<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=4Id8PV_0wCKrsJo00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4Id8PV_0wCKrsJo00" width="1021" height="580" ><figcaption>Photos from the first half as the Florida Gators host the UCF Knights at Ben Hill Griffiin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida. October 5th, 2024. Gator Country Photo by David Bowie.</figcaption></figure>Kentucky football under Mark Stoops has not been what you might call subtle for much of his run. The defense doesn’t change a lot from year-to-year. Stoops has created a solid framework, and his Wildcats generally win when his players out-execute the opponent. He tried following his older brother Bob’s path by running the Air Raid on offense early on, but he’s long since given up on that. It’s most often been a run-and-offensive-line based attack, usually with one or two focal points. You know the names: Benny Snell, Lynn Bowden, Wan’Dale Robinson, Chris Rodriguez, Will Levis, Ray Davis. If you try to play it safe against one of his teams, Stoops will be delighted to join you. He wants to keep games short and simple. He doesn’t usually have an offense able to come back from large deficits. Many a Florida head coach has gotten himself into trouble by thinking that the way to beat Stoops is to minimize risk to minimize mistakes. In actuality, that’s a recipe for playing into his hands and giving him a path to victory.Last year, Billy Napier had one of his most telling quotes of his UF tenure after last year’s 33-14 bulldozing at the hands of Davis and a tough UK defense: “Anybody who knows me, knows that that game right there is going to be hard on me, just in terms of who I want to be, the brand of football that I want to play.” This quote is slightly misleading in isolation. It came from Napier’s postgame press conference, and he had just spent several answers talking about how the Gators were dominated on both lines of scrimmage. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Napier wants to win exactly how Stoops does. His three different defensive coordinators in three years don’t run the same defense Stoops does, for instance. However, the quote does indicate that Napier does want to win with a line-of-scrimmage team. I have wondered if he’s so focused on that as to engage in wishful thinking at times, seeing what he wants to see rather than what’s there, because he’s overestimated the quality of both his lines two years running now.Regardless, Kentucky is now a good test of Florida’s seeming resurgence from the past couple of weeks. The defense has played a lot better since moving Ron Roberts to the booth and the exuberant Austin Armstrong to the sideline. It makes a lot of sense having the play caller in a quieter environment where he can focus and see the whole field while having the over caffeinated rah-rah guy down where he can fire up the players. It makes so much sense that one wonders why it wasn’t the plan from the start. UK’s offense lacks the obvious focal point that it’s had in most years. Georgia transfer QB Brock Vandagriff has been okay but not great, making it obvious why the former 5-star had to leave Athens to get playing time. The workhorse running back has been Demie Sumo-Karngbaye, but he’s under five yards per carry on the season. It’s consistent too: he’s only broken five YPC in a game against Southern Miss, and in the non-Southern Miss games, his longest run has been just 14 yards. Dane Key is somehow still around and is the top receiving threat, but he’s not a burner. The Wildcats have therefore been subsisting on Stoops’s defense. It’s served them well in most games. It did enough to keep UK in contention until the end in losses to Georgia, Ole Miss, and Vanderbilt, but the offense couldn’t do enough to pull out the win. Even in the 31-6 loss to South Carolina, the Gamecocks gained just 252 total yards on the day. A pick-six from Vandagriff and a 20-yard field goal drive juiced Carolina’s point total, and half of their ten offensive drives went fewer than ten yards and ended in a punt or turnover. Napier’s been asked about hot-seat chatter in his past couple of press conferences, and he’s predictably waved them off. He says what all coaches say, which is that he doesn’t listen to those kinds of distractions and is focused on making the team play better. Even if it were true that he’s kept himself completely isolated from outside criticism, which seems extraordinarily unlikely, he knows what Florida’s expectations are and that his record doesn’t meet them. His record surely doesn’t meet his own expectations. And, he is certainly aware of how UF doesn’t suffer losing from a head coach for long. The seven-year contract he negotiated was partially in recognition of that fact. With a tremendous opportunity wasted on bad coaching decisions last week in Knoxville, Napier knows every game from here on out is critical to his future. What will he do with that information? If the answer is to keep playing with something akin to 2023 Kentucky as his guiding light, he’s doomed. It’s very hard to beat a Stoops Kentucky team playing like a Stoops Kentucky team unless you’re far more talented. I’m not sure Florida is, so trying to play it safe would, again, be one of the most dangerous things he can do. If nothing else, Napier has to expand what he does with DJ Lagway. The playbook for the freshman was quite small once Graham Mertz went down in Knoxville, and when Tennessee decided to light him up, they got home with a quickness. Precocious as Lagway is, he’s not yet able to deal with a college pass rush that is collapsing the pocket in under two seconds. If Napier continues with his predictable play calling ways, Lagway’s jersey might have more green on it than anything by the end of the game. This is the most beatable Kentucky team in years. The defense is legit, but the offense isn’t explosive at all and struggles to get anything going a lot of the time. If Napier’s team really has turned a corner of any kind, this is the kind of matchup where it should be clearly evident. </div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Kentucky is the perfect test of whether Florida football has turned a corner

Kentucky football under Mark Stoops has not been what you might call subtle for much of his run. The defense doesn’t change a lot from year-to-year. Stoops has created a solid framework, and his Wildcats generally win when his players out-execute the opponent. He tried following his older brother Bob’s path by running the Air Raid on offense early on, but he’s long since given up on that. It’s most often been a run-and-offensive-line based attack, usually with one or two focal points. You know the names: Benny Snell, Lynn Bowden, Wan’Dale Robinson, Chris Rodriguez, Will Levis, Ray Davis.