Brown

When Kentucky offensive coordinator Neal Brown came off the field to meet with the media following Friday’s practice, there was little hiding his frustration with his unit’s performance when faced with adversity. “Broke my sunglasses; you can tell it probably wasn’t that good of a day,” Brown said.Broken sunglasses were a minor issue for Brown, who has been neck deep in constructing the Kentucky offense in his second season under coach Mark Stoops. “It was an okay practice,” Brown said. “We had some give-and-take. We did pretty well in the scrimmage on Wednesday. Defense got after us a little bit in the team portion of it today. We worked some situations. You know, we’re reaching that point in camp where guys are getting tired. We’ve got a lot of young guys. They’ve got to get mentally stronger. (I’m) happy where we’re at. We’re still excited; we just got to handle adversity better.”Among the challenges facing Brown in preseason camp is identifying skill players who could make an immediate impact at Commonwealth Stadium, starting with the season lidlifter on Aug. 30 vs. UT Martin at 12 p.m. ET on the SEC Network. Among those skill-position priorities is identifying a starting quarterback amongst the four QBs competing for the job, freshmen Drew Barker and Reese Phillips, sophomore Patrick Towles and junior Maxwell Smith. While that storyline has dominated much of the chatter during preseason camp, Brown is also focused squarely on finding reliable targets for his future starting quarterback. While several receivers have stood out at this stage of camp, Brown singled out true freshmen Dorian Baker, Blake Bone and Charles Walker as newcomers that could develop into potential immediate impact weapons. “When we were initially recruiting (Blake Bone), I thought he was going to be a redshirt guy, but he came here and put on like 20 pounds in the summer and he’s made a bunch of plays in live situation,” Brown said. “So he’s really showed he’s capable of playing. And Charles Walker; I knew when he made the decision that he was going to come here that he was going to be a good player. He was not going to be a typical walk-on. I knew he was going to be a really good player, but I think he’s going to be a guy who’s going to play for us this year.”While identifying some skill players to move the chains and change the scoreboard is a priority, another focus of Brown’s at this stage of camp is improving the tempo of his unit. “Early in the week when the practices were open we had some officials, so we had three really good days — Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday — of really working with what the actual tempo is going to be in a game,” Brown said. “Wednesday was the best we’ve had since I’ve been here. We fell back a little bit today, didn’t probably try to push it as much. But Wednesday was the best tempo in a game or a scrimmage atmosphere that we’ve had since I’ve been here.”Part of the tempo that Brown wants can be aided by vocal leadership and true accountability from his standouts on offense. “It’s getting better,” Brown said. “Defense has got a little more leadership than we do just because they’re a little bit older group. You know, Jordan Swindle fills that void. Braylon Heard does that in a different, different way, different type of correction, but he does that.”