Just over a month from today, Kentucky football kicks off. Here are my thoughts!
- Thread starter Rhavicc
- Start date
UT hasn't been much of a frontrunner in football since my freshmen year of college. Lol
During the streak to UT their was several games we should have won but found a way to lose. Also some of the games the refs were horrendous towards us.
Even still when UT has won 28 out of 29 games it would be hard to say it has been very competitive.
Oh I agree it hasn't been competitive but we were leading several games until the very last. Should of had a few more wins except the play calling was atrocious and in others the refs were.
Eh it's always been my view that if you leave it up to the refs you've already lost. Ex: UK/UF 2014, UT/UF 2014
I'm one of those, but it isn't because I don't think we're good enough. We should win 7 with a chance at 8. The issue, imo, is a change in mindset. Knowing they can win. It's hard to go from where we've been to seeing yourself as winning every game. You have to think you can before you will. Let's hope the coaches have fixed that for them now.
Just to reply to 2 comments above:
Missouri has beaten us IIRC 33-10, 48-3, and 20-10 in a game last year where we barely moved the ball at all, a pretty one sided 10 point loss. Sort of like we "only" beat Vandy 17-7 last year, but the outcome was never in doubt. But on paper at least, we should have talent pretty comparable to them, so I hope for the best this year.
As for Butch Jones, I saw his teams play in person several times at UC and they would have smoked Kentucky, no question in my mind. Plus UT has clobbered us the last two years with him as head coach. He was definitely my first choice to replace Joker. And it is not just my opinion he is the better coach, I am pretty sure that reports were that Mitch Barnhart called him, and he politely declined to talk to UK. Then MB moved on to other candidates.
That is not to say Stoops is not a good coach, just that if you asked 1000 fans nationwide who they would rather have, 95% would pick Jones right now.
Missouri has beaten us IIRC 33-10, 48-3, and 20-10 in a game last year where we barely moved the ball at all, a pretty one sided 10 point loss. Sort of like we "only" beat Vandy 17-7 last year, but the outcome was never in doubt. But on paper at least, we should have talent pretty comparable to them, so I hope for the best this year.
As for Butch Jones, I saw his teams play in person several times at UC and they would have smoked Kentucky, no question in my mind. Plus UT has clobbered us the last two years with him as head coach. He was definitely my first choice to replace Joker. And it is not just my opinion he is the better coach, I am pretty sure that reports were that Mitch Barnhart called him, and he politely declined to talk to UK. Then MB moved on to other candidates.
That is not to say Stoops is not a good coach, just that if you asked 1000 fans nationwide who they would rather have, 95% would pick Jones right now.
You give Towles a complete pass and blame Neal Brown and his surrounding players? That is totally inaccurate. Towles has plenty of issues. Two of them being:
- He can't see the field.
- He can't deliver on short and intermediate routes. Numerous times, he could not throw a catchable ball last season for short throws that would have ended up being first downs.
If those two things don't improve a lot, he won't be much better this season. Watch tape of how Jameis Winston threw perfectly catchable short/intermediate throws last season and then compare it to Towles.
Towles has a long way to go if he is ever going to sniff a NFL field.
Butch is a better coach than Stoops? Wow, that's a stretch....How do you figure?
UT recruiting is on fire and that's main reason I pick them to win the East. Not because Butch is such a wonderful coach.
Was what I said about Neal Brown false? I recall seeing the ball being thrown downfield close to 3 times a game. UK's best game came against Florida, arguably the best pass defense in the SEC, and Towles went off. What did we do different in that game? We threw the ball downfield several times. Actually, every single TD that was scored in regulation in that game was a long-ball. Towles showed the ability to get the ball downfield effectively. Should he have played better at times? Yes, but that same thing could be said about our entire offense, and I believe if UK would have actually tried to stretch the field more frequently, it would have given our guys more room to operate.
Frankly, I'm glad Neal Brown took the coaching job. I'm happy for his success, but I'm happy that we're getting a more aggressive offensive mind in there, especially somebody who is highly touted as a QB coach. I think everybody here saw what Trickett turned into under Dawson, and Dawson has given Towles glowing reviews.
Me and you have differing opinions, that's fine, I just happen to believe that mine is closer to the truth than your "It's not Brown's fault" opinion.
I'll just be glad to see Towles actually throwing the ball or handing off to a RB and not being used like Tim Tebow on QB dives.
