UK Football: Where Fantasy Meets Reality

You all know the guy in the picture. Randall Cobb, WR,QB,RB,TE, and practically every other title you can give him of an offensive nature. He is joined by Derrick Locke, Mike Hartline and others on the offensive side of the football for the Wildcats in what has become a very potent offense this year. Cobb, Locke and the other guys on offense have had an unenviable task. Outscore everyone. You see, there is only one way to win a football game. You must score more points than the other team.

The problem for the Cats is that there are two parts to this puzzle. The offense does the scoring, and the defense is supposed to prevent the same thing from happening on the other side of the ball. Now, if you look at the Kentucky rankings in the SEC for offense you will find this:

Rushing: 6th, Pass Efficiency: 7th, Total offense: 4th, Scoring: 3rd

By all rights, decent and respectable numbers for the Cats. And much better than some folks thought they would put up this season by a long shot.

Now the defense:

Rushing: 12th, Pass Efficiency: 5th, Total Defense: 8th, Scoring 11th

Anything there catch your eye?

When you have the conference’s worst rushing defense, and next to last in scoring defense what does that tell you? It tells me that we cannot accomplish one of the fundamentals of football. We cannot tackle. Passing defense is not as much about tackling as it is about preventing something from happening, and scheming to force the offense to make passes they otherwise would not want to try to make. But rushing defense is really simple. It is about tackling the man in front of you. There are only two reasons that a team cannot tackle. They are either not properly trained in the art of tackling, or they are not physically able to overcome the opponent they are trying to tackle. If you watch running plays in football, you will see two things occurring when an offense is successful in running the ball. One is that either the offensive line is opening huge holes in the defense, or two is that the offensive player is breaking tackles and eluding the defensive men he comes in contact with. The latter is what is happening with the Cats. The line is not “breaking down” so to speak, our players are not able to tackle their opponents when they are faced with a one on one situation.

Some offensive co-ordinators try to compensate for this by having safeties or defensive backs as some call them, “cheat-up” to fill holes and gaps in running lanes. Usually your safeties are some of your best tacklers. They are usually linebacker strong, cornerback fast, and defensive coordinator smart. The Kentucky safeties are pretty good safeties. They know how to fill lanes when they are in a position to do it.

So, if we are suffering from tackling deficiencies, there are schemes to fix the problem right? well, one would think so. And admittedly, this is probably an oversimplification of the problems UK is having on the defensive side of the ball this season. Adding to that, there have been times when the offense has committed turnovers that have given the opponent the benefit of very short fields to run in order to score as well. But, however it is put in front of anyone, if they cannot see the problems UK’s anemic defense is having they have to be either seriously vision impaired, or incredibly Blue Eyed. And don’t come back to me and say this is a call for someones head, because it is not. Steve Brown may very well be the best man for the job of Defensive Coordinator, I do not know. But what I do know is this. I don’t care how many points this high-powered offense of ours scores, if the defense does not stop the other side at least once more often than we score every game, we lose. Simple as that.

I would be willing to hear any side of this discussion that anyone would care to take in rebuttal. Simply put, we have a problem on defense and we must find a solution for it and very soon before the season slips away from us. That falls on Joker’s head. I know it, he knows it, and he does not strike me as a guy who shrinks away from problems. And some folks are going to say that continually writing about it does not help. Well, until someone finds something that does help, I am going to continue to try my methods. When the problem is fixed, I will either have been a part of the solution or not. I want to see us continue this rise through the SEC that we began a few years ago. And we go nowhere until this defense is fixed.

We all have been living in a bit of a fantasy world where football is concerned, because the SEC is a very nasty place for a football team. Just ask Alabama. But we have to face reality and understand what our weaknesses are, and find ways to either fix them immediately or mask them somehow in schemes and plays that allow for the team to play to it’s strengths. But in the end, it is still going to come down to one guy being able to tackle another. That’s where fantasy meets reality.

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