway, but we work that, we work off schedule and he’s (Brock) not afraid to work off schedule, both pulling it down as you’ve seen, or buying time.”