Stoops keeping the faith in his offensive-coordinator.
Saturday night’s performance was a tough pill to swallow for Kentucky Wildcats football fans.
On the heels of a demoralizing loss to Vanderbilt, Mark Stoops’ team came out and laid a complete egg as favorites in Gainesville.
The 48-20 loss has fueled harsh criticism for Stoops and his entire staff, especially first-year offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan.
In fairness, the Cats have been atrocious on offense during SEC play this season.
They’ve now scored just 20 points in three consecutive games. It took a Barion Brown 99-yard touchdown on special teams to even get the Cats to that mark against the Gators.
There were a slew of concerns on Saturday night in the Swamp, but one of the most frustrating was Kentucky’s inability to do much on third down.
UK was 4/13 on third-down, and at no point did it seem like they had the Gators guessing.
Brock Vandagriff would finish the game 12/26 for 165 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions. That graded out to an abysmal 43.6 QBR.
Things just flat out haven’t been good on the offensive side of the ball all year and fans want answers.
“I think there’s drives where we look how we need to look. Again, it’s just a lack of consistency to finish drives, whatever the case may be. It’s just a frustrating situation.” Hamdan told reporters after UK’s lopsided loss to Florida.
But what does Mark Stoops think?
“I have a lot of confidence in Bush. He’s been handed…it’s tough. We’re not going to point any fingers. Put it on me,” Stoops exclaimed. We’ll go back to work. There have been opportunities, but it’s like each game, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, so close that it wouldn’t at least be so eye-popping if we get several other possessions in the end zone.”
Kentucky has been running through new offensive coordinators for the past five seasons, and maybe that lack of continuity is starting to become more apparent.
This thing has the chance to really get off the rails if Stoops can’t reel this back in over the next few games.
It’ll be interesting to see how Hamdan’s offense responds when UK takes on Auburn next week.