A.J. Rose (SEC Photo)
Senior running back A.J. Rose admits it has been a “battle with the pandemic” for Kentucky players this season but he says not to worry about UK’s mental outlook for Saturday’s game with Vanderbilt.
“It ain’t hard to get up. This team loves football. It’s what we came here for, this is our job,” Rose said Tuesday. “We just want to start winning. We are trying to do everything we can to get this thing going and start winning some more games.”
Kentucky is only 2-4 going into the Vandy game and has scored just one total touchdown the last two games in losses to Missouri and Georgia.
Rose said UK “definitely needed” the bye week for players to get healthy and also work on their play.
He said Kentucky wants to finish the season strong. For him, that involves a personal goal as well.
“I got a goal to crack the top 10 rushing here. Need about 220 more yards to do that,” Rose said.
He has 1,547 yards and has averaged well over 5.0 yards per carry on almost 270 carries the last three seasons. He needs 223 yards to move past Marc Logan, who had 1,769 yards from 1983-86 and is currently in 10th place. He has four games to do that if none are cancelled by COVID-19.
Rose is averaging about 40 yards per game this season and would need to average about 55 yards per game in the remaining games to overtake Logan, something that certainly seems possible if UK’s offense can start sustaining drives.
“Finishing strong would be getting a couple of wins and making the most of my career here,” Rose said. “I want to crack the top 10 in rushing.”
Of course, Rose — and every other player — has the option to play an extra year due to the pandemic and could opt to play again in 2021 where he certainly would crack the top 10 and also likely become only the 10th UK player to amass 2,000 yards rushing.
Rose says he has talked about returning with his family and team but prefers to just focus on this season now.
“We can come back but I am just trying to figure out how to finish the season and let that play out,” he said. “With my class, we talked about it. If things don’t go as we want, next year could be a pretty good thing. But we still have this year to worry about.”
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