In the SEC if you don’t have a good line you have no shot. The thing that is really hard to project is where Louisville Dline in comparison to the Dline’s UK has faced. Louisville isn’t that kind of quality so to expect Louisville to create the level of havoc SEC’s created isn’t logical thinking. Louisville is probably close or better than Vandy’s DL.
It also explains the last several years in this game. Louisville has made significant improvement up front. Last year Louisville pushed them around on both sides. They just blew it. This year I expect similar game Louisville won’t lose the battle up front.
1. It used to be that if you won the rushing yardage total in the game you won, but we have outrushed UK the last two games. My mindset is that while we won't have played an SEC defensive line to this point in the year, we did run the ball effectively against Clemson and in chunks against Notre Dame and those are two high quality defensive fronts every bit as good as what you see in the SEC. Our offensive line has played well since the Boston College game, both in pass pro and run blocking.
2. Going back through UK's five game winning streak over us, I think we can all reasonably agree that our defense at all three levels isn't remotely comparable to what we fielded with Satterfield's first unit which was the flotsom left from Petrino's apocalyptic demise. We knew back then that his last two recruiting classes were virtually devoid of down linemen. That started turning around three years ago with the Dez Tell and Ashton Gillotte classes; heck we've lost Jermayne Lole' to Texas and Kaleb Banks to Florida and nobody remembers that--but they left in part because there were reps split across multiple DTs. I'd have loved to have JJ Weaver and would be a fool to downplay Walker, but that gap of talent that was more a Canyon from 2019 isn't there anymore.
3. The last two matchups have seen one thing that clearly spelled the difference and that was turnovers; we only intercepted Leary--and it was a huge one--in the fourth quarter last year. But they turned Louisville over six times in that two year span and it was a huge factor. I think we'll move the ball on Kentucky, but we need s short field and we need it early to almost spell that this is going to be a different story. We're among the better teams in college football at blocking kicks and getting production out of special teams has sometimes been a big plus. We need that early kickoff forced fumble like Notre Dame, we certainly DON'T need the airmailed punt snap that puts us down two scores on the road. Give me the two blocked FG, three of four made FGs type of special teams difference we saw at Clemson.
I like us Saturday, but the kicked terd that was Stanford had me asking some tough questions of everybody in the program. We should have been watching the CFP committee rankings release last night with our name pop up on the edge of those rankings (basically where the name Clemson was). Saturday defines this season for us whether we care to admit it or not. A win doesn't make it a great season, a win makes it a good season that was underachieving. A loss? There's no way with what we saw from the skill positions, at QB and with the freshmen running backs that we should have five regular season losses.
