Tim Couch predicts breakthrough for Kentucky offense: "This year should be a lot different for those guys"

The Kentucky offense finished with the No. 95 passing offense (208.5 YPG), No. 116 total offense (324.7 YPG) and No. 112 scoring offense (20.4 PPG) in college football last season. Protection was abysmal, finishing No. 127 overall in sacks allowed (3.62 per game), leading to a No. 95 overall finish in points per drive and No. 101 in yards per play.

If there’s someone who knows what a good offense is supposed to look like, it’s Kentucky football legend Tim Couch. He racked up 8,159 passing yards and 73 touchdowns his sophomore and junior years alone, going on to become the No. 1 pick in the 1999 NFL Draft.

And he knows what the Wildcats put out there in 2022 simply wasn’t good enough on that side of the football.

A change at offensive coordinator

Like all of us, he thought the move to hire Rich Scangarello as offensive coordinator was smart, simply for continuity. Liam Coen’s pro-style offense was working, so why not keep it? As the weeks passed by to open the regular season, though, Couch could tell something was off.

“After probably two or three games, I started seeing and thinking, ‘Something doesn’t look right,'” Couch said on Wednesday’s edition of KSR. “We couldn’t block some of those teams early on our schedule, Northern Illinois and some of those guys. You could kind of see it each week, trending in the wrong direction, to put it nicely.”

Protection was poor and injuries piled up. It didn’t help having Chris Rodriguez suspended four games to open the season.

“We couldn’t get anything going,” Couch added. “… It was just a struggle.”

Trust in Devin Leary

Out goes Scangarello, back comes Coen. The Wildcats then went on to add Devin Leary, who broke Phillip Rivers’ single-season touchdown record at NC State as a junior, throwing for 35 scores with just five picks at a 65.7% completion rate. Over four seasons with the Wolfpack, he threw for 6,807 yards and 62 touchdowns on 60.2% passing (568-944).

He hasn’t gotten the chance to see Leary in person yet, but he’s talked to plenty of people around the program who have, along with watching tape himself. The consensus?

“I really like his game. … From what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard throughout training camp talking to the coaches, the video I’ve seen, he looks like he’s fit right in with this offense,” Couch said. “And I think he and Liam Coen are gonna fit are gonna make a great duo. I think he feels comfortable in the offense.”

A good kind of different

There was plenty to love about Will Levis. He had every physical tool you could dream of in a quarterback while also earning respect as a leader, tough as nails. But there’s also something to be said about accuracy and decision-making, two of Leary’s best traits.

And why Couch thinks change may not necessarily be a bad thing.

“It’s very different than what we had with Will. I think with Devin, you’re going to see more of a guy who’s just a decision maker, pocket passer type of guy,” the former Wildcat said. “Will relied on a lot of athletic ability at times, he held on to the ball a little bit long at times in the pocket because he just trusted his arm strength and his athletic ability to get out of things if it broke down.

“Devin is going to be a guy who’s going to make those decisions really quickly, you know? He’s going to see it, he’s going to get a good pre-snap read, he’s going to get rid of the football. It’s going to get out of his hand and he’s going to be accurate.”

High praise for the receivers

If there was a bright spot on offense last season, it was the freshman wide receiver duo of Barion Brown and Dane Key. Those two simply got it, the former racking up 628 yards and four touchdowns through the air while the latter added 519 yards and six scores. One year of development under their belts, another offseason to get bigger, faster and stronger.

Factor in the other pass-catching talent on this roster, and Couch believes Leary will have arguably the best group of playmakers he’s ever seen at Kentucky.

“The wide receivers? Man. As a group, they’re as good as I’ve seen at Kentucky as a whole,” Couch told KSR. “When Andre Woodson was here, that group that they had with Keenan Burton and Dicky Lyons (Jr.), Jacob Tamme, Stevie Johnson, that group — they’ve got some big shoes to fill there. But I think they have the potential.

“You’re talking about two guys who walked in and started as freshmen last year in (Barion) Brown and (Dane) Key. You just don’t see that very often — and they produced. I think this year, the offense that they’re in, they’re gonna put up huge numbers. Last year, the offensive system just didn’t really fit what we were trying to do.”

Couch predicts nine wins for Kentucky football

So what is he expecting from a record standpoint? That part is tricky. The schedule is a doozy, but Kentucky has the talent to compete in every game.

All things considered, he likes the Cats to win nine games in ’23.

“Well, the schedule is tough. I mean, you’ve got Alabama coming in here, you’ve got Florida — it’s a tough schedule,” Couch said. “But I think this team, the way we play defense and I think we’re going to be much better offensively, I think this could be a nine-win team. I really do.”

He looks at games like Kentucky’s trip to Mississippi State on Nov. 4 and South Carolina on Nov. 18 as key matchups — gotta win those. And really all of the matchups the Wildcats should win on paper. When you host Alabama and play Georgia on the road, you really don’t have any room for major slip-ups.

“Obviously, there are some key games. You’ve got to go on the road and play Mississippi State, and I don’t remember the last time we played well in Starkville. It’s been a long time. That will be a key game for us,” Couch said. “You’ve got to beat Missouri, at South Carolina, some tough games but all winnable games for us.”

“We’ve got a great record against South Carolina over the last 10 years. What have they beaten us, twice over the last 10 years or something like that? And then you’ve gotta go on the road and play Vanderbilt, which doesn’t sound like a tough task, but they came in here beat us last year at home. We took their best player, so hopefully that helps.”