Kentucky
Kentucky is a team that, in my opinion, has benefitted from a very weak schedule during the first half of the season. Their near-loss to Florida in Gainesville looks less impressive each week, as does their win over South Carolina in Lexington in the first week of October. The Cats were brought back down to earth in recent weeks with a 41-3 loss on the road to LSU and a 45-31 loss to Mississippi State this past weekend. The loss to Mississippi State would seem more impressive if not for the fact that the Bulldog’s currently rank dead last in the SEC for total defense.
Kentucky is much-improved, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they are quite the juggernaut that some made them out to be when they jumped out to a 5-1 record to start the season. There is a very real chance that Kentucky will not be favored in another game the rest of the season and the once-hot Cats now stand a very real chance of finishing the season by losing their final six games.
Kentucky’s offense and defense currently rank around 50th nationally (53rd and 56th, respectively), but, again, they haven’t played a strong schedule and look to have benefitted from some teams overlooking them early in the year.
Tennessee proved last year that there is still a large talent gap between these two schools in a 27-14 win over Big Blue in Lexington. Josh Dobbs started that game for Tennessee and threw two touchdowns while running for another. The 2014 version of Kentucky football is more talented and much more disciplined than they were a year ago, but so is Tennessee. The Vols also catch their second bye week of the season before welcoming Mark Stoops and his crew to Knoxville as they come off of what will likely be a very physical game against Georgia.
This game just sets up very well for Tennessee in a lot of ways and the Vols should be able to get by the much-improved Wildcats in this one.
