As each day goes by, it’s one day closer to the start of another season of Kentucky football in Lexington.

The Wildcats are looking to turn the page on a rough 4-8 season that ended their eight-year bowl game streak.

However, there will be a few keys that will be determining factors as to whether or not Kentucky will be successful in 2025.

1- Cutting down on the penalties

The Wildcats should not have been anywhere near as bad as they were last season to the point where the majority of their losses were uncompetitive.

That same sentiment remains this year because the daunting schedule is going to make wins hard to come by, but you have to at least give yourself a chance by being competitive.

One of the biggest ways Kentucky can improve at this is limiting penalties on both sides of the ball. 

Last season, the Wildcats were responsible for 52.1 penalty yards per game, which ranked seventh in the SEC and 74th in FBS. 

When it comes to actual flags itself, Kentucky averaged 6.3 penalties per game.

With some factors already working against them, Kentucky cannot afford to make things even harder on themselves by committing penalties.

2- Mark Stoops taking some risks

It would not be fair to say that Mark Stoops never takes any chances or is overly conservative, because that would be a bit of a stretch.

That is not even the main subject at hand when it comes to this particular point.

Stoops needs to start coaching games to win, instead of coaching not to lose.

For example, this is now a broken record but last season with the game on the line against Georgia, Stoops did not give his offense a chance to win the game.

He instead gave Georgia’s offense a shot and they came through and won the ballgame.

The punt was not the issue with this call, but instead the rationale of passing the ball on the third-and-8. That play calling showed the call was to always punt it away.

That is where the risk-taking needs to happen, not in the spur of the moment, but thinking of it steps ahead and being calculated about it.

Furthermore, Big Blue Nation will only hold onto what ifs and will never fault a coach for trusting his team and taking a gamble.

The lone SEC win for the Wildcats came on a critical fourth where Stoops rolled the dice, and got the job done.

Not to mention, in most of these games Kentucky will be far from the favorite, so that means it will need to do something to turn the tides in its favor.

This is where Stoops can take more chances and show a new side of himself as a coach, which may be exactly what swings him back into the fans’ good graces knowing that he tried everything he could to bring wins to Lexington instead of trying to make the losses look more respectable.

3- Quarterback Play

One of the key shortcomings in the last two seasons in Lexington and in-particular in 2024 was quarterback play.

Brock Vandagriff arrived in Lexington as a former five-star player, and it just did not work from the very start. It was clear that he was just not built for the modern-day pace and speed of SEC football.

Some of his throws had you scratching your head trying to figure out where he was going with that.

Now, it was not all his fault because his offensive line did him zero favors and it’s hard to get settled when every play is a scramble drill.

One thing no one can ever doubt was Vandagriff’s toughness, and he showed that time and time again as he managed to get up and back under center every single time he was leveled.

However, under Vandagriff, Kentucky’s passing yards per game decreased from 211.6 yards per game in 2023 to just 184.8 yards per game in 2024.

On top of the poor stats, Vandagriff was pulled twice last season due to poor performance.

The featured quarterbacks in 2025 are expected to be sixth-year transfer Zach Calzada and redshirt freshman Cutter Bowley.

Regardless of who suits up as QB1, they have to improve what was the offense in 2024 or this team will be set up for failure.

Kentucky dropped in both third-down conversions and red-zone offense in 2024, and this has to go up in 2025 for Kentucky to stay competitive.

While there are factors that play into those numbers like play calling and protection, the quarterback leads the offense and has to make sure momentum continues towards the sticks and towards the endzone.

4- Defensive Consistency

Switching gears from offense to defense, one of the biggest pitfalls last season was consistency on all fronts of the defense.

The year started off as a really solid defense on all fronts, but then the leaks started happening before the whole thing fell apart.

The biggest lapse was when it came to rushing defense. Through the first seven games of the season, the entire defense held up solid outside of the South Carolina blunder, but then it turned on its head in Gainesville against Florida.

The Gators went on to trounce the Wildcats by a score of 48-20 in the Swamp.

This game also started a streak where opposing rushes ran for over 100 yards on Kentucky in every single game for the rest of the season besides a non-conference win against Ohio.

In fact, Louisville rushers Isaac Brown and Duke Watson ran for 100 yards apiece on the Wildcats.

Jadan Baugh, Jarquez Hunter, Dylan Sampson and Quintrevion Wisner also ran at least 100 yards on the ground against the Kentucky defense.

This led to an overall decline in rushing yards per game as the defense allowed 161.8 yards per game on the ground. This mark ranked 15th in the SEC and 87th in FBS.

“The first six games we were what we had been the year before in terms of stopping the run,” Defensive Coordinator Brad White said. “Down the stretch the last six was completely unacceptable. ”

However, it was not all bad because the passing defense held up throughout the season and gave the defense something to build upon for the upcoming season.

Futhermore, the defense cannot afford to be hot and cold this season due to the daunting schedule ahead.

5- Big Blue Wall

One of the cornerstones of Kentucky football under Stoops has been the physicality and dominance on the offensive line, thus earning the unit the nickname “The Big Blue Wall.”

However, in the 2024 that once fortified strong wall appeared to be made of glass because it became one of the biggest weak spots on the entire team.

This resulted in a complete overhaul of the unit thanks in large part to the transfer portal as newcomers to the program like Joshua Braun, Shiyazh Pete and Alex Wollschlaeger along with in-house talents Jager Burton and Jalen Farmer are all expected to be in the trenches this upcoming season.

The bottom line is that it does not matter what quarterbacks, running backs or receivers you bring in to try and win ballgames, if the offensive line is as putrid as it was last year, then it will be much of the same misery.

Plays need time to develop and backs need gaps to run through to gain positive yardage, and none of this can happen without the o-line doing its job.

Overall, if the glass was not rebuilt to brick this offseason, then it may be time to rethink the “Big Blue Wall” nickname.

Like with any sport, there is a lot of football to be played, but these five pillars of the team will make-or-break this season for Kentucky football.

The Wildcats will make their 2025 debut on Saturday, Aug. 30, when they will host Toledo with kickoff set for 12:45 ET.