With Georgia coming to town, Kentucky football’s coaches need to rebound, too

Among the countless number of football adages there is this one: Coaches coach against coaches.

Mark Stoops got outcoached last Saturday. That’s no secret. Stoops will tell you that himself. In fact, the Kentucky football coach admitted it during his Monday press conference that rehashed UK’s 31-6 home loss to South Carolina.

“Shane Beamer and his staff did a better job than us,” Stoops said of the Gamecocks’ head coach who now holds a three-game win streak over Stoops and Co.

So with Kirby Smart bringing the powerhouse that is No. 1-ranked Georgia to Kroger Field for Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. SEC contest, instead of asking how will the Cats bounce back from their embarrassing performance, we should ask how will the coaches?

After all, Stoops said Monday that after watching the tape of the South Carolina loss, he didn’t question his team’s effort. Effort was there. Execution was not. “We just didn’t play very smart,” he said.

And while certainly some of that responsibility falls upon the shoulders of his players, Stoops said, “As coaches, we have to do our part.”

Coaches are not unlike players. As a coach of another sport who until recently held a Lexington address used to say, “They’re not robots.” They can have bad days, bad games, bad play calls, bad plans.

Monday, Stoops seemed to question his team’s offensive game plan, although the head coach was quick to say he was part of the planning process. In hindsight, Stoops said he wished the Cats had run the ball between the tackles more to avoid South Carolina’s obviously talented edge defenders. Testing the Gamecocks’ perimeter defense often led to negative-yardage failures.

(Side note: ESPN’s Greg McElroy, who was the ABC analyst on last Saturday’s game, said this on his Sunday podcast: “South Carolina is going to be, if they can stay healthy, they’re going to be a huge problem for teams. ... So anyone that has South Carolina on the schedule, be super careful.”)

We should remember offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan is new — Stoops’ fourth different offensive coordinator in as many years. While the Hamdan scheme is similar to predecessors, then ex-NFL assistants Liam Coen and Rich Scangarello, it stands to reason Hamdan has his own twists that might take time for his troops to process.

Offensive line coach Eric Wolford is also new, sort of. He coached the UK O-line in 2021, then spent two years at Alabama before returning to Kentucky this season. And for those questioning Wolford’s coaching acumen — a reasonable response to his unit’s play Saturday — Nick Saban wasn’t normally in the business of hiring bad coaches. Still, not sure you could tell that from Saturday’s performance.

Quarterback Brock Vandagriff is also new. Saturday was not just Vandagriff’s second collegiate start but his first against SEC competition. The QB had performed only mop-up duty at Georgia before transferring. South Carolina was a new (miserable) experience. And it did not go well.

Overall, my stance is that it is as easy to overreact to the second game of the season as it is to the first. I still maintain that this Kentucky football team is a much better football team than it showed Saturday.

But Georgia is Georgia. The Bulldogs have not lost a regular-season game, SEC or otherwise, since Nov. 7, 2020 — Florida 44, Georgia 28. With Saban sharing the “College GameDay” set with Pat McAfee and Jim Harbaugh pounding Justin Herbert’s shoulder pads with the Los Angeles Chargers, Smart is currently college football’s best coach.

In times like this, it is the media’s duty to ask the coach how important is his team’s leadership in a time like this. So we did.

“It’s going to be super important,” Stoops said. “It started (Sunday) with guys filtering around the office. I had a conversation with Eli (Cox) and that’s the first thing I asked, ‘Am I missing something?’ I think he had the same feeling I had. Did not see that coming. We have the toughness and the grit and the pride to get things fixed.”

And now: “You have to go out there and play. And they played better than us. They coached better than us.”

And again: “As coaches, we have to do our part.”

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