Kentucky Scrimmage Takeaways: Defense won day at Kroger Field

Kentucky’s fall camp officially reached one of its biggest moments on Saturday when the team entered Kroger Field for the first fall camp scrimmage. It was a hot day in the Bluegrass and one that could help settle the depth chart in Lexington. Unfortunately, Will Stein did not love what he saw on the field. “I would just categorize it as sloppy. There’s a lot of reasons why. So I typically let the tape tell me the story. I’m not going to let weather or heat play a factor into why it might look a certain way because ultimately this is going to be the temperature for the first game. We’re on turf. It’s going to be hot. It’s the first game of September,” Stein said. “And so we have to continue to prep our bodies and our minds more than anything about how to conduct ourselves on the football field and to play through being hurt and pain and mental fatigue. The best teams do. Championship level teams do. So we are based on today, a little bit a ways away from that standard but we’re going to continue to push this week.” In a loaded press conference that included the news that Antonio O’Berry won’t play for Kentucky this fall and that linebacker Alex Afari Jr. is now being onboarded back into the program, Stein expressed some frustration on how the scrimmage went. KSR will be unpacking everything the head football coach, offensive coordinator Joe Sloan, and defensive coordinator Jay Bateman said over the next couple of days. What the Big Blue Nation needs to know is right now can be found at Kentucky Sports Radio Dot Com. This was yet another unexpected busy August Saturday on the Kentucky football beat. It sounds like Kentucky had a juice problem The scrimmage was sloppy but there were some productive plays. Kentucky’s offense had their fair share of wins in the run game and the offense produced some explosive plays. Meanwhile, the defense also did some positive things. There were also some bad with procedural issues popping up on offense. There is plenty in between the whistles to work on. That’s not what had Stein a little irritated at the podium in Kroger Field. It had more to do with the juice level. “I’m slow to really judge where we’re at because I know there’s still instillation that’s going on. There’s schemes. There’s trying to perfect those,” Stein said. “And you know, when you’re trying to think on the football field, you usually slow down and play slower because you’re trying to think.” “I’m more disappointed in our guys’ enthusiasm coming out of the tunnel first time in Kroger Field in the stadium. It seemed like we let outside factors dictate how we were going to play today as a whole starting from the way that we stretched. The way that we did our pregame, our seven-on-seven. And so that bled into the scrimmage and ultimately did not produce winning football for the majority of it.” Many in the Big Blue Nation loved the clip of Stein saying “juiceful is useful” during a team meeting at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility. This was a coach who went viral at SEC Media Days with his “because of me” comments and who dropped a famous Ice Cube lyric to KSR’s Matt Jones. Energy and swagger have been calling cards for this new era. Neither appeared to show up in the first scrimmage of the season. That concerned Stein. There is time to get this corrected. The Kentucky head coach pointed out there are still 21 days until the first game and this lack of juice is something that will be addressed in practice on Monday. It’s clear that the approach irked the leader of UK football. “It just felt like survival out there a little bit instead of attack mode. It was kind of ‘hey, it’s hot, you know, man, we’ve been practicing awhile.’ Instead of ‘hey, we get to go in Kroger Field and go get to work.” First-team defense beat first-team offense Judging a winner in an intrasquad scrimmage is often a difficult task for any head coach. The leader of any football organization wants to see both sides of the football do well. Will Stein was quick to mention each side had wins but it sounds like the first-team defense got after the first-team offense. “I think there were good plays on both sides of the ball but I would say — in terms of like the blue group which is our first team — I would say the defense won that side. The white (second-team) was a little bit more even. There were some big plays on offense. But as a whole, I didn’t like how we started on offense,” Stein explained. “Just urgency. In and out of the huddle, breaking, the things that we can control. I can’t control what the ref does or a tipped ball or all this other stuff, but we can control our tempo. We can control our urgency in and out of the huddle. We can control our demeanor. And that’s what I really didn’t feel.” The head coach did not like the approach of the whole team but the offense seemed to really stick out. There were some pre-snap problems and a lack of execution. Stein believes it started early in practice and that fatigue got to the team. Even with some expected starters unavailable, the head coach wants to see a more crisp attack. The offense will likely be pushed hard in next week’s practice before the final fall camp scrimmage arrives. Jay Bateman was very happy with the scrimmage Many in Big Blue Nation have high hopes for what this offense can become with Will Stein in charge. Notre Dame quarterback transfer Kenny Minchey and the rebuilt offensive line have generated a lot of positive discussion for the program. The defense has gone a bit under the radar with some other parts of the program generating buzzz. This side of the ball simply has more to prove. So does defensive coordinator Jay Bateman who is back to having full autonomy on this side of the ball for the first time since his three-year stint at North Carolina from 2019-21. That run in Chapel Hill did not end on a high note. Bateman is ready for his next swing at the plate. The 53-year-old liked what he saw from his defense on Saturday. “I thought it was awesome. It was hot. Grant Godfrey‘s shoes like melted in the individual. I think that was like what we needed. I love the heat. I thought it was good. I thought we did a really nice job on third down,” Kentucky’s defensive coordinator told KSR. “Thought early on some of our run defense was a little bit timid. Kind of like trying to figure it out. I think once we kind of settled in, the run game was pretty good. I thought they did a good job on third down. Thought the corners really played well even though we were down kind of our main guys. I thought it was really impressive to see those guys.” Bateman liked what he saw from his unit. It sounds like he believed the defense adjusted and responded to some tough conditions. Stein and offensive coordinator Joe Sloan both admitted there was some work to get done. The defense sounded like the big winner of the first scrimmage.