First Down Kentucky: Adjusting After an Eye-Opening Letdown

They aren’t who they thought they were. The Kentucky coaches felt like they had a good idea of what their team was after a month of preseason practice and 2.5 quarters against Southern Miss. The offense in particular received a wake-up call in the loss to South Carolina.

“You go into every season thinking one thing. You get into a conference game and some things certainly stick out, so it shifts a little bit from what spring ball looked like and maybe what that first week looked like and now you gotta adjust,” offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan said Tuesday night.

“That’s obviously what we’re here to do is figure out what we gotta do to win football games. Obviously, there will be some adjustments after last week.”

What will those adjustments be? Hamdan isn’t going to spill the beans, but he did note that they aren’t starting from scratch.

“These aren’t drastic turns here. Nothing that we’re looking at is — we gotta do something out of what we’ve been training to do. We’ve just gotta focus, execute, and do a better job around (the quarterback),” said Hamdan.

Brock Vandagriff played poorly, but so did the offensive line. Watching the film from the South Carolina game was not a pleasant experience. The one good sign is that players were prepared to show accountability when they returned to practice for week three.

“The good thing about this program, the good thing about this culture, I really don’t feel like there’s a lot of pointing fingers going on,” said Hamdan. “Everybody came back to work on Monday looking at themselves. Certainly from a staff standpoint, our players, what do we gotta do better to play as well as we can play?”

Building Back Confidence for Vandagriff

It was a worst-case scenario in Vandagriff’s first SEC start. The Kentucky quarterback took more sacks (4) than completed passes (3). Clearly rattled by the pressure, Hamdan believes Vandagriff can rediscover his confidence, despite the daunting task that lies ahead.

“He’s a tough and resilient kid. He’s been through it in his own way, whether he’s been the starter or not the starter, he’s been going through the highs and lows. We have full confidence he’ll bounce back,” said Hamdan.

“I think it comes down to getting him in rhythm early, getting him an easy completion. Everything we’re trying to do with this game plan moving forward is to get him some confidence back there and get the ball out of his hands, complement it with a good run game.”

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Young Kentucky Offensive Linemen Poised to get Reps

One of the biggest criticisms of Eric Wolford‘s first stint at Kentucky was the lack of a rotation in the trenches that stunted the development of the offensive line. Tasked to build depth, the offensive line is turning to some youngsters this week out of necessity.

Aba Selm, a true freshman from Northern Kentucky, will likely see some snaps at left guard. Jager Burton was injured during a second quarter field goal attempt and is expected to be on tomorrow’s availability report. Malachi Wood, a redshirt freshman from Richmond, got some reps with the ones at right tackle. It will be a trial by fire against Georgia in their real SEC test.

Connections with Kentucky Transfer Portal Players

Vandagriff should know his opponent pretty well. The former Georgia backup faced this defense quite often in practice. He was even roommates with a starting defensive lineman. Will he be able to provide any secrets on their personnel? Any sort of advantage is probably overblown. We all know how good this Georgia football team is.

Marques Cox had a different experience on Saturday. After suffering a bad loss, he saw his old Northern Illinois coach, Thomas Hammock, get emotional following a monumental upset of Notre Dame.

“I was so happy for them, so proud of them,” said Cox. “Coach Hammock is a great coach and it actually brought tears to me. That was great to watch them, watch the highlights, and see them get a Boneyard Victory in South Bend.”

The Greatest Challenge for Gavin Wimsatt

Gavin Wimsatt saw his first action as a Wildcat on Saturday. He took some snaps as a Wildcat quarterback, then played the final few series in the fourth quarter. The greatest challenge in his new role is being prepared to go in at any given moment. He’s subbing more like a running back than a traditional quarterback.

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