Kicking it with Rich Brooks, Part 1

Posted by ESPN.com’s Chris Low

LEXINGTON, Ky. — There hasn’t been any magic formula for Kentucky’s turnaround under Rich Brooks, who enters his sixth season in Lexington. The veteran NFL and college coach had a plan, stuck to that plan and is now seeing the results after back-to-back eight-win seasons and bowl victories. You go back two years ago at this time, though, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody outside of his own household that truly thought he was going to make it. But the Wildcats’ improved recruiting began to show up on the field that fourth season, and they won five of their last six games to ensure that Brooks would get to finish what he started. Now, Brooks has the program at history’s doorstep. Not since Bear Bryant was coaching at Kentucky from 1949-51 have the Wildcats gone to three straight bowl games. They get a chance to match that feat this season, and Brooks — who turns 67 on Wednesday — gets a chance to put his stamp on one gem of a rebuilding job at a place most said it couldn’t be done … in football. Here’s the first part of my Q&A with Brooks, who sat down with me on Monday morning in his office:

Is this as many good football players on defense as you’ve had on one team since you’ve been at Kentucky?

Rich Brooks: No question about it, and that showed up big-time Saturday in the scrimmage again. To me, we’ve got SEC size and SEC speed on defense basically at every position, and we haven’t had that since I’ve been here. Plus, we have people behind them that are very similar.

How much has your success the past two years opened up doors in recruiting?

RB: Early on, guys just had to buy the vision. I guess you could say we got fortunate in evaluating guys that we thought were good players that some other people didn’t … Jeremy Jarmon, for example, Braxton Kelley, Trevard Lindley, who was recruited by almost nobody. Those guys aren’t only good players. They’re great players. Myron Pryor would probably be in that category. Corey Peters was fairly highly recruited, and we were able to keep him in-state. Just getting some of those guys like that who all of a sudden blossom into really good players has made a huge difference for us on that side of the ball.

How much has your defense had its way with the offense this preseason, and how different has that been from last year?

RB: They’ve kicked our offense’s (butt). It’s night and day different from what happened through the first five years. There were times in some of the early scrimmages we would have three, four or five years ago that the offense could stand back there and throw it at will even though we didn’t have a great offensive line, I didn’t think. They had all day to throw. People were wide open, and now there’s nobody getting wide open. If the ball’s complete, it’s being contested or he’s being hit just as it gets there. It’s just different on defense now. We’ve definitely closed the gap on the defensive side of the ball, where we’d been further behind. We started to close it last year, but we were still not as solid as we needed to be. If we’d had this year’s defense with last year’s offense, that would have been pretty special.

How concerned are you about your offense and its struggles this preseason?

RB: Well, I’m more concerned now than I was two weeks ago. I’m disappointed where our offensive line is. I thought that part was going to be very good. We’ve shuffled some people around and had some injuries. Our running backs, I still feel very good about. I still feel good about our tight ends, even though we don’t have an acrobatic catcher like Jacob Tamme. The receiving position and quarterback position are the two biggest unknowns going in. We have talent there. I like our talent. They have to show that in games, and if this last Saturday is an example, we have a ways to go.

What’s your plan at quarterback right now?

RB: (Sophomore) Mike Hartline would start, and we would see how the game went. If we were not moving the ball, I might make a change to (true freshman) Randall Cobb just to see if I could shake things up. Hartline can run a little, but Cobb can run really well. There’s a possibility early on to have a change-of-pace deal at quarterback, but my biggest concern is getting our offensive line gelled in the next two weeks.

With three starters back in the offensive line, what’s been the biggest problem?

RB: Our problem has been blocking Corey Peters, and that’s been our right guard primarily, so we’re going with our third guy there now. We’re moving Brad Durham in there from tackle to look at him. He’s bigger and stronger than (Stuart) Hines, a redshirt freshman, and (Jess) Beets, who’s a junior college transfer who didn’t play much last year.

Is Cobb good enough and mature enough as a true freshman that he could play both receiver and quarterback this season?

RB: He will play some receiver. Right now, we’re giving him a smaller package at receiver than we are the rest of the guys. He’ll primarily be in our three-receiver set. But he’s practicing 85 percent of his time at quarterback and 15 percent at receiver. The first three or four days, it was 50-50. He’s pretty damn good.

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