On Saturday night, Florida beat Kentucky 28-27, and the game-winning touchdown was pulled off in heartbreaking fashion.
Kentucky’s given up totally uncovered TDs 3 times now. Mark Stoops plans to have 2 assistants watching for this on every play.
It’s happened to the Kentucky defense three times under the head coach.


With less than a minute left, Florida quarterback Luke Del Rio threw a touchdown to a wide open Freddie Swain, who was uncovered from the line of scrimmage. Kentucky’s defense only had 10 men on the field — the 11th player on Kentucky’s defense can be seen running off the field on the bottom of the screen here:
Florida’s touchdown in the first half that tied the game at 14 was on a touchdown reception by Tyrie Cleveland, who was also uncovered from the line of scrimmage.
The Monday after Florida’s victory, UK head coach Mark Stoops told reporters that he will now designate two people to ensure no one is wide open on the line of scrimmage on each snap.
“There’s no excuse for it,” Stoops said via 247Sports. “That starts with me. Now I got two guys that the ball cannot be snapped unless we have leverage on both sides of the ball. That’s on me. I can’t believe it happened, but it did and I take responsibility for that. So, that cannot happen. We have plenty of people that can watch and look for things. That shouldn’t happen, and it did.”
In 2015 during UK’s 21-17 loss to Vanderbilt, the Commodores scored a 37-yard touchdown before halftime when Kentucky didn’t recover a receiver off the line.
“In 30 years, it’s happened to me three times and it’s happened to me three times here,” Stoops continued via 247Sports. “So that’s on me. That shouldn’t ever happen again. I’ll have two people watching the edges, the perimeter of the field and if we’re not in position, somebody better he hitting me over the head and I need to call a timeout.”
Designating two coaches to ensure this doesn’t happen again may seem a bit extreme, but it’s pretty necessary, given that this seems to be a real problem for Stoops’ defenses lately.














