Kentucky offensive line is looking to play connected as rebuild begins

Using both the eye test and advanced metrics, Kentucky might have had the worst offensive line in the Power Five last season. You cannot expect to score points and win football games with bad line-of-scrimmage play. This is the elephant in the room hovering over the program.

As Liam Coen returns to call plays at Kentucky in 2023, the coaching staff and personnel on the roster must find a way to make big improvements before the season arrives in September. The offensive line play will have a lot to do with establishing the floor and ceiling of this offense.

The 15 practices in the spring present a huge opportunity as there is time to tinker with alignments, bank a lot of reps with experienced players, and see what is there in 11-on-11 football activities. Through two practices, Coen believes some strides are being made.

Physicality, connection, and communication are emerging as the three key pillars for this current version of the Big Blue Wall.

“We did some nice things in the run game yesterday in terms of just blocking movement. Something that we’ve really tried to emphasize over the course of our winter workouts,” Coen told reporters on Tuesday. “I thought from a communication standpoint upfront, just being connected, that’s really what we’re trying to work on upfront is getting back to that connection. And truly playing as one unit.”

“That comes with reps but I thought they took a step yesterday.”

Subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel for press conferences, interviews, original shows, fan features, and exclusive content.

That is good to hear. According to Coen, Kentucky is doing the typical alignment shuffling and cross training (both Jager Burton and Eli Cox are getting reps at center. Meanwhile, Kenneth Horsey is locked in at left guard after playing left tackle last season. Marques Cox has stepped to replace the hole that Horsey left by sliding inside. Meanwhile, there is a full-on competition at right tackle brewing with no names specifically mentioned.

This all checks out. There are tangible reasons to believe the offensive line can make a jump at four positions. However, we’re all waiting to see how right tackle plays out. With another transfer portal window coming in May, there will be another opportunity for the coaching staff to add talent to the position. But in the meantime, growth needs to be made.

Most notably, Kentucky needs its five guys in the trenches to play as a collective unit.

“The connection, communication, playing as one. Playing together, being all on the same page, and if we make a mistake we make a mistake full speed. But we’re trying to just slow ourselves down a little bit upfront,” Coen told reporters. “We still want to come off the rock and be physical, but we’re also trying to just slow ourselves down. Being able to get our second step in the ground and be able to see that movement that so often last year we struggled with. So that’s been the biggest emphasis is being able to block and handle movement.”

As most will remember handling simple twist stunts for the offensive line last year was a major issue. That led to the Wildcats ranking No. 104 in stuff rate (20.3%) and No. 128 in sack rate (12.3%). Defenses were able to constantly produce havoc plays leading to stalled drives. Kentucky cannot have that happen again.

Banking reps together, staying off the injury report, creating consistent communication, and playing as one unit is the top task for the Big Blue Wall. The position battles will end up shaking themselves out but the Wildcats cannot have the overwhelming amount of simple busts that we saw occur last season.