Through the first three games of the 2022 college football season, this Kentucky football team is undefeated and ranked in the AP top 10, yet it sees a troubling cloud gathering on the horizon.
“If we don’t improve,” Rich Scangarello said Saturday, “we’re going to have some problems.”
Scangarello is UK’s first-year offensive coordinator, of course, the play-caller who left his position as quarterbacks coach for Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers to succeed Liam Coen, who after one season on Mark Stoops’ staff rejoined Sean McVay and the Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams.
Through three games, Scangarello’s Kentucky offense hasn’t been awful, but it hasn’t clicked, either. It has contributed key elements to the Cats’ 3-0 start but is also far from what Scangarello believes it should be at this point of the campaign and can be down the road.
“I’m disappointed in myself as a football coach,” Scangarello said Saturday after UK’s 31-0 blanking of Youngstown State. “I’m disappointed in the offensive staff and I’m disappointed in the players.”
The Wildcats did gain 480 total yards Saturday, but they again failed to run the ball effectively, averaging just 2.86 yards per carry. Quarterback Will Levis was sacked four times. Playing against an FCS opponent, the Cats were slow out of the gate. Their first three possessions resulted in two punts and an interception before finally cracking the scoreboard. In the first quarter alone, six of UK’s 12 official running plays (including sacks) were negative yardage plays.
“We’ve got to get that fixed and run the ball downhill,” Stoops said afterward.
Truth be told, early struggles should have been expected. While basically an NFL offense, from the same coaching tree as Coen’s NFL offense, Scangarello has added his twists and tweaks to the playbook. He’s learning his personnel as his personnel is learning its new OC. Together, they’ve yet to find a sweet spot.
More importantly, UK’s offensive line lost a pair of NFL Draft choices (Luke Fortner and Darian Kinnard) and a third starter (Dare Rosenthal). Eli Cox moved from guard to center. Kenneth Horsey moved from guard to left tackle. With right guard Tashawn Manning absent Saturday because of an injury, UK has played just one game (Florida) with its expected starting line — Horsey at left tackle; Jager Burton at left guard; Cox at center; Manning at right guard; Jeremy Flax at right tackle.
That lack of continuity is surely one reason Scangarello left Saturday’s first-teamers in the game until the final series. Plus, the offensive coordinator was not happy with the performance. “I didn’t think it was good enough tonight at all,” he said.
Bright spots exist. You would have difficulty finding a better pair of true freshmen receivers than Dane Key and Barion Brown. Key has 13 catches for 226 yards and three scores, one each game. Levis threw for 377 yards Saturday, completing 27 of 35 passes for 377 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions. He ranks 18th nationally in passing yards per game, 30th in pass efficiency.
“This just was not good enough, especially how the defense played,” Levis said Saturday. “They’re getting the ball back for us repeatedly and we are just not finishing drives. Again, just the good things we did, we should have been doing a lot more.”
“We’ve got to play better around him,” Stoops said of Levis. “And it starts with being physical, moving the line of scrimmage and running the ball downhill.”
The return of Chris Rodriguez should help with that. The preseason All-SEC running back is set to return from his four-game suspension just when the Cats hit the heart of their SEC schedule — Oct. 1 at Ole Miss; Oct. 8 vs. South Carolina at home; Oct. 15 vs. Miss State at home and Oct. 29 at Tennessee.
Through these first three games, however, Kentucky is 91st nationally in total offense, 122nd in rushing offense and 126th in average yards per rush.
Said Scangarello, “We’re gonna get it fixed.”
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