The first half went about as bad as it could have possibly gone. Self inflicted mistakes were a big part of the story there. Penalties. Drops. Overthrowing receivers.
In the second half the offense righted the ship but the defense continued to struggle. Overall it's a performance that was concerning enough that it does give you some pause about this team, because that's two weeks in a row of not looking especially crisp, and we saw last year that persistent problems early in the season foretold issues that would last for the whole season.
Devin Leary was fantastic in the second half for the second straight week. He took plenty of criticism on social media for the first half but aside from some overthrows I thought he was absolutely fine today.
A bigger issue for me is how much confidence does Kentucky have in the run game? They haven't really established a lot of balance through two weeks and some suspected preseason that the OL might be better suited for pass protection than run blocking.
Most concerning of all today was the defense. They have not played with an edge this year and tackling has left something to be desired. McKinney is a very savvy quarterback for EKU and he took advantage of Kentucky blitzing with some very effective dump offs today. But the tackling and the coverage can both be better.
Overall not a pretty game and one that we may look back at and say, "We should have known there would be issues," so they really need to wipe a team out to make everyone feel better.
In the second half the offense righted the ship but the defense continued to struggle. Overall it's a performance that was concerning enough that it does give you some pause about this team, because that's two weeks in a row of not looking especially crisp, and we saw last year that persistent problems early in the season foretold issues that would last for the whole season.
Devin Leary was fantastic in the second half for the second straight week. He took plenty of criticism on social media for the first half but aside from some overthrows I thought he was absolutely fine today.
A bigger issue for me is how much confidence does Kentucky have in the run game? They haven't really established a lot of balance through two weeks and some suspected preseason that the OL might be better suited for pass protection than run blocking.
Most concerning of all today was the defense. They have not played with an edge this year and tackling has left something to be desired. McKinney is a very savvy quarterback for EKU and he took advantage of Kentucky blitzing with some very effective dump offs today. But the tackling and the coverage can both be better.
Overall not a pretty game and one that we may look back at and say, "We should have known there would be issues," so they really need to wipe a team out to make everyone feel better.
