LEXINGTON, Ky. — Georgia fan Greg Wassel was tailgating on Saturday at Kentucky, his third time doing so. He and his red-clad friends were in a near-empty tailgate lot for hours before Wildcats fans began streaming in, not too excited about what they thought awaited.
“It’s dead here,” said Wassel, somewhat meaning the turnout but more the spirit. “We’ve had so many Kentucky fans come up to us and saying ‘Please take it easy on us.’”
As it turns out, Georgia did. And the chance for an upset was right there, an opportunity for Mark Stoops to get the biggest win of his long tenure, a breakthrough that would change the downward vibes of the Kentucky fan base. It looked like it could happen …
Then he punted.
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Now let’s stipulate this: Stoops’ decision to punt was defensible. It was fourth-and-8 against the stingy Georgia defense. Stoops had all three timeouts. And even after the decision didn’t work, Stoops didn’t regret it, bringing it up without being asked.
“You know I have been honest with you for years, and if I made a mistake like last week I will tell you. I do not regret punting that ball,” Stoops said. “I felt like if we went for it there and don’t make it, our offense, if we stop them, has to go the length of the field. That was going to be tough against that defense. And (fourth-and-8) is a predictable pass situation. That’s not our strength.”
But here was the problem: Why was Kentucky in fourth-and-8 in the first place?
That was when Stoops and his staff erred the most during that sequence: When the Wildcats had third-and-8 from the Georgia 47, they tried a pass, instead of realizing they were in four-down territory, and they had success running the ball against Georgia in the game — 5 yards per rush, not counting sacks. But not only did Kentucky pass the ball on third down, it did so on second down, and that was incomplete as well.
Kentucky has a dual-threat quarterback, but it’s dropping back on second and third down against a Georgia defense that had three sacks, more pressures and played well in the secondary?
That’s why Kentucky lost. And that’s why Stoops, for all his success at Kentucky and for all the kudos he deserves for how his team played Saturday, finds this group at 1-2 with plenty of other tough games awaiting.
And it plays into a sense that Stoops and Kentucky football are just kind of stuck right now.
Stoops is the dean of the SEC coaches, the longest-tenured and one of the most respected by his peers. He has been Kentucky’s most successful coach since Bear Bryant. Twelve years ago, Stoops took over a moribund program, which had gone 2-10 the year before he arrived and didn’t have a 10-win season since 1977. Then after a slow start — Stoops went 2-10 his first year, then had two straight five-win seasons — the Wildcats have had eight straight winning seasons and two 10-win seasons.
He broke a 31-year losing streak to Florida. Kentucky is one of only eight teams that has gone to a bowl for eight straight years. There haven’t been major breakthrough wins or top-10 finishes, but under Stoops, the program has been respectable, competitive and trending in the right direction.
That was all until a Week 2 loss to South Carolina, which deflated the fan base. Among them is Rob Pierce, a 2000 graduate who now has a child at the school. Pierce has been so happy with Stoops that he was in favor of giving the coach a statue. But even Pierce, weighing in Friday from his home in Owensboro Ky., is growing worried, if not weary.
“I’m not there yet,” Pierce said of hot-seat talk. “I’d like to see a few more games first. But I’d like to see a little more fire in his belly.”
That happened in Saturday’s game, with Kentucky nearly knocking off the No. 1 team in the country. Stoops may harness this to have another winning season or at least keep the bowl streak alive. But there are road games against Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas, and home games against Auburn, Louisville and even Vanderbilt won’t be gimmes if the team that fell flat against South Carolina returns.
There isn’t much sense that Stoops is on the hot seat. He has a huge buyout, the support of important donors, and what he has done with the program brings credibility. Even Stoops’ dalliance with Texas A&M at the end of last season can be overlooked with Kentucky fans taking a nuanced view. They understand why Stoops was interested — after all, Kentucky once hired away Texas A&M’s basketball coach — and the news broke the same day Stoops coached Kentucky to an upset win at Louisville.
“I don’t think many UK fans think about that, to be honest,” Pierce said. “I think at the time it was a big deal, but we had just beaten Louisville. His popularity was relatively high. So we were happy he came back.”
The bigger turning point may have come before that. It was after last year’s loss to Georgia, 51-13 in Athens, when Stoops said on his radio show that “Georgia bought some pretty good players” with NIL money, then turned it on Kentucky fans: “I encourage anyone that’s disgruntled to pony up some more.”
That rubbed some fans the wrong way, and it didn’t help that Kentucky proceeded to lose four of its next five games. Then came the win at Louisville, a close bowl loss to Clemson and an offseason when key additions were made, including quarterback Brock Vandagriff, while good players like defensive lineman Deone Walker, a possible first-round pick, were retained.
Optimism was back, the post-Georgia complaints and other concerns receded. Then came the South Carolina debacle. The rebound performance against Georgia should stunt the downward momentum, but how much?
“We’re pretty happy with an eight-win season,” Pierce said. “I don’t think anyone’s going to complain about an eight-win season who’s pretty realistic. I do think with the 12-team Playoff, maybe being in it every four years, every five years, would be about the ceiling that most realistic fans would expect.”
The Stoops who rebuilt Kentucky’s program and then kept it at a competitive level, the coach whose Kentucky team took Georgia to the brink on Saturday could still be the coach to have the Wildcats in Playoff contention.
But the Stoops whose team laid an egg the previous week and who abandoned the run at the worst time on Saturday night, is not that coach. Which Stoops is Kentucky getting the rest of the way? That’s the big question.
(Top: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)
