Kentucky went from ‘the air raid’ to a thundering caveman offense, and it’s working beautifully

When Kentucky hired Mark Stoops in 2013, one of his first moves was to hire state native and former Wildcats receiver Neal Brown to, in theory, bring the air raid back to one of its original footholds.

The Hal Mumme/Mike Leach show had brought the non-stop-passing attack to Kentucky in the ‘90s, before it launched UK’s Tim Couch to No. 1 in the NFL Draft, helped Stoops’ big brother win a national title at Oklahoma, and eventually snuck its wide-open principles into all of football. See: Patrick Mahomes, Baker Mayfield, and Jared Goff.

At Stoops’ introductory spring game, Couch spoke to a full house about how Brown was indeed going to run the same offense that’d once made Kentucky special in the SEC. There were shirts and everything.

The Kentucky coach balked a bit when the Cats’ offense was dubbed “air raid” by a reporter.

”Yeah, I’m not ready to define that as air raid, OK?” Stoops said. “Maybe I did when I walked in and they asked me, and I said, sure. I’ve got to talk to our marketing people about that.”

Brown moved on to beat Power 5 teams at Troy, while Stoops moved further away from the air raid idea, first by hiring new OC Shannon Dawson from Dana Holgorsen’s West Virginia. The Holgorsen air raid is noteworthy for evolving far away from the Leach/Mumme vision, quite often rushing more than it throws, depending on the QB. (Leach is, to this day, perfectly happy to win games with 0 rushing yards.)

By the end of that year, Kentucky was still flailing, with no identity or real promise. In three years, Stoops had four SEC wins and zero against Louisville, with the whole air raid gimmick looking about as good a fit as it’d been for Tommy Tuberville at Texas Tech.

And it’s worked, uh, great!

Gran’s best known for Auburn’s running games of the early aughts, with names like Cadillac Williams, Ronnie Brown, Rudi Johnson, Brandon Jacobs, and Kenny Irons coming to mind. Though UK never really bought into its own air raid branding, in part due to never really finding the QB for it, doing whatever Auburn did at any point in history is about as far from Leach as you can get.

In 2016, it was like Kentucky suddenly realized mid-season that it should just scrap every element of football offense that’d been developed since the 1920s. I’m kidding, but not all that much.

At some point, Gran and company reassessed.

Freshman Benny Snell Jr. had rushed for 136 yards against NMSU in his first action, and QB Stephen Johnson had rushed 10 times for 51 yards (sans sacks). Hmm. Desperate for a jolt against Vandy, with Johnson going 10-for-24, the Wildcats handed to Snell 20 times, and he ground out 94 yards.

Basically during a mid-October bye week, Kentucky became a run-first team.

It also became a Snell-first team. Through five games, Snell had rushed 41 times to 67 for Stanley “Boom” Williams and 27 for Jojo Kemp. Over the next seven games, the 220-pounder carried 138 times to Williams’ 83 and Kemp’s 40. Snell continued to average about six yards per carry, and as complementary pieces, Williams and Kemp saw their per-carry averages rise.

Oh yeah, and Kentucky scored a lot more points. The Wildcats averaged 24.5 points per game in their first six games and 37.5 in their next six. The run game thrived enough to distract defenses and open up passing lanes. They won four of six — including a road upset of Louisville — and won seven games for the first time since 2009.

S&P+ likes the Cats, particularly on defense, but this rowdy, explosive, wildcat-heavy offense — remember Gran’s Auburn guys Cadillac and Brown? — is just as vital. Kentucky lines up its really good O line and slugs people, then runs past them. From a post by Bud Elliott on how well this team blocks:

Look at who is running the jet action. It’s Terry Wilson, the QB! You don’t see many QBs act as the jet motion man in wildcat (or any) packages. But Wilson has the speed to play receiver in the SEC if he’d wanted to, so defenses must respect him as the motion man.

In this case, it’s just window dressing. Kentucky is running split zone. The blitzing nickel safety and defensive end react to the jet motion and take a wide path. They are quickly washed to the outside by right guard Stallings and right tackle Asafo-Adjei.

But what makes this play, again, is the double-team by center Drake Jackson and backside guard Logan Sternberg.

And that guy “freshman Benny Snell Jr.” is still around to lead it all, becoming one of the country’s most lovable players overnight.

It’s just been fun to watch Kentucky go from having Tim Couch promise people there’d be plenty of passes to Kentucky just saying, fuck it, let’s run all the time.