Kentucky's physical brand of football must return in 2023

Kentucky was not the best version of itself in 2022. Much of that had to do with some inefficient play at the point of attack.

After consistently churning out top-five offensive lines in the SEC for a half-decade, things got ugly for the Big Blue Wall, and it led to disastrous offensive results. Meanwhile, there were other areas where Kentucky wasn’t as physical as they needed to be. Kentucky lost its edge in 2022 and cannot go through another season without it.

A key for head coach Mark Stoops entering his 11th season at Kentucky is getting that nastiness back and playing to the standard established in Lexington.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that we have to get back to being who we are at Kentucky. And we’ve always been a physical football team, and it started up front and playing physical on the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. I feel like we fell short of that a year ago,” Stoops told the media on Wednesday afternoon in Nashville. “Obviously we have to improve. We have to protect the quarterback. We have to be physical and have some balance.”

Last season, Will Levis had one of the highest sack rates (11.6%) and pressure rates (37.8%) in college football. The second-round pick was constantly hit and knocked off platform. The running game was anemic without Chris Rodriguez Jr. in the backfield. Multiple times, Stoops came into a postgame press conference upset about the way his team played. Kentucky has established a standard as a blue-collar program that is one of the most physical teams in college football. That disappeared last year and needs to return in 2023.

A buzzword at the Grand Hyatt for Eli Cox, Octavious Oxendine, and J.J. Weaver was consistency. The Wildcats had too many ups and downs last fall and need to get back to playing Kentucky football. In recent seasons, opposing teams have publicly talked about how physical games were with Kentucky. Stoops wants his team to get back to earning that reputation.

“I hope they think of it as a team that — I said it day one — very blue collar. Very tough and fundamentally sound and put our players in position to win. We know that there’s areas where you fall short on that and there’s times when you do it well, but overall, our program has solid foundation and solid structure and at the core that’s what I want to be,” Stoops said. “I want to be tough, I want to be physical, I want to be well coached. And then we want to be cute and score points.”

“I do feel a sense of pride in that when people walk around and they know the style of play that we play. We’re far from perfect but I think that we’ve earned people’s respect over the last 10-plus years.”

During that run, Stoops is 66-59 and the program’s all-time winningest head football coach. Over the last five years, the Wildcats have won 40 games and a case can be made that the Cats are the second-best program in the East behind Georgia during that stretch. However, that rise happened with physical play and a tone set by the offensive line. With a new SEC arriving in 2024, UK must get back to its standard after an off year in 2022. Last season cannot be the start of a trend.

“You’re not going to compete for a championship unless you’re that,” Stoops said about playing physical.