Kentucky Cornerbacks weren't the problem vs. Tennessee

Mark Stoops was prepared to spend an entire Monday afternoon ripping apart Kentucky’s cornerbacks for the way they played against Tennessee. Then he popped on the tape and it told a different story.

“The corners I felt like two games ago (vs. Mississippi State) at times were maybe not competing at the level that I expect out of them, and I did see that Saturday. I did see improvement,” Stoops said. “You may not because you’re like, ‘What the heck? You give them so many yards.’ But watching specific guys and seeing specific matchups and then winning; They won more than I thought just watching the game live.”

To be precise, Kentucky allowed 316 passing yards and four touchdowns on only 15 complete passes. According to Stoops, it wasn’t always a cornerback problem.

Not a Transfer Portal Problem

The transfer portal greatly benefitted Kentucky this offseason. The Wildcats added four starters — Will Levis, Wan’Dale Robinson, Dare Rosenthal and Jacquez Jones — that made an immediate impact, propelling the Wildcats to a 6-0 start. Kentucky also lost players in the portal, including a pair of cornerbacks. Jamari Brown went to Purdue and MJ Devonshire transferred to Pitt. Their absence is not the problem with UK’s pass defense.

“I don’t want to call out any any specific guys. You know, I recommended those young men do what they did,” Stoops said. “We need to, again, play better. I’m not trying to put this on any one person, but the corners actually played pretty good. We played poorly inside, inside out.”

A Tackling Problem

When Stoops describes Kentucky’s pass defense problem as an “inside problem,” he’s looking right at the safeties. UK’s head coach did not publicly single out Tyrell Ajian, Davonte Robinson, Vito Tisdale, Jalen Geiger or Yusuf Corker, but I’m sure they will hear his wrath during Monday meetings.

“Defensively, it was very frustrating because there was a lot of guys playing extremely hard. As I mentioned, with the style that they play, the way they spread you out, if you lose a one-on-one situation, the whole defense suffers, and the whole team suffers. We did that too many times,” Stoops said.

“Again, there were some obvious situations that I don’t need to call out any one specific player or anything like that. But there were some missed tackles at safety and on the perimeter that we got to leverage moments. It’s as simple as leveraging the football. How many how many times have I talked about that? I can’t talk about it anymore. You know, we got to get it taught. It’s Football 101. Leverage the damn ball. First play of the game we don’t leverage the ball.”

That missed tackle led to a 75-yard touchdown. It was one of ten explosive plays that accounted for almost 80% of the yards gained by the Volunteers. Kentucky must get back to the basics to fix the pass defense problems in the final three games of the season.

“Some individual guys giving up missed tackles and missed plays, you know it’s not winning football,” said Stoops. “We have to get that addressed and get that fixed as we move forward.”