Mark Stoops has said since Spring Practice that his team is much improved, Saturday was the first time that the Wildcats could actually prove it on the field and they did in a big way. With a year of experience in the offensive and defensive systems, and players learning what Stoops wants from them, Year Two already looks brighter. The offensive scheme is the same, however the offense is allowed to open up its playbook much more this year, and that's largely due to the drastic improvement at the quarterback position, but the improvement of the players around Patrick Towles should be noted as well. Because of this improvement, teams will have to defend Kentucky differently this year. Defensively, players look much more confident, and Kentucky seems to have a safety, AJ Stamps, who is capable of being an All-SEC type of safety.
The Offense
Kentucky's improvement offensively has allowed Neal Brown to show more of the offense that was ranked one of the top offenses in the nation while at Texas Tech. Neal Brown utilized a lot of 4 receiver sets, twin sets (2 receivers on both sides of the formation) and trips left, (3 receivers line up on the left side and 1 wide receiver is lined up on the opposite side of the formation). Because of these alignments and the speed of Kentucky's receivers, UT-Martin had to play a lot of man coverage with corner backs matched up on Kentucky's outside receivers, and the safeties matched up on the Kentucky's inside receivers. UT-Martin more than likely avoided having linebackers matched up on receivers to avoid mismatches in coverage that Kentucky can exploit.
These 4 wide receiver sets will also prove to be a blessing to Kentucky going forward while breaking in a new quarterback. Some defenses will have enough speed to match linebackers on inside receivers and will cause Towles to pause a little or bait him into bad throws; however, most teams will not have the speed to do this. This means that the defensive coverages that Towles face will be limited in some games.
UT-Martin played almost exclusively in the 3-4 defense and always had a linebacker assigned to a running back. When UK was in a 1 running back set it allows for the other 3 linebackers and 3 defensive linemen to bring pressure to Patrick Towles. UT-Martin's strategy was to bring pressure to Towles while playing man coverage in the back end and hoping that the pressure would lead to Towles making mistakes, as we know this strategy didn't pan out very well.
To make matters worse, Kentucky was very balanced in this game. Gone are the days of an Air Raid offense that passes the ball 70% of the time. In this game Kentucky put the ball in the air just 54% of the time, while running the ball 46% of the time. This balance won't have much of an effect against a time like Ohio University Bobcats; however, if Kentucky wants to compete in the SEC and beat the likes of South Carolina and Florida then that balance is going to be important.
In this game it's hard to pick a sore spot for this offense. Sure there were times when the Kentucky offensive line missed blocks and times when the full back whiffed on blocks, but it didn't stop the offense. This was more so because UT-Martin was a bad team and couldn't capitalize on Kentucky's mistakes. This will have to be something that Kentucky needs to fix. Jojo Kemp consistently made the first man miss, even when blocks were missed, however you can't expect that to happen in SEC play.
The Defense
As for the Kentucky defense, the play-calling was really vanilla and was done by design, Kentucky didn't need to do anything fancy to win this game. Coverages in this game were mostly man coverage, they also played man free technique with the safety in the back end. AJ Stamps' interception came on a cover 1 man free technique. Kentucky also called some cover 2 and very little cover 3, however its main coverage against UT-Martin was man coverage. For most of the night the secondary was running stride for stride with the UT-Martin receivers, Kentucky contested a lot of the UT-Martin throws.
The Kentucky defensive line looked great as they started out in the 3-4 alignment and then switching to the 4-3 alignment. Switching alignments didn't have any effect on what UT-Martin wanted to do offensively in the running game. UT-Martin started out running the ball, and to my surprise it actually got going being ran at Bud Dupree and Za'Darius Smith, however stopping those runs were hardly Bud Dupree's Za'Darius Smith's fault. When UT-Martin did run the ball effectively it was because they heavily protected the running back on the side where they were running with 2 offensive linemen, 1 tight end, and a full back to make way for the running back. On these plays Za'Darius Smith and Bud Dupree would occupy their gaps as they should, however, the lack of linebackers plugging in holes allowed for the running back to find some daylight. Moving forward in the season this may be a way that teams consistently attack Kentucky's defense.
Kentucky went with 2 linebackers mostly, with Josh Forrest playing just about the whole game and Ryan Flannigan and Khalid Henderson rotating at Will linebacker. Both positions were slow at diagnosing plays, in fact one can assume that coaches emphasized pass coverages with this group. When diagnosing plays the linebackers would often take steps back to get in pass coverage before realizing that it was a run play. Sometimes the linebackers were just hesitant and taking hop steps and not flowing with the direction of the ball. With that said pass coverage by this group was great. Without verification it even seemed like Kentucky was faster at the mike linebacker position.
Previewing Saturday's Game
The Ohio Bobcats, who come into Commonwealth Stadium on Saturday, is a spread team with a dual- threat QB. This means that the linebackers will be even more important in this game. With a running quarterback, linebackers are going to be called upon to be more alert, so reads get even more crucial this week. If the linebackers aren't diagnosing plays faster it could mean more running room for the Ohio Bobcats quarterback. The defensive line played well against UT-Martin. One could wish for Bud Dupree and Za'Darius Smith's name to be called more, but the most important thing for them was to be discipline in their assignments, and trust the players around them to do theirs.
Because Mark Stoops likes to switch between 3-4 and 4-3 so often, Kentucky's defensive line plays the Under technique a lot. This means the interior defensive linemen are shifted to the weak side towards Bud Dupree. The nose tackle (Melvin Lewis), most of the time is playing the 1 technique and the defensive tackle, is playing the 3 technique and sometimes even a 4i technique to stretch out a little further. When they do this it frees up Dupree to play the defensive end position from the stand up position instead of with his hand in the ground. The biggest weakness that UK has on the defensive line is the defensive tackle (Corey Johnson, Mike Douglas, or Regie Meant) who moves to the 5 technique in the 3-4 alignment.
In my studying film against UT-Martin there were times when Cory Johnson would peak inside instead of controlling his man and two gaping. Because Ohio Bobcats are a spread offense with a dual threat QB, this probably won't hurt Kentucky much because speed of the defense will be valued over power when stopping the run. On this side of the ball is usually where the nickle back lines up so Blake McClain will have to be ready, against a spread team who tries to get speed on the edges. McClain is actually more suited than a bigger bodied defensive end for this task.
Conclusion
All in all for Kentucky to make it to the next level and shock some teams in the SEC the offense has to continue to build upon what they showed against UT-Martin. Whoever wins in the trenches wins the battle so the mistakes that were made in blocking assignments by the offensive line and the fullbacks need to be shored up, however it was very encouraging seeing the offensive line perform the way it did without Darrian Miller at left tackle. The defensive will have to shore up its run defense mostly from the linebacker spot and shore up the edge on the weak side in the 3-4 defense.