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What will Kentucky's offense look like? And will it succeed?
Kentucky officially opens fall camp Friday afternoon, and with expectations building for a team that improved to 5-7 last year but hasn't reached a bowl since 2010, there are a number of crucial questions to be answered in the coming weeks.
The Courier-Journal this week assembled a list of the biggest of those questions, and the emphasis is on offense. While Mark Stoops has said that the quarterback position is up for grabs, there seems to be little debate that redshirt junior Patrick Towles will come out of camp with the job -- ahead of talented redshirt sophomore Drew Barker -- given his strong performance last season and his SEC experience, something Barker has none of.
What's more uncertain is what, exactly, the offense will look like under new coordinator Shannon Dawson. An "Air Raid" disciple, Dawson spent the last four years at West Virginia under Dana Holgorsen, where the Mountaineers gradually became a bit more pass/run balanced than in the traditional "Air Raid." Dawson has said that Kentucky will have a viable running game, but as pointed out by the Courier-Journal, Dawson is still pass-happy at heart. The last time he was sole play-caller for an offense, the 2010 Stephen F. Austin squad averaged over 50 attempts per game and led the nation in passing.
So Towles (or possibly Barker) should end up getting plenty of opportunities, and Stoops certainly seems to be OK with that. The third-year coach said during spring of the offense, "I really like what we're doing right now. I just think it was exactly what I was looking for."
In that regard, Stoops has what he wants; whether the results are what he wants, though -- and whether they're enough to get Kentucky to the postseason, which the Wildcats have openly stated is their team goal -- remains to be seen.
(h/t Courier-Journal)
