Barion Brown Always Finds a Way to Make Explosive plays

Barion Brown couldn't quite reach this long pass but he had a touchdown run Saturday. (Vicky Graff Photo)

Barion Brown was being counted on to be an explosive playmaker this season.

He’s been one of the nation’s best kickoff return specialists but teams have avoided giving him many chances to return balls — he had five returns for only 91 yards, an average of 18.2 yards per try that is well off his career numbers at Kentucky.

Brown also had just seven catches for 62 yards and two touchdowns in three games with a long catch of only 18 yards and three rushes for only 11 yards with a long run of 10 yards.

In Saturday’s 41-6 win over Ohio, Brown had one run but it went for 23 yards and a score on a jet sweep (his second career rushing touchdown). He had five catches on seven targets for 28 yards, including 14 yards after the catch. He also had a 27-yard kickoff return — his best of the season — when he fielded a short, high kickoff intended to deny him a return.

“That’s part of the game. You see it in the NFL and you see it in college. You know, if you are like me, when the ball is on the perimeter and  it doesn’t work, it’s like that is enough of that sh!! on the perimeter. And then there are times when it works,” Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said after the game.

“I think even if you look at last week and look at this week … I said it early on with this team with the
slicing and dicing that they do we have to hit it with some gaps games. They made it hard in the run
game. I don’t know, we might have been more efficient running the ball last week at downhill runs in
between the tackles. We knew it was going to be hard.

“That is part of the game, getting the ball on the perimeter. And part of it – some of it is it reads too. When Gavin (Wimsatt) was in there, we thought we would probably hit the downhill but the read told him
to give it  I would assume. Real life out there looks like they took both away. You know what I mean?”