Kentucky Wildcat Football: Is it time to start giving Joker Phillips a chance?

The future is bright for the offense at Kentucky. Sophomore Max Smith continued his stellar play last night by torching the Kent State Golden Flashes 47-14. The Wildcats now rank 18th in the country in passing yards (317 per game) after last night’s 30-39, 354 yard, four touchdown performance by Smith. So far this season, he has thrown six touchdowns, no interceptions, for 634 yards and has completed 65-89 passes. Those are Andre Woodson numbers.

While the offense racked up 539 total yards, the defense did give up 409 yards to a bad offense. That being said, the D seemed to have found something in the second half. The sacked the quarterback, caused turnovers and scored a safety. Maybe something clicked with the young unit.

All this being said, is it time to start laying off Joker a bit? That’s two weeks in a row that the offense has looked good, and the defense improved despite of all the youth on it. There will be growing pains this season, heck we’ve already seen that, but the offense is exciting again and we have a legit QB, something that most teams can only dream of. Let Joker work and let him continue to build his recruiting classes. This is not the 2011 version of the Cats. This team is better.

The attendance was an issue last night as UK filled a little over 48,000 seats, the lowest attended game since 1999. But I would venture to say that last night’s offense coupled with the alumni basketball game should draw a much larger crowd for Western Kentucky next Saturday. This blogger may even nab a couple of tickets and head down. It should be a good time and I need to put my money where my mouth is and support this team in person.

In related news Louisville had a little over 47,000 at their game and they are supposed to have a BCS bowl caliber team. After the loss to Louisiana Monroe last night, John L. Smith’s days will be numbered in Arkansas. Charlie Strong sees the “support” Louisville fans are giving him and I don’t suspect him to stick around in a lame duck conference and a less than stellar attendance week in a week out.

Give Kentucky time to build back trust with the fans with wins, and Commonwealth will be filled with 60,000 people once again. Just win baby.