Football season is just around the corner and I for one am very interested to see what Rich Brooks does with his team this year. UK is coming off the most successful three year run in UK football history. I feel that this team has the potential to make a bowl game, but there are some large roadblocks that will have to be overcome in order to make their fourth straight bowl game.
Maybe the largest obstacle this year is the schedule. No matter how you look at it the SEC is always tough, but the schedule this year fields the likes of Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, and Georgia. Year in and year out every one of these teams competes for the SEC title, as well as national titles. The good new is that we have Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee at home. Yes, I know UK has some very long losing streaks against Florida and Tennessee, but it does prove better for UK that they will at least have home field advantage and will not have to deal with the raucous crowds.
In my opinion, I feel the CATS will have to win all their non-conference games which include Miami-OH, Louisville, Louisiana Monroe, and EKU plus squeak out a couple of victories from either Vandy, South Carolina, or Mississippi State in order to add to their record of three straight bowl games. I just do not see them pulling off the upsets of the likes of Alabama, Florida, Auburn, Georgia, or Tennessee. While UK has come a long way in the realm of player athleticism, I just do not believe it will be enough this year to pull off the huge upset of one of the big five.
The second obstacle I see standing in the way of UK making their fourth straight bowl game is the offense. Whether or not the offense has improved will rest on the shoulders of junior quarterback, Mike Hartline. At this moment, I believe all UK fans believe that Hartline will be the starting QB when Miami, OH arrives September 5th. Hartline will have had to improve his confidence, arm strength, and accuracy in order for the UK offense to have improved at all from the statistics they put up last year. At times last year it was very hard to watch our offense while Hartline was the QB. He was inexperienced and afraid to make a mistake. This led to him not taking any chances throwing down field. Opponents new that UK was not a threat down field so they concentrated on stopping the run and allowed UK to complete the two and three yard passes. Hartline is the key as to whether UK reaches their fourth straight bowl game or whether the keys to the offense are turned over to one of the two top twenty five quarterbacks that UK was able to sign this past off season.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Lets us also not forget the loss of Jeremy Jarmon at DE, the Cats are going to be very thin at that position without him now after his failed test. Although i am a very Offensive minded person i think the key to us making it to a fourth straight bowl game may be the defense, can the Cats build depth at the DE position because as of right now we have no one who has had any meaningful playing time what so ever there, also i have heard talk of maybe playing Micha or Sam Maxwell some at that position on passing downs and if this is the case it shows me that the coaches don't feel very confident in many of the players that they have at the moment at DE.
ReplyDelete