Kentucky football’s defense only gave up 10 points to Tennessee Tech, which seems like a good thing, but it could be troublesome moving forward.
Obviously a win is always the goal and it was accomplished, but the way the Golden Eagles moved the ball was not up to par.
“I think we need to play better. I don’t think we played particularly well,” Defensive Coordinator Brad White said. “We talked about competitive toughness, and, credit to them, a good football team, quarterback we knew going in was going to be extremely mobile. He did a nice job extending things with his legs, just not particularly pleased with our performance.”
As mentioned by White, the way Kekoa Visperas used his legs to extend plays really hurt the Wildcats defense.
The quarterback rushed for 44-yards in the game and that just continued to reveal a troubling trend with the defense, and that’s giving up yards on the ground to quarterbacks.
Looking back on the earlier part of the season, South Carolina dual-threat quarterback LaNorris Sellers had his way with the Wildcats by rushing for 83-yards and throwing for 153 more.
The performance against the Golden Eagles was just seven days removed from when the Wildcats bottled up Florida dual-threat DJ Lagway.
After what White deemed as a bad performance for giving up yardage to the quarterback, the Wildcats next test will be against the best dual-threat they have played this season in Diego Pavia.
“Diego’s a guy that can drop his shoulder and run over a linebacker like he’s big and thick and physical,” White said. “We’re gonna have to do a really good job there next week.”
The Commodores quarterback is second in the SEC in quarterback rushing yards with 613 to pair with his 2,440 passing yards on the season.
This will not be the first time that White has had to game plan for Pavia as the Wildcats fell to a Pavia-led Vanderbilt 20-13 last season.
In that matchup, Pavia ran for 53-yards and threw for 143 yards along with two touchdowns.
It was not just the fact the Golden Eagles moved the ball, it was more about how they did it that left White displeased even after a win.
“We have a standard in which we play, I don’t think our pass lanes were clean, I don’t think our run fits were clean,” White said. “There were some things in there that, hey, listen, good football teams are gonna move the ball. We get that. But when there’s self inflicted mistakes that are training camp mistakes at this point in the season, we shouldn’t be making those.”
This game will have much bigger stakes than it did a year ago as Vanderbilt is clinging on to playoff hopes while the Wildcats are just one win away from bowl eligibility.
However, it’s likely this one could be decided by Kentucky’s ability to contain Pavia and keep him from burning them with his legs. Nonetheless, the play caller is confident in his team’s ability to respond.
“We got to refocus our mind and get back to playing. It’s a one game season next week. That’s what we got to focus on,” White said. “It’s a really, really difficult Vanderbilt team that had a bye, so they’ve healed up, they’ve had time to look at us. We’re going to have to play at an extremely high level. I would hope our guys understand that.”
All of those questions will be answered when Kentucky and Vanderbilt take the field on Saturday, Nov. 22, with kickoff slated for 3:30 p.m. ET.
