Brad White hopes "humbling experiences" will help his defense. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Kentucky defensive coordinator Brad White learned one valuable lesson from UK’s scrimmage last week.
“We learned that we need to tackle better. You always know after a long layoff, tackling is going to be a little bit rough on that first one and it was, especially on that first drive,” said White. “There were some good, humbling experiences there. We need that. You need to get humbled, so hopefully they can respond.”
Getting humbled could mean the UK offense created those situations. Or it could mean the defense could be in trouble this season as White tries to put together a new unit for 2025.
“It’s trying to find the right mix. You find out who communicates well together, which guys maybe vibe better together,” White said. “Sometimes it’s organic, sometimes it’s forced. We’ll script different groups intentionally, just to see how they react.
“Again, a lot of humbling moments happen in fall camp, especially for younger players. They find out that this is way bigger than they thought.”
White has done this enough not to overreact to what happens good or bad in one scrimmage.
“You can show them that the process works if you can just stay patient, keep gaining the coaching,” White said. “Try to get better every day. You’re not going to be perfect the next day, try to just correct the mistakes that (were) made the day before.
“You’re probably going to make some new ones, take the corrections there and then just try not to repeat the same ones over and over.”
Offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan felt his unit made progress in Saturday’s scrimmage. He scripted plays and liked the way the offense handled the “operation” part of the 40-second play clock, getting lined up, dealing with penalties and more. He also felt it was good conditioning work since some drives were as long as 12 plays.”
“We certainly addressed some things, just being ourselves whether it was cadence related, obviously schematically,” Hamdan said. “I think the biggest thing is how we can have less concepts and do more over and over again so guys feel extremely comfortable. Just honing into that scheme in year two, trying to simplify it, making it about the fundamentals and execution.”
Hamdan believes he has a “professional outfit” whether they have previously played at Kentucky or at UK for the first season.
3 Responses
Where’s D’edryck when you need him ?🤷♂️
Here we are two weeks away from the start of football and we're still talking basketball and volleyball. And, the few football articles we do see could have been dust offs from previous seasons based on the verbage.. Is this season going to be that bad? Is anyone showing any excitement for football?
Personally I report on what I have the most access to but there have been several football stories most days