Lots of reasons to be excited! Particularly on offense where the majority of the team are Stoop's guys. I'm really hopeful they will be much improved. If they are then we can really get excited about the O for the next year as most will be returning. We have a QB who despite the team faltering around him still ended up on the leader board for some of the SEC season long stats. He's got formidable size, and can scramble and run if he has to. And we have a highly touted backup ready to step up should he get injured, or not play well.
The D seems much more questionable. Still a lot of pre-Stoop's guys in the depth chart. OTOH they are seniors and hopefully will perform better now in their 3rd year under Stoops and his staff. Except it appears in the secondary where there will be lots of youth and inexperience. I think the Cat's may have to outscore the other team to win some games.
And it looks like I might be able to attend the Auburn or UT games. I guess those might be tough games to get tickets to especially if the Cat's start off say 4-1, but with some effort I suspect it can be done.
The D seems much more questionable. Still a lot of pre-Stoop's guys in the depth chart. OTOH they are seniors and hopefully will perform better now in their 3rd year under Stoops and his staff. Except it appears in the secondary where there will be lots of youth and inexperience. I think the Cat's may have to outscore the other team to win some games.
And it looks like I might be able to attend the Auburn or UT games. I guess those might be tough games to get tickets to especially if the Cat's start off say 4-1, but with some effort I suspect it can be done.
-you didnt answer...you gave an opinion.
Example: BJs cincy teams would likely have given Jokers UK teams trouble...but that is pure conjecture on my part. BJs record against Stoops is more about jimmys/joes than x's/o's.
And you obviously have a different opinion, which is fine. His specific question was "how do you figure", and what I thought I gave was the basis of my opinion, just like every single post in this thread is someone's opinion. No one can "prove" one coach is better than another coach, any more than I can "prove" one girl is better looking than another girl. (But I will also stand by the opinion of our AD, who as I previously stated, am 99% sure called Butch Jones first, before moving on to other candidates, before landing on Mark Stoops)
Well . . . lets kick his ass on October 31 and really heat up the debate!!
Hmmm it's not up to the refs to win the game it's up to them to call it fairly. Play your best and punch them in the mouth and let the chips fall on the outcome. It's hard to do that when you have lopsided calls.
When refs call roughing the passer all night on ur team while the opposing team is down right holding all night and beating the Recievers up I imagine that plays an outcome in the end. Or do you not agree?
Towles had a long way to go, he has already come a long way. He has the tools, maybe the best around, a lot better athlete at 6' 5" and 240# than a lot of fans give him credit for, I won't be at all surprised if he doesn't improve a lot more this year, it seems he has the work ethic and desire, two big factors to add to his physical talent.
Not sure he can't see the field or not, but he felt it a lot last year, about 30 tackles for loss IIRC. He WILL be a lot better this year if he doesn't improve at all, because he will have a lot better support from the team.
Nope but I mean if you don't win it outright you may lose as a result of your reliance on a good call. I saw the game I didn't see many egregious calls other than the non-call for the delay of game.
Can't understand why when we're this close to the next season that we can't be happy about Dawson without throwing Brown under a bus. Give it a break the man was handed a seriously short deck with both hands tied behind his back. Brown had some weird playcalling at times but he had a freshmen dominated receiving corps that couldn't run routes, get out of press coverage, block, or get open most of the time. He had a first year starting QB that wasn't seeing the field well enough, made the wrong checks, and abandoned the pocket way too fast. We had no threat at TE, we played 3 RS freshmen on the OL, we lost two of our best receivers for the season and had another so banged up he needed offseason surgury on his shoulder and ankle, and I could go on because there was more.
Some of the QB sneaks were designed but many of them were Patrick panicking and taking off running. We would've thrown deep more if our line could hold their blocks, if our receivers could break free of press coverage, and if Towles stayed in the pocket longer.
Somehow we managed to increase our points per game by 9 which was good enough to be around a top 10 improvement in the country in year two. We're going into year three jacked up about all of the playmakers that were recruited on offense while giving the OC no credit at all for why we are excited about the prospects of the offense. Brown left a really good situation at Texas Tech where he had things rolling only to start from scratch in the hardest conference in America at one of the hardest places to coach in any sport because this is home and he loves this school. Yet a majority of our fans are too nearsighted to see what he did here and give him an ounce of credit.
