The college football regular season is almost here. We’re just two weeks away from Kentucky’s opening kickoff against Youngstown State in Kroger Field and less than 1 week until college football as a whole begins.

With such a young team and newcomers all over the field, there will be some growing pains no doubt. That has been felt in all of Fall Camp, per the coaching staff. Kentucky’s now had two scrimmages along with their weekly practices throughout camp to improve and as the season approaches they’re looking to play as clean as possible.

As far as how the second scrimmage went, Stein says there were some early mistakes on offense, but for the most part, it was a clean one. He is making sure it stays like that by preaching ‘ball excellence.’

“You never want to put the ball on the ground as an offensive player, and that’s stuff that we can control. We preach ball excellence all the time on both sides of the ball, getting takeaways on defense and protecting the football and offense. So it’s a little bit of a double-edged sword for me. I want to see the defense take the ball away, but I want to see our offense protect the ball. So I think when it’s in our control, that’s when it is not good. And so I didn’t think our backs did a good enough job today protecting the football. But kudos to the defense as well for getting takeaways.”

As Stein said there, taking care of the ball is in your control as a player. Do that, and you limit the opportunities that your opponent gets to score and take advantage. What can help the offense have clean drives and limit the defense’s opportunities? Taking the ‘easy money’ as a quarterback.

“Even the best players, it’s just about taking the easy money. You don’t have to force plays down the field. You don’t have to get antsy. If you just make the correct play each time, the ball is going to move forward. So that’s not just with new players, young and old. It’s playing quarterback. It’s an art and a science. You got to understand the down and distance. You got to understand the situation, and you got to play to that situation and know that you have really good players around you.”

The Kentucky offense has a ton of youth, but it’s guys like Kenny Minchey, CJ Baxter and Jovantae Barnes that can help them limit mistakes. I’m excited to see how they develop throughout this year’s season.

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