Experience Pays as Smith Fills in for Injured Wilson
One play away. Every backup quarterback has heard the mantra a hundred times.
Sawyer Smith has lived it. Twice.
A season ago at Troy, Smith stepped in Kaleb Barker went down with a knee injury and helped lead the Trojans to a 9-3 season. That’s what created the opportunity for Smith to come to Kentucky as a grad transfer.
On Saturday, Smith found himself in a familiar situation when Wilson went down with a knee injury in the third quarter of a game against Eastern Michigan.
“You need to be ready and ready to go,” Smith said. “Next man up is a cliché thing to say, but that’s what it is and that’s how it really is right now.”
Last October, Smith ripped off a 63-yard run on his first play after Barker’s injury. This September, his coaches let him settle in by calling four straight runs on Smith’s first four plays. Then Smith cut it loose on a perfectly thrown deep ball to Ahmad Wagner for a 54-yard touchdown to steady the ship en route to a 38-17 victory for UK (2-0).
“He’s about 6-(foot)-7,” Smith said. “He looks like he’s about 8-foot out there. It’s fun to throw it to him. We got plenty of playmakers, so it’s not hard for us quarterbacks to go out there and make plays like that.”
Of course, playing quarterback at this level isn’t nearly as simple as Smith makes it out to be. That’s why losing a proven winner in Wilson for any period of time is a blow.
“I think you all know that it doesn’t look good,” Mark Stoops said. “Anybody that gets carted off on a cart like that and they put his knee in that deal doesn’t look good, right?”
That was certainly the feeling at Kroger Field as the crowd gave Wilson a standing ovation as that cart took him off the field for preliminary evaluation. Wilson will undergo an MRI on his injured left knee Sunday.
“I told him, ‘I’m playing for you, man,’ ” Wagner said.” He’s our brother. We’re all hurt by what happened and we’re all going to be praying for him, speedy recovery. We love him and he knows that.”
With Wilson sidelined at least for the rest of Saturday’s game, Smith knew he had no choice but to play on.
“I learned last year real quick that if you don’t get in a different frame of mind it’s not going to go as you planned,” Smith said. “It’s kind of good that happened to me last year. I know how to do it now and I know the coaches have full confidence in me.”
That confidence, though Smith was far from perfect in his UK debut, was proven to be well placed. Smith completed 5-of-9 passes for 76 yards and two touchdowns in relief.
“He’s a tough, hard-nosed kid,” Eddie Gran said. “You saw the guys rally around him when he went into the game. He gets along with our guys fantastic. He’s a great addition to our football team, our players love him and he’s a competitor.”
Smith has plenty of game tape to back that up. The Cantonment, Florida, native played in all 13 of Troy’s games last season and threw for 1,669 yards and 14 touchdowns against just six interception. Smith twice topped 300 yards passing and the Trojans went 5-2 as Smith started the season’s final seven games.
“I think it’s really important having his real game experience,” Wagner said. “Him being out there and (having) made plays before, I think that really helps. I think you guys saw, he wasn’t nervous when he stepped in. The first pass, he threw a touchdown. He’s ready to go.”
Smith wasn’t running a watered-down version of the UK playbook either. Mere months into his time in Lexington, Smith has learned the offense well enough that nothing is off limits when he’s in the game.
“We thought going into our first game that we would have to have two game plans,” Gran said. “We didn’t think we had to do that going into game one.”
Going into game three – an SEC showdown with Florida next Saturday night – and beyond, Smith doesn’t know what the future holds exactly. He does know how he and Wilson will approach it together.
“Either way this goes, I’m going to have him and he’s going to have me and we’re going to have each other’s backs,” Smith said.