I agree with the rest of your post but as you can probably tell I didn't agree with trashing Neal. I'm excited about the season and am looking forward to making a big leap forward under Dawson. I hope some UK fans will see it for what it is and not give all the credit to the new guy. As Stoops said at the luncheon in response to Dawson being excited about all the playmakers he has "just be glad you weren't here the first two years"
Some of the QB sneaks were designed but many of them were Patrick panicking and taking off running. We would've thrown deep more if our line could hold their blocks, if our receivers could break free of press coverage, and if Towles stayed in the pocket longer.
Somehow we managed to increase our points per game by 9 which was good enough to be around a top 10 improvement in the country in year two. We're going into year three jacked up about all of the playmakers that were recruited on offense while giving the OC no credit at all for why we are excited about the prospects of the offense. Brown left a really good situation at Texas Tech where he had things rolling only to start from scratch in the hardest conference in America at one of the hardest places to coach in any sport because this is home and he loves this school. Yet a majority of our fans are too nearsighted to see what he did here and give him an ounce of credit.
I agree with the rest of your post but as you can probably tell I didn't agree with trashing Neal. I'm excited about the season and am looking forward to making a big leap forward under Dawson. I hope some UK fans will see it for what it is and not give all the credit to the new guy. As Stoops said at the luncheon in response to Dawson being excited about all the playmakers he has "just be glad you weren't here the first two years"
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Agree, I dont join in the downgrading of Neal Brown. Dude recruited a helluvalot of great Kentucky kids on this roster. And judging his offense with what he had to operate with in his 2 years here is completely unfair. Last year it got to a point where the best play available with the lowest risk of blowing up was Towles keeping it up the middle.
awful offensive coordinators don't become D1 head football coaches, folks.
awful offensive coordinators don't become D1 head football coaches, folks.
Hmm I wasn't even talking about the Florida game. I'm talking about games over the course of 30 yrs against UT.
Oh. I think over the course of 30 years I have seen bad calls against UK and bad calls against UT. It pretty much balances itself out in the end. I can't say I believe there has been an inordinate amount of bad calls against one program over the other. I think for much of the last 30 years UK has just been terrible and hasn't put themselves in a good position to win games.
GREAT post OP. Nice job. I mainly agree with your wins, and Im going to go way out on a limb and predict one more. Its a shocker. Auburn. We get them at home, in our first Thursday night game. That crowd is gonna be INSANE. It will be on par with the South Carolina game last year. Black Unis, chrome helmets, only game on TV in front of the country. Im not the only one saying it either, many analyst are calling it a trap game for the tigers. I think we play balls to the wall, hard hits, and pumped up and we beat them in a barn burner. But, I also only think we get 7 wins, and lose to Missouri in a game we should win. But I like UK in the Auburn game. I think we have 6 wins going into the Louisville game, with a birth at a really good bowl game on the line, and we beat the cards to get it. Watch out for the Auburn game, we have played them close in recent matchups (37 - 34 last time vs cam newton)
I am going to quote a statement by our new OC Dawson. He was talking about how he picks his QB recruits. He stated that Accuracy was the most important thing he looks for in a QB. He said that he can teach a QB most things but accuracy is not one of them. Either a QB has it or he doesn't.
My problem with Towles is I am not sure how accurate he is especially in what is the bread and butter of the Air Raid offense which is the short passing game.
Could this be the reason why this QB competition is going into the fall and is there a real chance that Dawson thinks Barker is the more accurate QB and better suited to run his offense?
I just think there has to be a reason that a QB that started every game last season has not already been named the starter.
I have no agenda and only want the QB best suited to get wins for the Cats on the field. I hope it is Towles because of his experience and would hate to having a QB starting with no game experience like Barker but if there is a accuracy problem and accuracy is really the thing that our OC thinks is God given and is something he can not teach to any extent. Is there a chance he pulls the trigger and starts a more accurate QB and that is assuming Barker being a more accurate QB?
My problem with Towles is I am not sure how accurate he is especially in what is the bread and butter of the Air Raid offense which is the short passing game.
Could this be the reason why this QB competition is going into the fall and is there a real chance that Dawson thinks Barker is the more accurate QB and better suited to run his offense?
I just think there has to be a reason that a QB that started every game last season has not already been named the starter.
I have no agenda and only want the QB best suited to get wins for the Cats on the field. I hope it is Towles because of his experience and would hate to having a QB starting with no game experience like Barker but if there is a accuracy problem and accuracy is really the thing that our OC thinks is God given and is something he can not teach to any extent. Is there a chance he pulls the trigger and starts a more accurate QB and that is assuming Barker being a more accurate QB?
