For UCF, the sky isn’t falling when it comes to offensive struggles

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Two weeks into the football season, UCF faces an identity problem.

In the season opener, the Knights looked like offensive juggernauts, totaling 560 yards while scoring a school-record 73 points in a dominating 73-6 win over Bethune-Cookman.

A week later, UCF looked anemic on offense, managing just 206 yards of offense in a disappointing 12-7 loss at Pittsburgh last Saturday. To make matters worse, starting quarterback Alonza Barnett III suffered a hamstring injury that is expected to sideline him for several weeks.

With their spirits battered and bruised, the Knights dedicated much of this past week to finding their footing again. However, coach Scott Frost remains confident, insisting one loss does not define his team’s character.

“Sports is classic overreaction with everything,” Frost said on Monday. “This team’s going to win the championship and then they don’t play well in week one, and the sky is falling right. We’ve got to be careful on both sides of the ball not to overreact.

“There’s a habit and a tendency to go to the extremes and overreact. As a coach, you can’t do that. We’ve just got to be better next week than we were this week.”

UCF (1-1) hosts Georgia State (2-0) on Saturday (7 p.m., ESPN+), and the Knights hope one pothole doesn’t turn into a sinkhole.

Perhaps the biggest focus this week has been on the offense, as the Knights prepare to introduce a new quarterback against the Panthers. While Frost hasn’t officially named Barnett’s replacement, veteran Keyone Jenkins will likely take the helm.

Jenkins, who started multiple years at FIU, brings the most experience and has backed up Barnett in the first two games of the season.

Whoever takes the reins at quarterback will have to navigate with an offensive line that was bullied throughout much of Saturday’s loss at Pitt. Early injuries at right guard forced UCF to shuffle several players, and the Knights were pressured over a dozen times.

“Part of that problem was we had two interior offensive linemen dinged up early in the game, and some other guys got to come in,” said offensive coordinator Steve Cooper. “That’s certainly no excuse. It’s up to us as coaches; we’ve got to find a way to make sure those guys are ready to go.”

Frost also noted that the Knights managed only 53 plays against Pitt.

“I was really frustrated with our offensive performance,” said Frost. “We only had 23 or 24 snaps of offense in the first half and a huge percentage of our snaps were when we were backed up inside our 5-yard line or during two-minute (drives).”

Frost attributed the limited number of snaps as one of the reasons the team was able to gain only 20 rushing yards, the lowest single-game output since totaling 12 yards in the 2016 Cure Bowl.

Barnett led the team with 13 yards on 13 carries, while running back Duke Watson had 10 yards on six carries.

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“You always need to establish some kind of run game and there are multiple ways to do that. We weren’t able to do that on Saturday last week,” said Cooper. “We just didn’t execute and we didn’t put enough good football on tape in the first three quarters of the game to realistically say we deserve to win that game.”

This week, the Knights face a Georgia State defense that ranks third in the Sun Belt Conference, allowing just 270 yards per game against North Carolina A&T and Kennesaw State.

Still, Frost believes his team will make the necessary adjustments heading into this weekend.

“Our biggest improvements have to come after Game 2 now, because we didn’t get tested in Game 1. We know a lot more about ourselves and our team right now and we’re going to be capable of addressing those things now,” said Frost.

Please find me on X, Bluesky or Instagram at @osmattmurschel. Email: mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com. Sign up for the Sentinel’s Knights Weekly newsletter for a roundup of all our UCF coverage.

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