Kentucky lays mammoth egg in primetime opportunity

The ball was teed up for Kentucky football in Week 9. Mark Stoops and his football program had the chance to issue a statement in a national window with a lot of eyes watching.

What followed in 60 minutes at Neyland Stadium was one of the worst performances we’ve seen from this program in recent memory.

The offense had a bad game plan with poor execution, the defense had numerous coverage busts, and the kicking game was atrocious yet again. Kentucky just ate a big piece of humble pie on Rocky Top.

KSR is live from the press box in Knoxville to provide some instant takeaways on what was an ugly and unacceptable performance.

Kentucky had suboptimal offensive game plan

In the Week 7 home win over ranked Mississippi State, offensive coordinator Rich Scangarello went to heavy personnel and got run heavy on first and second down with Chris Rodriguez Jr. rumbling for a big game. When the Cats got into third-down situations, Will Levis made enough plays to lead to a huge second-half performance.

That mainly worked because Mississippi State had a poor run defense to that point in the season. The Bulldogs entered the game ranking No. 99 in yards per rush, No. 82 in rushing EPA, and No. 60 in rushing success rate.

The same could not be said for Tennessee.

Under defensive coordinator Tim Banks, the Vols play downhill and want to stop the run at all costs. That has led to this unit ranking No. 8 in yards per rush, No. 7 in rushing EPA, and No. 18 in rushing success rate. However, this style comes with a cost as their aggressiveness has led to some very bad pass defense numbers.

Despite the strong run defense, Kentucky did not stray away from its plan against Mississippi State. The Cats ran the ball constantly on early downs in the 44-6 beatdown, and Tennessee got Kentucky behind the chains constantly. That put the offensive operation in a bad spot as Levis had the worst game of his season (19.4% passing success rate, 3.6 yards per attempt, and 3 interceptions).

Scangarello’s rushing attack finished the game with a 41.9 percent rushing success rate and averaged 4.1 yards per rush. Those are not terrible numbers, but the offense got behind the sticks more times than not as the Vols logged more than a few no gainers. From there, Levis was unable to come away with third down magic.

Instead of taking advantage of the aggressiveness of the Tennessee defense on early downs in the first half, Kentucky played right into the hands of the Vols. It led to the worst performance of the season.

Coverage busts come at a bad time

Hendon Hooker is rightfully receiving some Heisman Trophy buzz this season, but it’s clear that his top wideout also deserves some shine for the most popular individual trophy in sports. Jalin Hyatt entered Saturday with 17 receptions, 444 yards, and nine touchdowns in his last three games.

The future All-American again performed well on the big stage with five receptions for 138 yards and two touchdowns on Saturday night against Kentucky. However, two coverage busts led to both of his touchdowns.

On the opening drive, Hooker connected with Hyatt on a 55-yard touchdown sideline with outside linebacker J.J. Weaver trailing in coverage. However, Kentucky appeared to be in a zone defense and should have had help over the top.

The same thing happened at the end of the first half when Hyatt got loose for a 31-yard touchdown reception as Weaver trailed in coverage but again had his help disappear over the top.

Kentucky’s defense was put in bad spots constantly by its offense and kicking game but we’ll get to that later. For the Cats to pull off an upset in Neyland Stadium, the defense couldn’t afford to have these busts.

Unfortunately, two in the first half led to half of Tennessee’s touchdowns before the break.

Tennessee owned the hidden yardage battle

In recent victories over LSU and Alabama, Josh Heupel’s offense was able to cash in on short fields to build an early double-digit lead. That allowed the Vols to establish the tempo of the game. Kentucky avoided the slow start, but could not stop giving Tennessee short fields after the opening period.

Tennessee had 12 possessions in the game with five starting on Kentucky’s side of the 50. In total, the Vols had a sizable field position advantage (+24) with Heupel’s offense averaging possession starts on their own 45 and Kentucky averaging possession starts at their own 21 with four starting inside the 20. Tennessee’s offense is too good to get easy scoring chances like this.

Three interceptions all led to short fields, but net yardage punts of 18 yards, 33 yards, and 11 yards all led to easy scoring opportunities. The kicking game was awful again as the Cats got both a punt and an extra point blocked as there continue to be snapping issues.

Kentucky cannot win without playing complementary football. That showed up big-time in Knoxville and was the No. 1 reason the game got ugly. The offense and special teams let the defense down in the embarrassing loss.

It’s time to talk about the offensive operation

Now it’s time to get to the elephant in the room. Offensive coordinator Rich Scangarello took over an offense that Liam Coen had turned into a top-25 attack and expectations were rightfully sky-high in 2022 with an NFL quarterback, All-SEC tailback, deep tight end room, and a young but explosive wide receiver unit.

The offensive line issues were unavoidable, but there was enough there to reasonably expect Kentucky to once again be a top-30 offense that could score over 30 points per game and play the ball-control style Mark Stoops prefers.

We’ve played eight games this season with five SEC contests, and Scangarello’s unit is nowhere close to meeting expectations. In the big window games this season — Florida, Ole Miss, and Tennessee — this offense is averaging only 14.7 offensive points per game. None of these defensive units rank inside the top 20 of SP+’s adjusted efficiency rankings.

Despite having the personnel that should be able to score points, Kentucky looks like they have one of the worst offenses in the SEC and are currently averaging only 23.9 points per game and haven’t scored more than 31 points in a game this season.

There’s no getting around it — the offense has been a surprising disappointment this season and is the main culprit for why Kentucky sits at 5-3 (2-3) despite having a legit top-15 defense. Whatever we’ve seen through eight games is not working.

Things need to get fixed on that side of the football and they need to get fixed in a hurry. If nothing changes for the better in the final four regular season games, it’s fair to wonder if a difficult coaching staff decision or two may need to be made after the season.

At the end of the day, you are what the results are. Currently, these offensive results simply are not good enough.