Monday Huddle: Football time in the Bluegrass

The week you have all been waiting for has finally arrived. After Week Zero gave us an entertaining appetizer over the weekend, the real fun can begin this week with a full slate of college football waiting on us.

One of the best weekends of the year is just around the corner with college football taking over the sports world from Thursday to Monday for the beautiful holiday weekend.

The party will get started on Thursday before some intriguing games are played on Friday night. That will ultimately get us to Saturday for the first full lineup of the season before LSU-USC takes centerstage on Sunday night and Boston College-Florida State closes things down on Monday night. A glorious weekend of football awaits us all.

Over at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility, Mark Stoops is preparing his 12th team at Kentucky for another grueling season in the Southeastern Conference. Palpable buzz started to build during fall camp but a brutal schedule has many wondering how high the ceiling could be for this team.

KSR’s Monday Huddle is back for another season to serve as the official start of game week. Now we set the table for Southern Miss to make the trip from Hattiesburg to Lexington where UK will be a four-touchdown favorite in the season opener.

But there is one thing that everyone will be paying close attention to on Saturday afternoon.

First Down: Brock Vandagriff makes his Kentucky debut

There will be a lot of new for the Kentucky offense when the first unit takes the field on Saturday night at Kroger Field. Bush Hamdan will be calling plays from the box, there will be two new transfer starters on the offensive line, and North Texas wide receiver transfer Ja’Mori Maclin will receive a lot of playing time. But the biggest debut will be at quarterback.

Georgia transfer Brock Vandagriff will make his first collegiate start on Saturday and it seems like there is not much hype for the redshirt junior. The program has seemingly gone out of its way not to hype up the big-ticket acquisition, but there is no hiding from Vandagriff’s importance this season. The Wildcats need the former five-star recruit to deliver and the transfer appears to have the skill set that could make him a good fit in Hamdan’s offense that places value on the quarterback run game.

As fall camp progressed, we started to hear more about Vandagriff’s development and how impressive he was. The reports and team intel at KSR+ indicated that the redshirt junior continued to stack good days together and was one of Kentucky’s best players during the team scrimmages. Now we will get to see what the new quarterback looks like when the lights come on.

Kentucky doesn’t need Vandagriff to be great but they need him to be a productive starting quarterback that can get the ball to the Kentucky playmaker when scheme meets strong one-on-one play. Finding ways to move the chains on third down — whether through the air or on the ground — will be an added bonus. In his last public performance at the stadium, the quarterback played well in the spring game. Real games are a little different.

Vandagriff’s opening act is something everyone will be paying close attention to on Saturday night against a Southern Miss defense that could have some glaring holes in the secondary. Kentucky — and the fan base — would like to see BVG look the part in Week 1.

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Second Down: Tempo, tempo, tempo

To say that pace of play has been a massive talking point surrounding the Kentucky football program would be an understatement. Kentucky had the slowest offense in power conference football just one year after having one of the slowest. The Wildcats must find a way to play quicker.

Mark Stoops talked all offseason about moving at a crisper pace on offense but does not want Kentucky to become a true tempo offense. New offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan has installed a no-huddle operation that will allow the offense to get to the line of scrimmage immediately after the play with the next play call coming in very quickly. The new helmet communication certainly isn’t going to hurt.

Expect to see a pre-snap approach similar to what Florida State and Georgia Tech used in their game in Ireland on Saturday. The Wildcats will get to the line quickly with Brock Vandagriff getting the call from Hamdan. Once that happens, Vandagriff will communicate with the other 10 players and then get UK into their pre-snap motions if needed and ultimately snapping the football with some time left on the play clock. Getting in a traditional huddle and lining up with just a few seconds remaining on the play clock should be a thing of the past.

But how fast will Kentucky go? That is a question that we could get answered in some way on Saturday at Kroger Field. There has been talk of Kentucky playing faster and the players needing to build up stamina to play in the new offenses. We should learn soon just how quickly Kentucky wants to move on offense.

Hamdan has built the infrastructure to allow Kentucky to play faster.

Third Down: First look at a talented defense

Southern Miss will also have a lot of new offense. Former Notre Dame offensive coordinator Chip Long was a quality control assistant at Louisville last season and will now be calling plays for Southern Miss. Florida State transfer Tate Rodemaker is expected to open the season at quarterback, but the Golden Eagles have some production to replace at tailback and wide receiver.

Similar to Kentucky, USM will have many starters making their debuts on offense. But Saturday will mostly be about the Kentucky defense.

The Wildcats have extremely high expectations on that side of the ball due to some of the high-end star power on the roster. Deone Walker and Maxwell Hairston each return after posting All-SEC campaigns and are each receiving some big-time draft buzz heading into the season. D’Eryk Jackson returns at linebacker after leading this team in tackles in each of the last two seasons. Georgia transfer Jamon Dumas-Johnson was added via the transfer portal. The former blue-chip recruit earned All-American honors in 2022. There are also multi-year starters at all three levels outside of the known stars. Kentucky’s defense is well-rounded, has improved depth, and has a chance to be very good this season.

Saturday could give us an early glimpse at some of that star power facing an offense that could be somewhat limited. Week 1 will be the first showcase for how good Brad White‘s unit can become this season. Do we really see more press coverage? Does Walker flash extended periods of dominance?

We might not learn a ton about the team but we will get to see just how good some of the talent is on this defense.

The week ahead at KSR

Game week is here, and KSR will provide the Big Blue Nation with in-depth pregame content from now until kickoff arrives on Saturday night. The wait for football is finally over.

We will have full coverage of Mark Stoops’ press conference on Monday before breaking down the first depth chart of the season. From there, practice reports and daily podcasts will take over as Saturday quickly approaches.

Over at KSR+, we will have our in-depth scouting report on Southern Miss published on Thursday along with some more preseason content before the games finally start. It’s time to get this party started.