Andy & Ari On3 - Kentucky STUNS Ole Miss in Oxford

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

Welcome to Andy and Ari On3 presented by Wendy's! Andy and Ari break down Kentucky's 20-17 win at Ole Miss. What does it mean for the Rebels, who lost their first SEC game of the season? What does it mean for Kentucky, which had its biggest win in decades? And what does it mean for Ari, who was vindicated by Mark Stoops' crazy fourth-down decision? Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey

Welcome to Andy and Ari on three. It is your instant reaction show. Kentucky has upset Ole Miss and Oxford 20 to 17. Just like we drew it up. Ari Wasserman. I see the smile on your face. I see it. I see it. I see it. So let me set the scene and then I'm just going to let you cook. Remember a couple of weeks ago, Kentucky lost to Georgia. Mark Stoops opts not to go for it on fourth and eight from the Georgia third, uh, 48 yard line. Ari says, how could you do this?

This is the ultimate in cowardice. And I said, wait, wait. The analytics said you punt there with the time and all that's remaining. And by the way, they did force a fumble. So, okay, they did what they were supposed to do. Ari did not back down. Continued to pound it. That Mark Stoops should have gone for it on fourth down.

Ari, Kentucky, up three. Or excuse me, down four. Kentucky is down 17-13. They face fourth and seven on their own 20-yard line. 3.51 to go. I can tell you the analytics all say punt here. Greg McIlroy is openly questioning Mark Stoops' decision. He goes for it. Brock Vandegrift, 63-yard pass to Braylon Brown. Sets with a game-winning touchdown. R, you have the floor. I think this is... Is this good enough?

I mean, I guess it's an audio product, so I guess me staring at you with a smirk probably isn't going to get it done, but here's the thing. Are you going to be a math guy guy or are you not a math guy? Like, what is it? Like, does this make the – we're going to get into Mississippi. We're going to talk about Ole Miss. We have to. Are you going to question Stoops on this call too?

I just want to understand, does this make you angry about the Georgia game? Because it's like Kentucky fans are probably – well, Kentucky fans are super excited, I'm assuming. But you going for it inside of your own 25 with three and a half minutes left, 351 left, calls into question your entire argument, which was he's an analytics dude. He's listening to the math.

He listened to the math. He listened to the math. Maybe he listened to you this time. Maybe he changed his mind. I'm not changing my mind. Because I thought he was crazy to go for it in this game. Like, I'm like a rational person, I think. Like, this was nuts.

That was a nuts call to go for it. And it worked. He popped a 61-yard gain. But it's just like the only thing that I, like, the second they went for it, I knew they were going to win once they got it. Because it just, like, that was the kind of game that Mississippi was having. And it's just like sometimes you can just get a feel for the game, like that this isn't going to end well for Ole Miss.

But it just makes me shake my head. And I understand that maybe the opponent comes into play, but you're at home against Georgia. It's like this just makes me angry about how, A, we even argued about it to begin with. And, B, if you're a math person then listen to the math like so so the decision that he made against georgia i think further confirms that he was not listening to the math he just he just whittled like that's i mean like

honestly like i've never been more affirmed in my entire you're still mad at mark stoops and i'm mad at you andy and i'm mad at you, Andy. And I'm mad at you for having a 20-minute argument with me about it. I hope that it makes you feel differently about the Georgia game. If you go back, if we had to have that argument again tomorrow, do you have the same stance after- No, they still wouldn't have made it. And it was a great argument for the show. Their luck was clearly concentrated in this particular play.

They were not going to make it against Georgia. I mean, like, listen, this is... Okay, so we got that off our chest. Thank you for giving me the floor. And thank you for being a good sport and knowing that I wanted to talk about this. But this is one of the biggest wins of the Kentucky Stoops era. You know, like, we had them left for dead a few weeks ago, and then they showed life against Georgia.

And it's just like we thought Kentucky was going to be a nine-win team this year. And then we watched the South Carolina game. We gave up on Kentucky. Then we watched the Georgia game and maybe, you know, just hammered Georgia a little bit too much about the sleepwalking that they did on the road. But maybe Kentucky is a semi-competent to competent football team that can give everybody fits in the SEC. I don't know how this changes your viewpoint of even tonight's Alabama-Georgia game, but it's like it makes me feel even a little bit better that Georgia struggled in that game.

