We didn't play Johnson or Snell in our first 2 games last year. They completely changed our team.
Yep!
We were the youngest team in America, last season, so the old mantra of "bigger, stronger, faster" might really be appropriate this season.
And as the quoted post says, there was an unusual emergence of two players who had received no preseason hype, last year, during the 3rd game.
Benjamin Snell, Jr., and quarterback Steven Johnson, Jr., had their coming out parties in the same game, when UK was 0-2, and trailing at home to New Mexico State. They played lots (after the injury to starting QB Barker sustained in the So. Miss game and then re-injured in the NMS game).
Snell ended the season tied for second in the SEC for TD's, and Johnson was in the top 5 QB's in the nation for TD tosses of 40 yards or more. Our whole offense slowly evolved into a power running game, punctuated by long throws. A far cry from the "hunt-and-peck, yards-after-catch" Air Raid we saw against Southern Miss, and could not execute AT ALL against Florida with a gimpy Barker.
In short, consider two statistics/comparisons from 2016: UK rushed for its most yards in a season, since its SEC title season of 1976, and Steven Johnson, Jr. threw for more lengthy TD's than UK legends Tim Couch and Andre Woodson, combined, in their multi-season careers at UK.