Mark Stoops talks Kentucky Wildcats Football

Mandatory Credit: Daniel Shirey-USA TODAY Sports

Q. You’re down three receivers this week, but numbers‑wise do you feel you can use those four wideouts?

COACH STOOPS: I do. I feel better. We were discussing our depth chart over the weekend and early this morning. We do feel good about the wide receiver position.
I feel like if we are in a four wide receiver set, we do feel we’re two deep. Maybe not as experienced as you’d like to be still at certain spots there, but talent‑wise we’re getting to the point where those are the guys we’re looking for. You just need to continue to get better, keep on working, see who goes out there and make the plays.

Q. What do they (UT Martin) do offensively?

COACH STOOPS: They do a little bit of everything. They can put an extra tackle in and play him at tight end. They may try to get big and run the ball a little bit. They’ve done that certain games. They get into what we call a 20‑personnel look, like our offense, like a lot of people do, that H back off, do a variety of things. They get into a little bit of the quarterback run game stuff.

There’s a lot to prepare for. It will be good for us. There’s a lot of things we’re familiar with, that we see from our offense as well, even if it’s just the sets, things like that, from 11 or 20 looks. 20 looks is just two backs, three wide receivers.
We’ll see a lot of things from them, I’m sure. Like anybody, the first game, they’ve had a long time to make some tweaks and adjust some things. So you never really know in that first game. They could come out and emphasize something we haven’t seen much of. But that’s where all the practice and preparation comes. Whether they’re empty sets, big sets, whatever, we’ve worked it all.

Q. Question about your team. What have they got to do better?

COACH STOOPS: I just think consistency. We’ve got to go play well and be consistent. We’re not good enough to make simple mistakes and shoot ourselves in the foot, turn the ball over, things like that obviously. We want to be very consistent. We want to pick up our tempo offensively and continue to grow and move the ball like we want to move the ball.

We talk about our running backs and things like that. Of course, I’ve always said that, Neal has always said that. We’ve never given anybody any false indication of what we want to be offensively. We want to be balanced. Of course, that means we need to throw the ball better than we did a year ago also. We need to grow offensively and do what we want to do that way. Defensively, again, be more consistent. We need to get more turnovers. We certainly need to get more interceptions. Just be a more consistent group.
Fundamentally we’re getting much closer to where we want to be, especially up front. I think in the secondary we’re getting better. We just need some play‑makers to step up.