LEXINGTON, Ky. — After waiting three years for his opportunity to start a college football game, quarterback Kenny Minchey’s first step into the national spotlight could not have gone much worse.
In front of a sellout crowd at Kroger Field, Minchey threw a pick-6 and lost a fumble in a loss to Alabama. He completed 18 of 31 passes for 146 yards and one touchdown. He netted minus-19 rushing yards in the 45-17 loss.
But coach Will Stein wanted no part of the message board and social media debate about whether Minchey was all hype and no substance after the disappointing game.
“The best thing that happened to Kenny Minchey was getting sacked four times last week, throwing a pick-6,” Stein said Saturday after Minchey responded to the Alabama disappointment by leading Kentucky to an upset of No. 9 Texas A&M in College Station. “That was the best thing. Why? Because he learned.
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“It’s hard to learn in the first game (against Youngstown State) when you’re clearly better than your opponent. We learned at home, and he took it on the road and did an outstanding job.”
If Minchey looked overwhelmed by his first legitimate test as a starter against Alabama, he looked like a savvy veteran just seven days later.
Playing before a crowd of 105,186 mostly Aggie fans in the 31-21 win over Texas A&M, he completed 14 of 18 passes for 252 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. Two of his four incompletions were dropped passes. A third was a pass he threw away to avoid a sack.
“He was in full command,” running back CJ Baxter said. “And this week, if y’all could see how he went about his business, it was like, oh yeah, I know what No. 3 is going to do.”
The numbers could have been even better for Minchey.
On his first pass of the game, sophomore wide receiver DJ Miller appeared to gain close to 40 yards, but a replay review showed he had stepped out of bounds earlier in his catch-and-run, limiting the game to just 19 yards.
Three plays later, when Minchey was sacked on a third-and-5 play, it would have been easy to worry a repeat of the Alabama performance was coming.
Those fears compounded on the second drive.
Kentucky’s second drive started with a drop from tight end Mikkel Skinner on a screen pass. Three plays later, Minchey hit freshman Kenny Darby in stride on a deep pass over the middle for what looked certain to end with a 64-yard touchdown pass, but Darby lost control of the ball as he turned to see no one between him and the end zone.
That drive stalled too after another Minchey sack. A missed field goal fueled more frustration.
After two drives, Minchey was 3 for 6 for 54 yards and had been sacked twice. On the next six drives, he completed 11 of 12 passes for 198 yards and two touchdowns with no sacks.
“He was elite,” Stein said. “That was an outstanding job by him. I’m really proud of him. He really, really competed his butt off.”
Minchey credited Stein and offensive coordinator Joe Sloan for developing an offensive game plan that was successful in scheming receivers open with formation shifts and unique personnel groupings throughout the afternoon. He heaped praise on his offensive line for keeping the pocket relatively clean, claiming both sacks were his fault for holding onto the ball too long. He deflected blame away from Darby for his ill-timed drop by noting the freshman scored a touchdown on the first drive of the third quarter on a “badly thrown” ball.
But it has been clear since Stein assembled his first roster in January that this Kentucky team would only go as far as Minchey took it.
Stein made a bet on the ability of his staff to continue its stellar record of quarterback development at previous stops by building around a player who spent three seasons as a backup at Notre Dame and lacked any meaningful experience outside of late cameo appearances in blowouts.
UK coaches did not shy away from hyping Minchey throughout the offseason, going so far as to pick him as one of three players to represent the team at SEC Media Days in July.
But there was at least some attempt to temper expectations in preseason camp.
“I don’t want Kenny to feel like he’s got to go win us a game,” Stein said after the second preseason scrimmage. “There’s going to be times in the game where he’s going to have to go make plays, but the key, I think, for all young quarterbacks is to know that more quarterbacks on Saturdays lose the game for their team than they do win it. I mean, it’s true. Same with Friday nights and Monday evenings, freshman football.
“More of them lose it than they do win it, with making bad decisions, with putting the ball in jeopardy, not using their legs when they have to. … To me, when you can eliminate the bad first, that’s when you can take another step as a quarterback.”
Kentucky fans have seen this narrative play out before.
While there were fears after the Alabama game that Minchey might be a repeat of the previous staff’s failed Brock Vandagriff experiment, it is worth remembering Will Levis was far from the version that would eventually earn him a second-round NFL draft selection early in his Kentucky career.
After transferring from Penn State, Levis helped Kentucky win the first six games of the 2021 season, but that record had more to do with a strong defense than his play. Levis averaged just 123 passing yards per game in his first three SEC games with two touchdowns and three interceptions. Liam Coen’s offense did not really find its stride that season until week six in a 42-21 blowout of LSU.
With the stellar showing against Texas A&M, Minchey is already ahead of that curve.
“He did not play his best (against Alabama), but I loved his mindset because he played every play literally like it was a one-play focus,” Stein said before the game. “That’s what I’m proud of him, more than anything. What happened happened, but I thought he had the right mindset coming out of the game. He responded correctly (in practice), and he’s got to continue to improve.”
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