2 weeks Ago By Lexington Herald-Leader
After another abysmal offensive showing in a 24-10 loss to Auburn, Kentucky coach Mark Stoops wanted to make it clear that the Wildcats’ woes cannot be attributed to any one player. Eight games of the 2024 season have been enough to prove him correct. The pass protection has varied from atrocious to barely passable.
The run game has looked efficient at times but lacked explosiveness. The receivers continue to show glimpses of talent interspersed around frustrating lapses in concentration. But the quarterback play always gets the most attention, and after Stoops benched starter Brock Vandagriff for Gavin Wimsatt in the second half Saturday it has returned to the top of the list of questions.
“I don’t need that to dominate the headlines,” Stoops said when asked if he considered the starting job open for competition after UK’s third straight loss. “We’re not playing very well. It’s never on one person, so if it’s Gavin or if it’s Brock, whoever it is, I mean, they can only do so much.
“It’s a team effort. I know everybody likes to concentrate on the quarterback position, and I know it’s a story. Bottom line is we’re not playing winning football on the offensive side.
And I’d rather that be the headline than on any one person.” Wimsatt, who completed just 46.6% of his passes in 25 games at Rutgers before transferring to Kentucky, attempted only deep balls on his first two drives.
None connected, but one did result in a first down off a pass interference penalty. Yet, with Kentucky still theoretically in the game down 14 early in the fourth quarter, Stoops and offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan stuck with Wimsatt rather than return the offense to Vandagriff. “Wanted to see if that was going to provide a spark for us,” Hamdan said.
“We’re at that point right now where we just felt we needed to do something. I don’t think it’s anything to Brock’s situation. “I think that guy’s battled his butt off and giving us everything he has, but we wanted to see what it looked like.
” With UK trailing by 14 and in desperation mode, the Wimsatt-led offense finally found some momentum in the fourth quarter on a 14-play drive, but for the third week in a row Kentucky walked away from a drive that passed the opponent’s 5-yard line without any points. This time the failure came when Wimsatt was intercepted in the end zone on a fourth-and-goal from the 2-yard line. Wimsatt finished the game having completed just 3 of 10 passes for 34 yards and one interception while gaining 16 yards on 10 carries.
Vandagriff was far from perfect again Saturday, but after UK coaches have insisted throughout the season the offensive struggles cannot be blamed on him due to issues around him it seemed strange to finally bench him against Auburn. The Georgia transfer finished the first half having completed 9 of 17 passes for 120 yards and one interception. He was sacked twice on third-down plays where he appeared to hold onto the ball too long and threw an interception on another third down on a badly underthrown ball.
Vandagriff did uncork multiple impressive throws to Dane Key again, though, and hit freshman Hardley Gilmore for a 22-yard gain through tight coverage shortly before his interception. Key dropped another pass on what would have been a long gain. Fred Farrier dropped a touchdown pass in the first quarter, but that mistake was overcome with a Jamarion Wilcox touchdown run on the next play.
Stoops and Hamdan confirmed reports from the broadcast that the plan was actually to give Wimsatt the third drive of the game, but after Vandagriff and the offense scored on the first two drives they elected to keep Vandagriff in the game, other than the increased use of the wildcat formation for Wimsatt due to the absence of normal starting running back Demie Sumo-Karngbaye due to injury. At halftime, though, the coaches decided rather than give Wimsatt just one drive to see if he could provide a spark they would fully hand the reins of the offense over to him. “I just think it’s the situation of the combination of size, speed (from Wimsatt), with where our running back situation was today,” Hamdan said of the plan to play Wimsatt more.
“If you asked me, ‘Is he one of the more explosive guys we have?’ I think the answer is yes.” UK coaches have repeatedly pointed to Wimsatt’s potential for providing explosive plays as justification for using him in wildcat formations this year, but that explosiveness has yet to show up in games. On the season, Wimsatt is averaging just 3.
6 yards per carry and 45 of his 93 passing yards came in the fourth quarter of the blowout win over Ohio. While Vandagriff has been a frequent inclusion on UK’s SEC-mandated availability reports this season, he was listed as available all week leading up to the Auburn game and Stoops said after the loss the quarterback switch had nothing to do with Vandagriff’s health. Still, Hamdan has been open about the fact that some of Wimsatt’s carries this season have been in an attempt to take hits away from Vandagriff.
Asked before the Auburn game whether the rotating of quarterbacks within a series affected his rhythm, Vandagriff answered with a firm no. “That’s kind of part of it, part of our offense, and whatever the coaching staff believes is the best decision for us,” Vandagriff said Wednesday. “If that’s me sitting on the bench the whole game, if that’s what gives us the best chance to win, then I’m all for it.
I want Kentucky to win. I want the Kentucky offense to do well, whatever that looks like. “If that’s me back there 100% of time, that’s me back there 0% of time, whatever that looks like, I want these guys to do well.
” As for whether Kentucky has a true quarterback competition, there might not be an answer until the Wildcats take the field in Knoxville. Stoops has essentially stopped updating the weekly depth chart and will not be in Lexington for his normal Monday news conference or radio show due to his mother’s funeral in Youngstown, Ohio. The one option still off the table at this point appears to be playing freshman Cutter Boley at Tennessee after his rocky debut late in the loss at Florida.
Boley can appear in just three of the final four regular-season games without losing his redshirt and has taken few reps with the first- or second-team offense in practice all season. Perhaps after the bye week that follows the Tennessee game Boley will become an option, but for now an offense that has found few answers appears to have another question. “We just got to get back to playing as good as we can,” Stoops said.
“Got to try to get some guys healthy, get better and look at all options to put our team in a better position to play better next week.”.
