September 6, 20215 yr On 9/5/2021 at 1:33 PM, Bert said: I oftened wondered what happened when Gran moved his system to UK. I'm not saying UK's offense was bad, heck with Gran at UK, in 2018 the team got it's first double digit win season since the mid 70's and won enough in 2019 to go to a bowl without a true quarterback but often it felt the defense carried a bit more of the load in those wins and the offense did good enough to win, but they often were not too impressive. Was it that Gram's system was great in a mid major conference but in a power 5 conference the defensive players are too fast and the defensive systems are to complex? I'm asking, not making an assertion that those are the reasons why his system just seemed to not flourish at UK while it did at UC. Eddie Gran had 3/4 situations occur that I think put him in a bad situation at UK. If you look at his first game at UK it was similar to that of Coen. 300+ passing yards 3tds. Situation 1: Drew Barker’s back injury vs Florida. Barker was the QB that threw for 300+ and looked great in the Southern Miss loss. Unfortunately the very next game he suffered a back injury vs Florida that eventually cost him his career and thrust Stephen Johnson into the QB1 spot. This led to the emergence of Benny Snell (arguably the best RB to wear the blue and white) Gran had to rely on Boom Williams and Benny Snell to take the pressure off of Johnson. Should be noted that Johnson still passed for 2,000 yards in both years he started at UK. We would probably take that about now. Situation 2/3: Decommitments from Mac Jones and Jarren Williams. Mac Jones was targeted as the successor to Johnson and was committed to UK for quite some time and had a late flip to Bama that left the coaching staff scrambling to find a new QB. Jarren Williams did the same thing except committing to the U instead of Bama. This led to the arrival of Terry Wilson. Wilson wasn’t bad and had some great games his first year but by this time we knew what we had in Benny and Gran would have been stupid not to run the offense through him. At this point we are in year 3 of being a mostly running offense and the effects on the lack of quality WR recruiting is starting to show the Cats had no true deep threat and were forced to short and mid range throws when the Cars did have to pass. Wilson passed for almost 1900 yards his first season. Situation 3/4: Terry Wilson & Sawyer Smith injury. Terry looked to be improved from year one and the UK offense was poised to show some more balance than the previous couple years until he suffered a season ending knee injury. Sawyer Smith stepped in and performed admirably against Florida but injured his wrist against Mississippi State costing him the season as well. This led to Gran coming up with a playbook in one week to put Bowden in at QB, abandoning the pass and winning 5 out of 7 games. At this point the concept of UK and passing game was all but dead. Gran needed a miracle in 2020 to revive a passing game but it didn’t happen. In my opinion this is what led to the demise of Eddie Gran and why he couldn’t translate his offense at UC to UK. He got one game with the players he needed and from then on it was making do with what you had.
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.