Kentucky head coach Will Stein made an honest admission about playing against Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles that is very telling
Kentucky head coach Will Stein has plenty of experience against Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, but that experience didn’t help much this past weekend in Knoxville.
This past Saturday was the fourth time that Kentucky head coach Will Stein had gone against Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Knowles.
When Stein was the offensive coordinator at Oregon, he coached against Knowles three times (twice when Knowles was at Ohio State and once at Penn State).
That previous experience didn’t help Stein very much in round four against Knowles.
Stein said that what he saw in Kentucky’s 34-6 loss to Tennessee was “different” than the Knowles of the past.
“Tennessee, with how they play — it’s different than the Knowles of the past,” said Stein on Tuesday. “It was a lot of five down fronts with shell coverage. The weakness in that is really the intermediate zones. It’s hard to get over the top of a Knowles defense historically. You have to create some advantage type looks — which we had. We had Nic Anderson wide open down the middle field, but we were a little bit late because of internal penetration.
“… Obviously, the shot that we threw to Kenny Darby, one of those DBs was running sideways. We kind of got an angle on them, but they recovered and they played over the top. I don’t fault Kenny Minchey for that throw. I think he was trying to be aggressive in the moment. I think we have to just reset our focus, and we have to be able to move the ball. But it is hard against the Knowles defense. What makes it tough is that he makes you play in 12 play segments, and so the more you have to drive the ball, the more that things (turnovers, defensive stops, etc) can happen.”
Stein is a great coach and a great offensive mind, but his comments show how elite Knowles is as a defensive coordinator.
I mean, Stein attacked the intermediate stuff that Knowles was willing to give up. And Kentucky moved the ball at times. But like Stein said, the more plays you have to run, the more chances there are for a turnover or a mistake from the offense. Tennessee was able to create some turnovers, and they had enough answers that they were able to snuff out some of Kentucky’s plays and stop them for either a loss or no gain.
Stein sounded defeated — like he had no answers for Knowles.
And the fact that Knowles is having success with something that’s “different” from what he’s done in the past is just even more evidence of his genius.
There wasn’t a better coordinator hire this past offseason than Tennessee landing Knowles.
