Kentucky Wildcats 10 at Missouri Tigers 33: Postmortem

This is the second SEC road game for Kentucky, and the second time they were killed by a struggling football team with tons of injury problems somewhat comparable to Kentucky's own.

I have absolutely nothing good to say about this football game. Once again, Kentucky could not even approximately stop the run. They looked as though they couldn't stop a quality high school team, and no matter how young Kentucky is, they cannot be permitted to get away with a performance this disgustingly abysmal without being dragged mercilessly over the rhetorical coals.

I hated this effort more than I have hated any game all year. Kentucky came out looking good, fumbled the ball near the goal line, played one good series after that and then failed like a dropped watermelon. It was painful to watch.

I am incapable of holding my head up after this loss. In fact, if you want to read my normally even-handed analysis, you'd best stop reading right now and wait for a basketball game, because this is going to get uglier than it already is. This was an embarrassing, completely inept effort by both the players and the coaching staff, and I would be ashamed to return to campus if I were either one.

Missouri played a very sub-par game in almost every way, but Kentucky was not content to allow that good fortune to help them. Instead, they repeatedly gave the football away, could not get the Missouri offense off the field, and made all of one third down conversion the entire game. Overall, this was the sorriest effort by a Kentucky football team I have seen in a long while.

Observations:

• I have exactly one bit of praise to offer: J.D. Harmon had a terrific game with two interceptions, some nice tackles, and just did a great job overall for a freshman. He's the only player that should not wear sack cloth and ashes to class Monday in mourning for this horror.
• The coaching staff was singularly awful in every way. They started out looking great on the first drive, and then played down to the level of the kids on the field. If I had any confidence in this staff left, and I don't think I did, it is gone now.
• Patrick Towles was either not ready, or not able. Not sure if it was him, or just the rust. I don't really care either way. He went into the game, so that tells me he thought he was ready. If he did, he was wrong.
• Kentucky abandoned the running game again, for no obvious reason. The QB rotation lacked even a semblance of sanity.
  
• I think Kentucky fumbled the football like five or six times. One was a great strip, and the rest were just stupid fumbles that should never happen. Raymond Sanders III did more things wrong this game than I have ever seen a running back of his experience do.
  
• Did we decide that running a slant was a bad idea? We had tons of opportunities in the passing game, but somehow decided it would be a good idea to throw the ball downfield, something we haven't been able to do all year. All we got for our trouble were incompletions and negative plays.
  
• Landon Foster, seriously, what was that?
• The perfect illustration of the ineptitude of the coaching staff was when Foster got off his one good punt of the day. Missouri was called for running into the kicker, a penalty which, if accepted, would not yeild a first down. The staff decided to accept the penalty and re-kick, and Foster returned to today's form with a weak effort, giving a net gain of 17 yards to the Mizzou return team -- all they would need to allow the offense to score three more points on a 31-yard field goal.
  
• DeMarcus Sweat is a freshman, but he showed signs of regression today with bone-headed plays.
• Jalen Whitlow played his worst game as a Wildcat, and against an opponent you would figure he would play well against.
• Special teams had some good moments, but they were more than made up for by fumbles, bad punts, and bad decisions.

I could go on forever, but I'm done. In one way, this is cathartic -- it showed that in spite of what happened last week, this football team is not making any progress whatsoever toward improvement. I don't care how bad you are, when you have an opponent who is not that much better than you and you are 1-7, you have an obligation to bring your "A" game. Instead, we brought our "E" game (E for embarrassing).

This was a debacle, and even I can't put lipstick on this pig and call it anything else.