What did UK gain from loss at Georgia

Kentucky's defense did not allow a touchdown in the first quarter at Georgia but just could not hold up against the talented Bulldogs. (Vicky Graff Photo)

Last Saturday Kentucky lost its first  game of the season 30-13 at No. 1 Georgia. After watching the first quarter of the game it became pretty obvious to me that the Wildcats were going to struggle to beat a team as talented as the Georgia Bulldogs.

Add in a few dropped passes, some special team gaffes (again), a couple of dumb penalties, and the lack of awareness to fall on a loose ball that might have been an incomplete pass and it might have been a fumble (it definitely looked like an incompletion to me but was ruled a fumble on the field) and you have the recipe for losing to the No. 1 ranked team in the country on the road.

Not only is Georgia the best team in the country but I believe they are the best team by a pretty significant margin. Yes, I know that Alabama on Saturday night waxed the other Bulldogs — Mississippi State — 49-9 in fabulous Starkville,  but I’m still not sold on Alabama being a complete team. They still play inconsistently from half to half and game to game and they don’t seem to always have the mental toughness that characterizes Nick Saban coached teams.

So with all that being said, after watching multiple highly ranked teams lose to lesser opponents (including No. 2 Iowa going down to an unranked Purdue team at home) I had to chuckle a little when I saw articles that said, “Georgia dominates unbeaten Kentucky” or others that tried to imply UK wasn’t a quality football team and had somehow lucked into its 6-0 record. Nothing could be further from the truth. Are they in the same class as this year’s Georgia Bulldogs? No, but neither is any other team in the country in my opinion.

Georgia’s defense had only allowed 33 points total in six games this season and only two offensive touchdowns. Kentucky scored two touchdowns on Saturday. And yes, I know that one of them was scored with 4  seconds left to play in the game but as near as I could tell Georgia wasn’t giving anything away for free on the Cats last drive to the end zone at the end of the game. It was still kill-or-be-killed in the trenches down at the goal line.

So what does this game say to Kentucky fans? At the end of the season, the record shows that a loss is a loss is a loss but it’s really much more than that. Saying Mark Stoops lost for the ninth time in a row to the Georgia Bulldogs doesn’t really tell the whole story. This isn’t 2013 Kentucky Football anymore. These Cats were prepared and played hard. Extremely hard. They just didn’t have enough talented players on the field to overcome the talent level that Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart has amassed over the past few years.

But knowing that 13 is the most points Georgia has given up in a game this season should add a little more validation to the new Liam Coen offense. After all, if teams like Clemson and Auburn can only muster up 3 and 10 points respectively, one has to believe that the Kentucky offense is headed in the right direction. They just don’t have enough talented players in the wide receiving corp to be able to outgun a team like the Bulldogs.

So now the true test for the Wildcats begins. As crazy as it may sound, a pathway to the College Football playoffs is still open to the 6-1 Cats. So is at least a second-place finish in the SEC East and potentially a second-place finish in the SEC overall (based on SEC wins and losses) if Kentucky were to win out for the rest of the season. A New Year’s Day Bowl appearance is also possible if the Cats don’t make the playoffs (and yes I realize the odds of Kentucky making the College Football Playoffs are extremely slim at best but it could happen).

But to me, the best thing that happened Saturday was the Wildcats did not self-implode. They didn’t turn the ball over, they didn’t give up massive amounts of yards or points the whole game because of busted coverages or missed tackles. They played solid football and yes they made mistakes but they hung in and played the full 60 minutes. Although I realize that it is not 2013 and there are no moral victories, there are steps in the process of learning to win championships, and Saturday’s game was one of those steps.

The final results showed that Kentucky is still not an elite football program, but they are getting closer. In my opinion, no team left on Georgia’s schedule will come much closer to beating the Bulldogs than UK did (and I realize that wasn’t close enough) because Georgia has an elite team this year. One that will win the National  Championship in January.

So if one were to look back at where UK Football was in 2012 and now look at where they are in 2021 the change has been dramatic. No longer is Kentucky Football mentioned with the have-nots like Vanderbilt. Now when coaches talk about UK they mention how physically they play, how dominant they can be in the trenches and not how well their punter punts the ball. They now have SEC speed and size, they just don’t have enough of it yet to compete with the Georgias and Alabamas of the football world.

But as Mark Stoops likes to say, “it’s a grind, a daily grind”, and I have no doubt that if Stoops remains at Kentucky he, along with his very talented staff, will continue to climb up the mountain that is SEC Football and when he reaches the top he will plant a blue flag that says “UK” for all the fans of all ages that have waited so long to see Kentucky Football at the top instead of at the bottom.

It’s coming folks. We just need a little more time to let that acorn that was planted in 2013 become the oak tree that will be championship football at UK.