Deep Ball Drought: An October without one Levis long pass completion

The inaudible gasp, followed by brief silence and an unexpected roar from the stands reignited Kroger Field with the sounds of an explosive aerial attack. Will Levis completed five passes of 30 yards or more, three of which went 50+ yards, in the 45-10 win over ULM. Since the season-opener those deep balls have slowly but surely screeched to a halt.

Over the next six games Kentucky completed just five passing plays of 30 yards or more. Only one of those happened in the month of October, a miscue by LSU that left Justin Rigg wide open just beyond the line of scrimmage to scurry 34 yards down the field. Levis is 0-10 on long passes through the air (20+ yards) since week four (Chattanooga). According to SEC StatCat, eight of those passes were uncatchable and two were intercepted.

“He’s had some ups and downs,” Mark Stoops said on this week’s SEC Teleconference. “Obviously, even this past week, he did some really good things and then he did some things you just can’t do. You can’t win on the road with certain decisions he made, interceptions, but overall I’m still extremely confident in Will. I believe he’s getting better with every opportunity. We just need him to put it together and we have to play really well around him as well.”

Deep Ball Misses by Levis

The long ball October drought is not all on Kentucky’s offense. Last month the Wildcats’ played their most difficult opponents and challenging defenses to date. Defenses have tried taking Wan’Dale Robinson out of the game, but it hasn’t always worked. Wan’Dale got loose on the first drive at Mississippi State. Instead of a touchdown, the deep ball ended as an interception. That’s on Levis.

“Wan’Dale ran a really good route. He beat the safety clean as a dream,” offensive coordinator Liam Coen said Tuesday. “That was a throw that we had shown the guys on Tuesday of some NFL teams hitting a flatter angle of the throw and when the bullets were live, it just didn’t get done. At the end of the day, it’s on (Levis). He’ll take that decision, he’ll take that throw back everyday.”

Even though he missed that throw on the first drive, Levis had an opportunity to bounce back right before half. Stoops put the ball in the quarterback’s hands and he got the Wildcats into scoring position. Josh Ali was open for a 34-yard touchdown, but the ball was overthrown. Levis was intercepted on the following play, keeping points off the scoreboard.

“They were off on a couple plays, they have connected on some before,” Stoops said at Monday’s press conference. “You saw the game Saturday, we had our opportunities We can’t miss them. Sometimes when you’re playing really good teams and you have one or two shots that are touchdowns, that’s the difference between winning and losing.”

“Greedy” Deep Shots

Kentucky’s offensive coordinator isn’t putting all of the blame on Levis’ shoulders. He kicked himself in the rear-end for “being too greedy” and dialing up the long ball to Wan’Dale on the first drive of the game.

“I think I can help in that situation, especially once we got the momentum swing with the targeting call, just don’t get greedy,” Coen said. “There’s no reason to get greedy in that instance. Let’s just get a good drive together. It’s the first drive of the game. That was me being greedy as a play-caller and I can’t put those guys in that situation.”

Being an overzealous play-caller is not always a bad thing, especially if Levis can effectively bounce back with a strong week of practice to end the deep ball drought against Tennessee.

“They got a little bit of a rush on us early, and then he threw a pick early which tends to throw you off. We just weren’t able to get him back. He’s kind of responded a little bit over the past few games. It just didn’t happen this game. He knows it…” said Coen.

“Practice performance equals game reality and that was the case last week for us. That’s on me to get fixed and get him right. He knows it. I’m aware of it obviously. We want to try to get him calmed back down, get our balance back and try to give him easier throws early on.”.”