Mark Stoops: 'We hurt ourselves' with offensive struggles against Toledo

A win is a win. That's the mindset Kentucky football is looking to have after eventually pulling away for a Week 1 win against Toledo 24-16, a game that shouldn't have been that close, but thanks to some mistakes on both sides of the ball, it was. Kentucky's offense heading into the season was looking to show improvement, but that wasn't the case in Saturday's win.

After scoring their first touchdown six minutes into the game, the Wildcats didn't score again until the beginning of the fourth quarter. There were a handful of offensive issues, but they reminisced those of last season, aside from the offensive line, which looked much improved, really opening up the running game, as Dante Dowdell finished with 129 yards on the ground, as well as Seth McGowan, who had 79 rushing yards.

As a whole, the offense struggled to get in a rhythm, especially the passing game. Zach Calzada threw for just 85 yards, as well as throwing an interception and at times overthrowing his receivers. Kentucky's wide receivers had a rough game, too, dropping balls and struggling to find some explosive plays. The tight end room ended up being the bright spot in the passing game, as Josh Kattus had a career-high three receptions for 43 yards and Willie Rodriguez going for 31 yards.

Mark Stoops talked about Kentucky's offensive issues on Saturday, saying, the Wildcats 'shot ourselves in the foot' with critical mistakes throughout the game. "Offensively, I felt like we were going to get in rhythm and we hurt ourselves. We had the decision on the safety, Zach (Calzada) is going to hand that ball off, he knows that. There is no read there. He's going to hand it and we've got to grind our way off the goal line there. That took a complete possession away for us because that was first down. And then, I believe we get the fourth-down stop, and it was on second down that we fumble. I feel like we were going to get into a rhythm and get moving and get good field position and the fumble hurt us. There is things that we did that shot ourselves in the foot that we have to get corrected."

It wasn't just the offense though that made mistakes in the game. As good and as valuable as the defense was against the Rockets, Kentucky allowed two Toledo touchdowns in the 4th quarter, one of those just under two minutes, taking it from a 24-9 Kentucky lead to just 24-16. Kentucky was able to still pull out a win, but Stoops acknowledged those late defensive mistakes after they played amazing up until then. The head coach knows the Wildcats have things, especially offensively, to tighten up before taking on Ole Miss.

"The good side of it is that we overcame those bad plays and won the football game. We beat a very good team that's getting top 25 votes. It's not like they're a bad team. We got the victory. We all know we need to get better. We all know the competitions going to improve, but it's one game. It's a step in the right direction and we have to go back to work and hopefully get that improvement that we all like to see between week one and week two."

Kentucky will get some time this week to develop that offensive rhythm working on things in practice before a top 25 team in Ole Miss heads to Lexington.