It wasn't just a complete one-off. They went on the road against a good team. But I think the most compelling thing here is the Ole Miss conversation. So let's Kentucky like it wasn't just a complete one-off they went on the road against a good team but you know I think the most compelling thing here is you know the Ole Miss conversation so let's Kentucky first and we'll get into the Ole Miss stuff well okay is it one of the bigger wins of Mark Stoops era of course it's one of the biggest wins in Kentucky football history as long as Ole Miss is good this year which we don't know that because the best team they played to this point is Wake Forest. So we don't know that, but we're pretty sure. Like, we're pretty sure this is going to be Mark Stoops' third career win

against an SEC team that will finish better than.500 in conference play. Ole Miss has to go 5-3 for this to happen. But I think they can go 5- two the rest of the way in conference play i think maybe yeah this huge win for them huge win for them and if you look at their schedule and i'll look vanderbilt is is going to be tough against everybody i think they've established that i think you know you saw the virginia tech team they beat against miami on friday night how good they played you saw how vanderbilt pushed Missouri at Missouri. So there's no guarantee you go win that game, but it's at home. So there's a good chance Kentucky

can beat Vanderbilt, Florida and Auburn, which puts them playing as Tennessee. And again, look, they still got to play at Tennessee and at Texas. So I don't know about playoff chances. I think we're probably going, you know, we're a little over skis. We want to talk about that, but can they compete with anybody? I think we've seen that now with Georgia and with, with this game. Now, does it make me feel differently about Alabama and Georgia? Now, obviously a lot of people who come to this video are going to see it after they've seen the Alabama Georgia game. So'll know what happened but yeah I'm a little little more concerned that I took the tide in that game now yeah yeah I mean it makes you feel a little bit better about Georgia right just having somebody

who um or just the fact that they're playing a good team like what we thought of Kentucky during that game or going into that game, we feel a lot differently now. But yes, it makes me wonder, and I hate to keep going back to it, Andy, but if they would have found a way to beat Georgia, if they would have won this game, could you imagine Kentucky, you could actually make a case for the top 10 in terms of the wins that they would have had? If you could give them the Georgia win, you give them the Ole Miss win, that would be wins over top 10 teams in the SEC in two or three weeks.

There's a lot to feel good about, and it just stinks that Kentucky fans have watched that iteration of that game 900 times in their Mark Stoops-era fanhood, and this one actually turned out to be great. I don't know what it is about the sport, Andy, but some days things just are just your day. Things bounce your way. Like for Gavin Wims, the backup quarterback to come into the game,

who is a really big kid and a hard runner. We saw a little bit of that late in the Ohio win last week. To fumble the ball inside the six-yard line for it to bounce perfectly into Kentucky's hands right into the end zone for them to take the go-ahead score. Like, it just – some days it just felt like that entire game that it was just going to be Kentucky's day, and it was. So, you know, I wish that this would have happened during a year where Kentucky hadn't already lost two games.

And, you know, morale is pretty low after what happened against Georgia. But at the same time, if you're Kentucky, you take this win, you hope to power through. And, you know, I guess their parting gift for this is they get to play Georgia and Texas later on in the year, too. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see what it goes. Or not Georgia.

They have Texas and someone else. Tennessee and Texas. They've already played Georgia. Tennessee. That's right. So, yeah, but, like, huge win. Okay, do you want to talk about Ole Miss now? We can't go eight minutes in.

Before we talk about Ole Miss, our producer River asked a great question via text to us. And I want to put this out here because I think the viewers are curious about this as well. As we evaluate Kentucky, do we just throw out the South Carolina game and say, sometimes weird stuff happens? Like, and that was weird?

Yeah. Well, you know, I have a hard time with that because kentucky got their butts kicked in the game it wasn't like oh they were destroyed yeah it wasn't it wasn't like they had a bunch of penalties and bad turnovers and they were you know it wasn't like they were out of funk they got physically beaten in that game so i don't know that i could subscribe to that train of thought i can do that when a team has a bad game and they're just you know not feeling it that day like that happens but like i don't think that's what happened in that

game and that makes them hard to evaluate going forward because you don't know if you're gonna get the kentucky that played georgia and old miss or the kentucky that played south carolina but because the kentucky that played south carolina can lose anybody else in their schedule the kentucky that that played georgia and old miss can beat anyone else on their schedule, the Kentucky that played Georgia and Ole Miss can beat anyone else on their schedule, which makes them one of the most interesting teams in college football. And you also, by saying that, are dismissing South Carolina being a very good team on the right day, too. Like, South Carolina isn't a rock and roll. Oh, I think with Lenora Sellers, healthy South Carolina is a tough team. Yeah, so I think that it

begs the question, and maybe we can talk about this on our show, the reaction show tonight, but in this modern world of transfer portal and, you know, NIL and all this stuff, if like every single team in the SEC, now that like we're taught we're living in a world where Vanderbilt can beat you, like you can't have a bad week against anybody ever. There's no walkthrough in this conference anymore because South Carolina, Texas A&M, Arkansas, I wouldn't want to play Arkansas on their best day.

