Kentucky will let its pads do the talking against Tennessee

A road trip to Starkville left the Kentucky football team with a bad taste in its mouth. Now the Wildcats are ready to take out their collective frustration on a rival, Tennessee.

“We’re ready to play Tennessee. We want to win,” said senior defensive end Josh Paschal. “It’s a rivalry game. It’s a big game. For the seniors, this is our last SEC game at home and it’s a big one. We want to go take care of business and we’re going to go out there hungry and ready to get after it.”

The senior class could become the first to defeat SEC East rivals Florida and Tennessee in the same season since 1977. The Wildcats won in Knoxville last fall. They know what it takes to win and it doesn’t involve trash talk before the game, even though the Vols did not get that memo.

“Every year that we play them it’s personal,” Paschal said. “You don’t want to say too much. You want to go out there and speak with your pads. That’s what we’re gonna do.”

Tackling Must Improve vs. Tennessee

Kentucky’s defense did not play drastically different schematically vs. Mississippi State in 2021 than it did in 2020. The difference between a 31-point Bulldog performance and a 2-point outing is turnovers and tackling. Defensive coordinator Brad White said the Wildcats missed 21 tackles in Starkville, an enormous number that is actually not all that surprising.

“We drifted too much and then coming out of those breaks,, they weren’t sharp angles, you know, we rounded stuff and it puts you in a bad position to tackle,” said White. “And you got to come down with bad intentions and you’ve got to really want to go put your face on somebody to tackle players in the SEC and I don’t think that we necessarily did that.”

Kentucky did not play with an edge at Mississippi State. The Wildcats have to get mean and downright nasty against the Vols. Luckily, it should not be hard to find extra motivation to hit Tennessee in the mouth.

“We just harped on getting back to how things were, straining, working hard and all fighting for the same cause. I feel like guys started to drift these past three weeks, but I feel like we’re all back on the same page and ready to just win again. We’re hungry for our seventh win, so we’ll be ready,” said DeAndre Square.

“It’s a rivalry game. Everybody’s anxious and ready to play the game. The guys are pretty juiced up for this one.”