Tennessee Killed the Kentucky Defense in One-on-One Situations

Football happens. The problem Saturday night at Kroger Field that is when football happened, it almost always favored Tennessee. The Vols’ passing attack created one-on-one matchups against Kentucky’s secondary and feasted on big play after big play.

On the first play of the game Tennessee scored a 75-yard touchdown on a screen pass after a Wildcat missed a tackle. It was one of five Tennessee plays of 30 yards or more. Entering the game the UK defense had allowed only seven such plays all season. The big plays resulted in 316 passing yards and four touchdowns in only 20 attempts.

“We are being put on an island on certain situations that we’re not winning enough. We’re not winning enough battles,” Mark Stoops said after the game.

“A team like that puts an awful lot of stress on you, sideline to sideline and then obviously with the vertical passing game. We didn’t keep up with them, we didn’t tackle very good in space and we didn’t cover very good.”

Josh Heupel’s offense lines up the wide receivers near the sideline, creating more space for the playmakers to operate while putting stress on defensive backs. The result was only one Kentucky pass break-up and 21 yards per Tennessee reception. If the Wildcats were put in a one-on-one situation, the Volunteer was winning that battle.

“It’s my job to try to limit those scenarios, or at least confuse the look enough that maybe it’ll come off some of those,” defensive coordinator Brad White said after the game. “At the end of the day, when you get an offense like this that spreads you out that wide, there’s going to be some opportunities that you gotta make plays. I gotta continue to find calls that help our guys, that they feel confident in executing. Again, that’s on me.”

Kentucky compounded those execution errors by letting the tempo get the defense out of position. Following a Kentucky tackle for loss, the Wildcats failed to get lined up properly, resulting in a 41-yard gain for the Vols.

“The disappointing thing today, you talk about one-on-one matchups, you’re gonna have those. But there were some communication issues, breakdowns today on the backend that is not like us. It’s not who we are,” said White. “We’ll get that fixed.”