The SEC is very, very deep this year, and there are no gimme games. And there used to be gimme games. Kentucky used to be a gimme game. Even Vandy's not a gimme game. Vandy used to be. That's what I'm saying. So it's funny.

We were texting on friday you know about uh what game should we you know cover live in the noon slate and we were like well just another lesson here that you know don't even look at the score the names just you know something's gonna happen and something did exactly exactly so let's talk all miss because we kept talking about Ole Miss's schedule draw and how easy it is but you just said something that suggests it's not that there are no gimmies in the SEC and that if you can lose a game this way and look Kentucky controlled the tempo of this game the entire game with the exception of Ole Miss's first offensive series Ole Miss's first

offensive series they marched right down the field. It looked exactly like what you want. But look, Ole Miss has got to go to South Carolina, the team we just talked about, the team that crushed Kentucky, at LSU, they play Oklahoma, they're at Arkansas, then they get Georgia. This is not an easy stretch of schedule whatsoever. The team that just lost this game to Kentucky could lose any of those games, any of them. Yeah. Well, and it also makes you call into question too, of like, you know,

bubble watch top 10, all those things. We maybe, I think we're going to do video on that this week, but like the idea that six sec teams could make the playoff this year, maybe it was premature because I just think that it's possible that there's just too many losses out there so you know my whole thing was that you know we even said it on Friday's show right that it would be really hard to take Ole Miss out of the playoff discussion because they just don't play anybody that I think is going to be able to beat them and then 24 hours later they lose to Kentucky at home so like you know now how how do you rank this team like Ole Miss was in my top 10 obviously they're going to Miss was in my top 10. Obviously they're going to fall out of the top 10, but like bubble watch is going to

be really, really hard this week. Well, I think you just drop them out. You can put them in next, you know, last four out if you want. But right now I think you drop them out because I've proven anything. The wins they have don't prove anything. Now they'll have a chance to get those wins over the next few weeks, but what they've done doesn't prove anything yet. No, you're right.

You're right. And it's just like got to be so deflating because, you know, think about the entire offseason's, you know, discourse about this program, about Lane Kiffin, about what they've done with their roster, the players that they brought in, the window of opportunity because of this schedule. This is supposed to be the game that you don't drop because your team is so good. You're thinking about ramping up this year, about playing the big dogs of the SEC and

potentially winning this conference. You loaded your roster so that this game was easy. You know what I mean? And to be sitting here now on September 28th with a loss to Kentucky at home, it's like, what did people pay for? You know what I mean? Like, what are we paying for? And that's like, that's like, you know, we talk about this is going to be an interesting case study for going all into the portal, trying to seize a moment of opportunity when there's that window and, you know, Ole Miss didn't even get out of September without losing. Again, it's a very different system now.

Ole Miss certainly still has a pretty manageable schedule moving forward if they are who we thought they were talent-wise. They certainly can still make the college football playoff. Not all is lost. But you're supposed to be buying these players and putting these guys on the roster to put you in a position where you have some breathing room, even if you lose to the big dogs of the sport. They were trying to win the SEC this year, and the team that I watched on Saturday is not an SEC champion. It's just not.

Yeah. No, they can't let – like, if you're going to play that tempo – and this is what we talked about with the Tennessee-Oklahoma game last week, where Tennessee played a different style and dominated the game different style than what we're used to seeing from them we've not seen teams that run that offense which is the old Baylor offense the old Art Browse offense we've not seen teams that run that offense able to dictate tempo and win games other ways this game Ole Miss let Kentucky dictate the tempo and it killed Ole Miss yep and I thought that they haven't figured out how to do what what Tennessee did against Oklahoma last week absolutely you know I'm 100 with you and uh you know it is interesting because

when you watch the way that the game was played too, I thought that Kentucky did a really good job just physically manning up. You know, there were a lot of defensive plays there that Ole Miss had where they got in the backfield and lit up Vandegrift pretty good. But I thought that from a physical standpoint, if you would have taken the uniforms and removed the colors and the logos, like you might not have known watching that game who was the better team athletically. Now, I love Trey Harris. I love Jackson Dart.

