Truzenzuzex over at A Sea of Blue doesn’t have high hopes for the UK offense after today’s loss. Here’s an excerpt from his post-mortem:
If UK is to achieve its goal of a third straight bowl, there have to be changes on offense. As it stands, with the possibility of Lyons going down for many games and perhaps even the season, UK looks incapable of putting up enough points to be successful from here on out, and even if Lyons is only mildly injured, I feel uncomfortable enough about what I have seen that I don’t see another sure victory on the horizon. Having seen Hartline now for six games, I can say that he is unquestionably not SEC-quality right now now, and I don’t know if we have an SEC-quality quarterback on our football team this year. Cobb is exciting, but I don’t believe he is the answer — he is just too young. Hartline may get better, but with a young receiving corps, and too much youth overall at our skill positions, Kentucky no longer looks like a sure bet to win any of the remaining SEC games, even next week when Arkansas comes to town.
Right now, I am not at all optimistic about the rest of the year. Something may change, but we have far too many offensive holes to plug in seven more weeks. We may have to cobble together some kind of gimmick offense to take advantage of where we are athletic, but the inability of receivers to get open or catch footballs, and the inability of Hartline to deliver the ball on target combined with the possible loss of Dicky Lyons Jr. make our offense look like it is on life support.
Over at Kentucky Sports Radio, Matt Jones pins the problem here:
The biggest issue at this time to me is that the Wide Receivers are simply not at the SEC level. Dicky Lyons was of course injured, Ford didnt play, Lanxter got hurt during the game and EJ Adams has hands made of brittle glass. As for the Freshmen, it is a tough go of it. Roark cant make the big plays, Boyd still doesnt know the routes, Adeyemi is a bit short….only Cobb really looks ready at this time. And it may only get worse.
John Clay is a sports columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader. A native of Central Kentucky and graduate of UK, he covered UK football for 13 seasons before being promoted to columnist in 2000. He lives in Lexington with his wife and two sons. You can e-mail him at jclay@herald-leader.com.
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