Sick of Losing, Jamon Dumas-Johnson Pleas, "We gotta make some changes"

Frustration filled the air at Kroger Field following the 20-13 loss to Vanderbilt. It was evident from the fans in the stands, down to the Kentucky coaches and the players on the sidelines.

Linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson was among the masses. Losing hits even harder for the former Georgia Bulldog. Following the demoralizing defeat to South Carolina, he shared that he had not lost a regular season game since his sophomore season of high school football.

Kentucky appeared to turn its season around after the week two loss. In Mark Stoops’ postgame press conference, he made it clear that history repeated itself.

“When I turn on the film tonight, I’m gonna see a lot of the same mistakes that we made in another loss,” he said.

At least from that loss, the Cats seemed to learn their lessons, right? Dumas-Johnson doesn’t care.

“I don’t want to keep repeating the losing, play another team, and win again,” said the linebacker. “I’m not used to that. I ain’t from that. Definitely not trying to get used to it.

“We gotta make some changes, not try, we gotta make some changes because I’m not used to this feeling and I don’t like this feeling.”

No Explanation for Poor Performance

The South Carolina game appeared to be a turning point. Then they went and did it again. Why? No one can explain it.

“No matter what message you give to a team, you gotta go out there and execute the call,” said Dumas-Johnson. “Play as a team, but I don’t think we played our ball today. The reason why? I don’t know, but we just gotta play ball. We’ve already seen what type of ball we can play as a team. That just didn’t happen today. Why? I don’t know.”

How Kentucky dropped the ball is abundantly clear. They made one self-inflicted mistake after another. It happened in a variety of ways, but the primary culprit was penalties. The least penalized team in the SEC had 12 for 106 yards Saturday night.

“They killed the whole game… As a whole, we just gotta limit the penalties. It kills a game like that. You have no chance when you have penalties like that, especially that last drive,” he said.

The Kentucky linebacker is clearly frustrated, just like the rest of us. However, his experience and expertise could play a vital role in ensuring we don’t reach these depths of depravity again.

“We just got calm down. I’ve been in situations like this and came out on top multiple times. Get a quick stop, three-and-out, let the offense try to do their thing, give the offense a chance. I think that’s what we did the last two minutes, but the message is to just calm down, we’re good.”

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