But he's not going to be even in my top 10 for the Heisman on Saturday. I'm done with the statistics are so good. Let's just throw this guy in there in the first marginal test of the year to drop that game at home. And I didn't think he was very spectacular in the fourth quarter when they had a chance to. I think he made some questionable decisions when they were on that final drive before the worst field goal attempt I've ever seen in my entire life.

I just think that this team has so much to prove, and they're not getting the benefit of the doubt back until they do something that proves that they're able to deserve that. One X factor about Kentucky that I do want people to consider is Deion Walker, who is one of the three best defensive tackles in the country. Now we can rank Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant from Michigan with Deion Walker. You, I think you can put them in any order you want. You know, it really is going to depend on what kind of flavor your, your NFL GM that has the higher pick wants,

but Deion Walker makes a massive difference because there's not a Deion Walker everywhere. He would start on every other team. You know, every other team in the SEC would start him if they had him. And I think that is something that Kentucky hasn't always had. I think that makes a big difference. Yeah. And, you know, that's the type of player that you're going to face no matter who you're facing in the conference. Not that specifically that good, but I mean i mean like all these teams have good players so you know all this was

situated in a position from a talent perspective they brought back a lot of players from a team that won 10 game year 10 games a year ago and really added a ton of juice literally and a literal juice um to the roster and to score 17 points at home. Again, I mean, just like think about the final score here. Like I was like, Kentucky can't hang because Ole Miss is just going to score 35 points and anybody they play, no matter who it is. And it's like, they couldn't, you know, they move the ball. Okay.

But they couldn't score. Yeah. And you wonder like Kentucky forced that tempo on Georgia and forced it on Ole Miss. Now with Georgia, they, they can play at that tempo. So we didn't really look at that as something that would scare you. But then when you see them force it on Ole Miss, you're like, okay, can they force it on Tennessee? Can they force it on Texas when they get to play those guys?

And I think that's what makes that interesting. So we'll see about Kentucky going forward. Ole Miss Miss that yeah they got to clean up some stuff and look you you went and got these guys in the portal because you're supposed to be able to dominate on the line of scrimmage now you did not do that you got to figure out how to do that now yeah you know what I don't know if you've noticed this too Andy but like in our our live comments here and on Twitter like Ole Miss fans were really feeling themselves this year. If you had Jackson Dart not in your top three of the Heisman ballot, I heard it from a lot of people. If you didn't have them, and surely in the playoff field or

in the first four out, we were hearing from them. And this team, I think, has a ton of potential. I don't think I'm 100 100 out on their ability to turn this thing around because a lot can change in six weeks with six wins but whatever this was that's not who we thought this was this team was supposed to be yeah well and look we had abandoned Kentucky three weeks ago after the South Carolina game we completely abandoned them yeah now dealing with Dylan says the South Carolina game was an outlier. True UK fans knew about this defense the last four seasons. Yeah, except I saw your message boards.

You were ready to fire everybody after the South Carolina game. Yeah, I mean, the South Carolina game. Yeah, the South Carolina game is not something that I can just like wash from my memory like it's men in black. Like we have to like we have to. I mean, I will consider what happened in that game with every analysis that we make about kentucky moving forward as well i consider how they played against george and of course this win against old miss so um you know kentucky is is far better off than we

thought they were i did think that the emotional roller coaster with mark stoops and the a and m job and um fire him no he's the greatest guy in the world like i don't think that we should have ever lost track of how good of a coach he is. I think we could have given him a little flack for a weird decision he made on a fourth down in the Georgia game. But Mark Stoops has done a tremendous job. I want to scream it. He's done a tremendous job as Kentucky's coach. I don't know that anybody else could have done this.

So congratulations to them, Ole Miss. Get those guys back into the film room. Get them motivated. Let's circle the wagons here. The season's not over. That's one of the benefits of this new system. But boy, that was disappointing. Kentucky, back to the best job in the world.

Best job in the world again. And Mark Supes, congratulations. Ari's still mad at you, but I'm not. I'm mad at you. You can not i'm mad at you i you can be mad at me all you want it was fourth and seven from your own 20 is insane that's the literal psychopath behavior you know what and i respect them for it and i respect them for it i was gonna say psychopath behavior beats cowardly behavior right that's true i would i will take psychopath behavior and failure over cowardly uh behavior and. There you go. Well, now you know what to do. If you want

to get Ari's attention, if you want to get Ari's praise and approval, just be a psychopath. We'll talk to you soon.