Missed tackles, third downs crush Kentucky defense in Athens: 'We gotta step up.'

We’re used to mediocre to bad offenses in Lexington under Mark Stoops, but the defenses are typically stout, especially under Brad White. His units will bend often, but rarely break, keeping things competitive while praying the other side of the football can put points on the board.

This season, though, it hasn’t been good enough. The Wildcats rank No. 75 in red zone defense, No. 81 in rushing defense, No. 96 nationally in scoring defense, No. 97 in third down defense, No. 104 in passing yards allowed and No. 109 in total defense — pretty ugly across the board. It got even uglier in Athens in Georgia’s 35-14 win over Kentucky, doing it in nine non-kneel possessions while averaging 6.2 yards per play with five touchdowns and a 52.2 percent success rate.

The Bulldogs made defenders miss left and right to earn extra yards, then made the Cats pay in third-and-short situations, converting on 9/12 attempts in the do-or-die down.

White called it the team’s worst tackling day of the season — and as far back as he can recall.

“It was. It was not a good performance tackling-wise and from a missed tackle standpoint,” he said. “It felt like we were heavy-legged at times.”

Those moments mattered in a game of inches, helping pad some of those third-down stats with the 75 percent conversion rate. You just can’t expect to win games against athletes of that caliber when you’re making those mistakes.

“If you want to put yourself in third and long situations where it’s not all third and two and third and three and it’s hard to get out of a down, you’ve got to be able to tackle early in downs,” White continued. “Instead of it being second and six or second and five, it’s second and eight. Then you’ve got to keep that thing and try to make a negative there on second down or force an incomplete.”

The front line has held up nicely, one of the best position groups on the team. Play at the second and third levels, however, has been inconsistent, at best. It’s frustrating, particularly because the secondary in particular was supposed to be a serious strength coming out of fall camp.

That has simply not been the case, and they know that.

“It’s probably just one-on-ones — like, we’ve got to be able to compete and win our one-on-ones. So far, at the beginning of this season, we have not won enough of those situations,” White said of the secondary. “We’ve won some, but you got to win — especially in crucial downs, on third downs, we got to be willing to challenge. We got to be able to get balls off. We understand that they’re a good team, they’re gonna make plays, we understand that.

“But I’ve got to do a good job of finding ways to relieve some of the pressure at times for those guys. We just keep trying to move the hat around so it’s not just all on one person or one group.”

Senior safety Jordan Lovett made one of the best individual plays of the day, a deep interception on Gunner Stockton’s heave down the left seam, returning it 20 yards to flip the momentum to open the second quarter.

That was an individual high, but too many other mistakes both for himself personally and the team. It starts on second down, setting up way-too-easy opportunities on third to keep moving the chains.

“We just gotta get off on second down. Miscommunications, too many missed alignments,” Lovett said. “We gotta do better, I gotta do better as a senior. We just gotta do better as a defense.”

There are young playmakers, but far too much experience with guys who have been there and done that to play as poorly as they did in Athens — and all season, for that matter.

“We gotta get off on the critical downs. It’s the critical downs that are killing us,” he continued. “As a senior-led group — me, Kahlil Saunders, Alex Afari, Ty Bryant, the rest of the leaders, we have to step up. We gotta make a big step-up, we can’t allow certain things knowing the type of team we have. …

“We gotta step up as a defense.”