Run game in focus during Hamdan's first year
Brock Vandagriff and those receivers he'll be throwing to will dominate a lot of the conversation around Kentucky football for the next few weeks, but the run game is in focus during Bush Hamdan's first year as the Cats' offensive coordinator.
There were bright spots to Kentucky's offensive performance a year ago. While the offense was very inconsistent and ran fewer plays than any team in the nation, Ray Davis had 20 touchdowns and the Cats were more explosive than usual, finishing in the top-40 in offensive SP+.
But overall, it wasn't good enough. A big part of that can be traced to the fact, Mark Stoops believes, that the Wildcats couldn't generate tough yards on the ground when everybody knew a run play was likely.
That was something Kentucky had through years of powerful running backs like Benny Snell and Chris Rodriguez, but when the short yardage running goes away, you notice it. It affects everything.
For a coach like Stoops, who has always cited the "80% of SEC games are won by the team that rushes for more yards" stat, the running game had to be in the front of his mind when he hired Hamdan.
"I really like what he does in the run game, there's no doubt," Stoops said of Hamdan on Friday. "Any good offensive coordinator is going to have that ability to be able to run the ball. We talked about it. We talked about the offensive line and up front we have to be more physical. We have to be able to get tough yards. We were at our best, doing really good things, when the entire stadium knew we were going to run the ball and we still ran the ball for success in some critical moments. We still need to do that."
Stoops emphasized that it's important to be able to run the ball when you have a lead and get into your four-minute offense to drain the clock. That was one of the reasons Stoops had such a good record in one-score games for a few years until recently.
"We have to be able to run the ball when everybody knows you're going to," Stoops said. "Obviously we're looking for that balance. You're going to be able to create explosive plays if you're able to run the ball better."
It's impressive that Kentucky was able to generate so many explosive plays last year given it ran so few plays. Kentucky averaged a 30-yard play more frequently than Georgia or Texas. If the defense has to respect the run game more, and play action, it could open that up even more.
"I like what Bush is doing. I like the way he mixes it up," Stoops said. "He does a very good job of window dressing and cutting off the defense with deception and motions. It's a mixture of getting things on the perimeter with running things downhill and the play-action off it."
But there's one hang-up: Even Stoops acknowledges the running back room is unproven, and this just days after Vince Marrow acknowledged the same thing on the 1 Star Recruits podcast.
"The running back room to some extent is unproven," Stoops said. "We'll see what they do. I believe in those guys. I believe there's a really big mixtures where we have the really big strong bruisers we had before and some guys who can be electric in the open field."