The next task for Kentucky’s vaunted defense is stopping college football’s breakout star

jon hale

Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 10:30 a.m.·6 min read

Five games into the 2024 season Kentucky football’s defense is no stranger to facing highly touted quarterbacks.

The Wildcats limited Georgia star Carson Beck to a season-low 160 passing yards in a 13-12 loss to the then No. 1-ranked Bulldogs on Sept. 14. In its most recent game, Kentucky limited Ole Miss star Jaxson Dart to a season-low 261 passing yards in a 20-17 upset win in Oxford.

But when Kentucky hosts Vanderbilt on Saturday the challenge will be different as quarterback Diego Pavia, the darling of the college football world after Vanderbilt’s upset of No. 1 Alabama, leads the Commodores at Kroger Field.

“I would say he is a little bit unique to somebody we have seen in a bit of time,” UK coach Mark Stoops said of Pavia. “I think he is extremely good at ball-handling and makes very good decisions. He is good in rhythm and on time and he is very accurate. … It’s not just short passes. He is very good with the ball in his hands, he is good at feeling pressure.

“When he escapes pressure he does a remarkable job of finding people down the field and hitting the open receivers. And that is a gift. He is a very good player and is very well coached. He is special in that regard.”

Pavia averages 261.6 total offensive yards per game, but he has been at his best in upsets of Virginia Tech and Alabama.

In the season-opening win over Virginia Tech, Pavia completed 12 of 16 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns and gained 104 yards and one touchdown on the ground. Against Alabama, he completed 16 of 20 passes for 252 yards and two touchdowns and added 56 yards on 20 carries.

Pavia has yet to throw an interception this season.

“Amazing player, he really is,” Stoops said. “... He’s also seeing things at a very, very high level and playing some very good football.”

Diego Pavia, who guided Vanderbilt to an upset of No. 1-ranked Alabama last week, received no football scholarship offers coming out of high school and began his career at a junior college in New Mexico.

The fact that Pavia is even in a position to be thrust into the national spotlight this week would have seemed impossible even a year ago.

The Albuquerque, New Mexico, native had no Division I football offers out of high school. Rather than focus on trying to wrestle in college — he won a state wrestling title in high school — he elected to play football at New Mexico Military Institute. As a sophomore, he led that team to a junior college national championship.

A standout performance in the NJCAA championship game convinced then New Mexico State coach Jerry Kill to offer Pavia a scholarship instead of the walk-on spot he initially had pitched Pavia on, according to The Athletic. Pavia started 23 games across two seasons at New Mexico State, leading the Aggies to the program’s first 10-win season since 1960 in 2023.

After Kill stepped down at New Mexico State, Pavia initially looked likely to land at Nevada as a transfer for his final college season, but he elected to sign with Vanderbilt when coach Clark Lea convinced Kill to join former New Mexico State offensive coordinator Tim Beck as an advisor on his staff.

“You just have to congratulate him on his perseverance and obviously the personal drive that he has and the competitive nature that he has,” Stoops said. “He’s a very good football player and he’s proven that. And I think that we all would say that we like teams and you like players that have a chip on their shoulder and certainly he’s playing that way.”

While no one will compare Pavia, listed at a generous 6-foot on Vanderbilt’s roster, with Beck as an NFL draft prospect or with Dart as a passer, he appears the perfect fit for the offensive system Kill and Beck brought from New Mexico State to Vanderbilt.

Stoops pointed to the propensity of the scheme to run plays toward or away from the side of unbalanced formations with the most players as being particularly difficult for defenses.

The amount of designed quarterback runs in the offense — Pavia leads Vanderbilt in rushing yards — also presents a different challenge for Kentucky than Georgia or Ole Miss. The Wildcats’ worst performance of the season came in the Week 2 loss to South Carolina against a dual-threat quarterback, though Gamecocks quarterback LaNorris Sellers did much more damage through the air (10 for 14 for 166 yards) than on the ground (eight carries for negative-11 yards) in that game.

“Obviously he’s been in that system, so he understands what they’re looking for,” UK defensive coordinator Brad White said of Pavia. “They stress you in a lot of different areas.”

In a college football landscape where Vanderbilt can beat Alabama, perhaps it should not be as strange as it sounds to suggest that Kentucky’s defense might actually be a stiffer test for Pavia and the Commodores than the Crimson Tide.

UK ranks fifth nationally in fewest yards allowed per game (244.2) and 11th in fewest points allowed per game (13.4). Even acknowledging those stats are slightly skewed by the season opener against Southern Miss ending early in the third quarter due to lightning, it is difficult to pick holes in a unit that is coming off a performance in which it limited an Ole Miss offense that ranked at or near the top of the country in almost every statistical category to 223 fewer yards and 27 fewer points than its season average.

Kentucky ranks just 43rd nationally in yards allowed per play (5.05), but the benefit the defense receives from the Wildcats offense trying to limit opponent possessions by controlling the clock should carry through this week against a Vanderbilt team that also tries to limit total possessions.

“I think we got one of the top defenses in the country,” UK linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson, a former All-American at Georgia, said. “So coming out, week in, week out, we just got to keep going. Don’t let the outside noise feed into it.”

Like before the Ole Miss game when all the national attention was pointed at the Rebels’ video game-like offensive statistics, Kentucky’s defense has spent most of this week hearing about Pavia and the Commodores after their historic victory.

Unlike most Kentucky-Vanderbilt games, this looks like a legitimate opportunity to gain even more national respect.

Adding Pavia to the list of quarterbacks Kentucky has slowed this season would accomplish that goal.

“He’s so savvy, and he’s got so much moxie and so much toughness to him,” White said. “No environment, no situation seems to really rattle him. … He’s going to make his plays. Like, we understand that. You don’t go against really good football players and say, ‘oh, we’re going to shut them out.’

“They’re going to make their plays. We just have to make our share when that opportunity presents itself.”