Weighing in on the question of whether or not the Kentucky game is a toss-up –
Last year we had a first year staff and had suffered significant attrition of key talent post-2020. Kentucky was in the 9th year of the Stoops regime.
We’ve beat Kentucky 7 times during the Stoops regime and the only 2 times we lost we fired our coaching staff (2017 Butch Jones and 2020 Jeremy Pruitt).
The only other time we’ve lost to Kentucky since 1984 was in 2011 and Dooley was fired before the 2012 game with the Cats, which we won.
One would think it an apparent fineable offense for a Tennessee coach to lose to Kentucky in football the way things have played out. jmo.
Last year Kentucky won 10 games against a schedule that had on average a losing record, 6.38 – 6.46. Our schedule last year went on average 7.69 – 5.31. But Kentucky won 10 games one might say; if we had won 10 games maybe the combined schedule of our opponents last year would look different. If we had beat Pitt, Ole Miss, and Purdue and thus they had lost those games, we would have won 10 games against a schedule that on average still would've went 7.46 – 5.54.
We played 5 teams last year that won 10 or more games; Kentucky played 2 and one of those was against Iowa which lost to 9-win Purdue in the regular season. Iowa scored 7 points against the Purdue defense last year; we scored 45, 52 if you count the TD robbed from Jaylen Wright.
One measure some analysts promote for efficiency is focused on 1st downs and touchdowns, the claim being that 1D+TD are a better measure of how well you move the ball down the field or inhibit your opponent’s ability to do the same.
Here are the comparisons of our units against the 6 common opponents we shared with Kentucky last year looking at 1D+TD.
- For rush offense the score was in our favor 4-1-1.
- For pass offense the score was in our favor 5-1.
- For total offense the score was in our favor 6-0.
- For rush defense the score was in their favor 2-4 (we couldn’t stop QB scrambles).
- For pass defense the score was in our favor 5-1.
- For total defense the score was in our favor 4-2.
One of the more striking things about last year is that Kentucky’s pass defense efficiency was worse than ours and they didn’t face Pittsburgh (1st round NFL QB and Biletnikoff award winner), Alabama (Heisman QB plus a 1st round WR and a 2nd round WR), or Purdue, three teams with passing offenses ranked in the top 8 in the nation. It was no accident that Hooker torched Kentucky’s secondary for 4 TDs and over 300 yards, all in less than 14 minutes of total possession time on his way to a passer rating of 273.72. It was Hooker’s highest mark on the year.
There’s no doubt that Kentucky is a marginally improved program under Mark Stoops but the idea the Cats will one day be able to compete for the East seems a bit preposterous, moreso when one realizes they have to first get past Tennessee. jmo.
Over the past 37 years we’ve won the Kentucky game 92% of the time and during the Stoops regime we’ve won 78% of the time. Those numbers are not in the toss-up range. jmo.
Y’all sound like my son and tons of kids I taught! That can be so frustrating to a parent. 
