{"id":240275,"date":"2025-10-21T05:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T05:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/240275\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T05:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T05:15:10","slug":"mark-stoops-would-not-change-kentuckys-short-yardage-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/240275\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Stoops would not change Kentucky&#8217;s short-yardage approach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kentucky blew a golden opportunity to end a long home losing streak and finally deliver a big victory that could help spark the program on Saturday night against ranked Texas. The game will ultimately be remembered for the Longhorns stuffing two leap plays at the goal line similar to what happened against Tennessee in 1987. Many in Big Blue Nation were not happy with the play calling in that huge situation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/coach\/mark-stoops-132239\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Stoops<\/a> is not one of those people. The dean of SEC head football coaches was asked about the decision-making after having some time to process everything. Stoops did not love the entire goal-to-go possession but would not have changed the process on third and fourth down. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s plays in there that we would like to look at differently. And again, I would probably start at first-and-goal from the three, and what set we were in, and what we were doing. Play two we tried a good play-action pass and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/cutter-boley-151566\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cutter (Boley)<\/a> was good. He ad-libbed and got a few yards.\u201d Stoops explained. \u201cThey covered it well, the pass play. Play three and play four, I mean, I don\u2019t have regret on that. I don\u2019t. Right or wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou watch it on the copy, on the coaches\u2019 copy, we were inches. We were literally two inches from that ball crossing on play three. Inches. His head was across, the ball was probably in his chest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/teams\/kentucky-wildcats\/news\/film-review-kentucky-texas-recap-mark-higgs-dante-dowdell\/https:\/\/www.on3.com\/teams\/kentucky-wildcats\/news\/film-review-kentucky-texas-recap-mark-higgs-dante-dowdell\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Film Review: What happened in Kentucky\u2019s overtime possession<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mark Stoops still believes that offensive coordinator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/coach\/bush-hamdan-132013\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bush Hamdan<\/a> \u201cdid a really good job\u201d and had an excellent game plan for Texas. That led to Boley completing 79.5 percent of his 39 passes using a dink-and-dunk passing plan and the offense creating multiple scoring opportunities including a pair of successful two-minute drives to end each half. Stoops also explained that starting tailback <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/seth-mcgowan-106051\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Seth McGowan<\/a> was extremely banged up at the end of the game. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/dante-dowdell-148684\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dante Dowdell<\/a> was clearly the best option. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/sites\/kentucky-wildcats\/news\/dante-dowdell-kentucky-football-offense-tailback-jamarion-wilcox\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Nebraska transfer was the most effective short-yardage tailback in college football last year<\/a>. Dowdell was perfect on all of his third\/fourth-and-short attempts until all three attempts failed on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Kentucky believed in its situational process in the biggest down-to-down series on the year against Texas. The Wildcats ultimately came up short, but it sounds like the offense would do the same thing if the situation occurred again tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kentucky blew a golden opportunity to end a long home losing streak and finally deliver a big victory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[132558,132559,399,117291,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-240275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-bush-hamdan-04-bishop-oconnell","9":"tag-dante-dowdell-23-picayune-memorial","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-mark-stoops-86-cardinal-mooney","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}