Kentucky is the perfect test of whether Florida football has turned a corner

Kentucky football under Mark Stoops hasn’t exactly been what you’d call subtle for most of its run.

The defense doesn’t change much from year to year. Stoops has created a solid framework and his Wildcats generally win when his players outwork the opponent. He tried early on to follow his older brother Bob’s path by leading the Air Raid on offense, but he gave that up long ago. Mostly it was a run-and-offensive line attack, usually with one or two focuses. You know the names: Benny Snell, Lynn Bowden, Wan’Dale Robinson, Chris Rodriguez, Will Levis, Ray Davis.

If you’re trying to play it safe against one of his teams, Stoops will be happy to join you. He wants to keep the games short and simple. He doesn’t typically have an offense capable of making up for big deficits. Many head coaches at Florida got themselves into trouble because they thought the way to beat Stoops was to minimize risk to minimize mistakes. In fact, this is a recipe to play into his hands and pave his way to victory.

Last year, Billy Napier had one of his most meaningful quotes about his UF tenure after losing 33-14 to Davis and a tough UK defense last year:

“Anyone who knows me knows that this game will be tough for me, just in terms of who I want to be, what kind of football I want to play.”

This quote is somewhat misleading on its own. It came from Napier’s postgame press conference, and he had just spent several answers talking about how the Gators were dominated at both lines of scrimmage.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Napier wants to win as much as Stoops. His three different defensive coordinators in three years, for example, don’t run the same defense as Stoops.

However, the quote suggests that Napier wants to win with a line of scrimmage team. I wondered if he’s so focused on it that he sometimes has wishful thinking and sees what he wants to see instead of what’s there because he’s been overestimating the quality of his two lines for two years now.

Regardless, Kentucky is now a good test of Florida’s apparent resurgence in recent weeks.

The defense has played much better since Ron Roberts moved into the locker room and the cocky Austin Armstrong moved to the sidelines. It makes a lot of sense to have the game official in a quieter environment where he can concentrate and survey the entire field while the over-caffeinated rah-rah guy is downstairs where he can get the players fired up. It makes so much sense that you wonder why it wasn’t planned that way from the start.

The British offensive lacks the obvious focus it had in most years. Georgia transfer QB Brock Vandagriff was OK but not great, making it clear why the former 5-star had to leave Athens to get playing time. The workhorse running back has been Demie Sumo-Karngbaye, but he has less than five yards per carry this season. It’s also consistent: He only broke five YPC in a game against Southern Miss, and in the non-Southern Miss games his longest run was just 14 yards. Dane Key is somehow still there and is the biggest threat, but he’s not a burner.

So the Wildcats relied on Stoops’ defense. It served them well in most games. It was enough to keep UK in contention until the end with losses to Georgia, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt, but the offense couldn’t do enough to secure the win.

Even in the 31-6 loss to South Carolina, the Gamecocks only gained 252 total yards on the day. A pick-six by Vandagriff and a 20-yard field goal drive wiped out Carolina’s score, and half of their ten offensive drives went less than ten yards and ended in a punt or turnover.

Napier was asked about hot seat talk at his recent press conferences and he predictably waved it off. He says what all coaches say: He doesn’t listen to such distractions and focuses on making the team play better.

Even if it were true that he has completely insulated himself from outside criticism, which seems extremely unlikely, he knows what Florida’s expectations are and that his record falls short of them. His record will certainly not be equaled his own Expectations. And he certainly realizes that UF doesn’t have to suffer the loss of a head coach for long. The seven-year contract he negotiated was, in part, a recognition of this fact.

After a tremendous opportunity was squandered by poor coaching decisions in Knoxville last week, Napier knows that every game from now on is critical to his future. What will he do with this information?

If the answer is to continue playing with something like 2023 Kentucky as a guiding principle, he’s doomed. It’s very hard to beat a Stoops Kentucky team that plays like a Stoops Kentucky team unless you’re far more talented. I’m not sure that’s the case in Florida, so trying to play it safe would again be one of the most dangerous things he can do.

Last but not least, Napier needs to expand his work with DJ Lagway. When Graham Mertz went down in Knoxville, the playbook for the rookie was pretty small, and when Tennessee decided to fire him up, they came home quickly. Although Lagway is precocious, he is not yet capable of handling a college pass rush that collapses the pocket in under two seconds. If Napier continues his predictable style of play, there could be more green on Lagway’s jersey than anything else by the end of the game.

This is the most beatable Kentucky team in years. The defense is solid, but the offense is not at all explosive and often struggles to get anything going. If Napier’s team have truly turned things around, it should be clear in this game.