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Lace up your boots UK sport fans and get ready for a surprise season. One of the biggest surprises will come on the defensive side of the football. One of the old clichés says ‘a leopard don’t change his spots.’ This is to say Mark Stoops hasn’t forgot how to coach defense. From where Florida State came in three years with Stoops as the defensive coordinator was sensational. Starting at 108 in a total defensive 2009 ranking in the country to #2 in the country in 2012. Granted those rises took place at Florida State in a league significantly less challenging than the Southeastern Conference and FSU being a more traditional football school. Stoops’ defensive coordinator D. J. Eliot came with him from Florida State where he was with him all three years at that school. Now Eliot has the experience as the head man on the defensive.
For most of his career his bailiwick has been defensive backs. And now he has something at UK that’s never been seen by the BBN or most everywhere. And that is 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-3 cornerbacks that can run and are athletic. Chris Westry and Derrick Baity respectively both now have significant playing time in the rugged SEC. In Westry, Stoops said after the spring game – “From what I see I have a lot of confidence in him. When I see the ball going down the field on his side, like immediately I’m like, that’s not going to be completed.” He said that’s a very low percentage play for an offense. The ironic thing stoops says that Baity on the other side, were it not for Westry’s presence he would be getting the same accolades. Along with the corners Stoops is equally excited about the quality in the safety position and has gone on to say Mike Edwards with the “Honey Badger,” look, might be the best football player on the team.
Stoops said about the hiring of Coach Matt House a former defensive coordinator to coach the inside linebackers and head up the special teams; “As I said before, each and every hire is critically important,” Stoops said. “I took my time to make the right hire. He (House) is an extremely hard worker.”
The secondary being his area of extreme expertise, we ask the coach how he felt about that group. He said – “I am high on our secondary. I’ve got to be cautious, these guys I’m talking about are just sophomores. Fortunately we have some guy that are juniors and seniors. Hopefully these guy will lead the youngsters into the second-half of the season after they get more experience. These guys are young guys and I’ve got to careful about complimenting them. They are very talented – they are long and athletic – and they’ve played some football and they and I think they can be elite.”
Former UK star defensive end Jeremy Jarmon said he saw a couple of practices and the spring game. His defensive assessment was – “I think there are some areas especially on our back end where we can possibly really be aggressive. The corners can be used in some blitz schemes. With our linebackers I could see a bend-but-don’t break mentality.” Jarmon said when you have some inexperience in the defensive line and linebacker positions you’re going to give up some plays. “But when you get into the shorter fields, they’ve got to force some field-goals and create some turnovers.” We asked was there case of inexperience or athleticism? He said – “In the case of Stoops’ teams it’s not a case of athleticism. I went out there this morning and I saw some big tall athletes running around. There hasn’t been this much talent on a UK team since the (Fran) Curci years. He especially pointed out junior college transfer wide receiver Kayaune Ross 6-foot-6, 225-pounds that he said moves well and defensive end sophomore Kengera Daniel 6-foot-5, 265-pounds. They’ve just got to find a way to close-out games.” D. J. Eliot said defensive end Courtney Miggins was the biggest surprise this spring and those same assessments are coming from other sources.
The entire team has to improve off of last year’s performance but to be much better the defense has to make a sizable jump.
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