August can be an emotional time in college football. Maybe it’s some hotshot basketball coach calling your school a basketball school. Maybe it’s the nature cycle of dreaming of 15-0 and fearing 0-12. But mostly, August is the time for dreaming big dreams in college football. Here are the boom and bust possibilities for UK football in 2022– 5 dream and disaster scenarios for Big Blue Nation.

The dream scenarios:

1. Will Levis is Joe Burrow 2.0 and gives UK not just a good passing game but a great one

Handing Levis the keys to the UK offense in 2021 provided immediate results. The Wildcats upped their scoring numbers and their passing numbers and won 10 games. Now comes the encore. Some NFL scouts are deeply impressed with Levis — like top-10-pick impressed. They see his moxie, his big arm and his potential, and they see him as elite. The 2,826 passing yards and 24 touchdowns could translate to more like 3,500 yards and 30-plus touchdowns in 2022. That would be the best season by a UK quarterback since the trinity that was Tim Couch, Jared Lorenzen and Andre Woodson. It would also likely result in another 10-win season for the Wildcats, which could just become a new normal in Lexington.

2. The backs are back … and start catching

Liam Coen’s one-and-done tenure as offensive coordinator was impressive, but new playcaller Rich Scangarello doesn’t have the luxury of Wan’Dale Robinson to catch passes. That said, he has more weapons to deploy in the passing game, and a big bunch are hiding in plain sight. Kentucky returns a stable of solid backs — Chris Rodriguez Jr. could become the school’s all-time leading rusher, and reserves Kavosiey Smoke, JuTahn McClain and La’Vell Wright have all shown significant upside. One thing clear from recent practice is that Scangarello will get some receiving yards for those backs. Kentucky hasn’t used a pass-catching back since Rafael Little in the late 2000s, and getting 50-60 catches from the backs is another big reason the UK offense could expand even without Robinson and Coen.

3. The transfer DBs create some positive havoc

Kentucky’s biggest weakness last season was pass defense. The Wildcats were thin in the secondary, and in one ugly 2-game stretch, Mississippi State and Tennessee basically played catch against the UK defense. While UK loses a couple of starters, transfer additions Keidron Smith (started 7 games at Ole Miss last year) and Zion Childress (an FCS standout from Texas State) can help things out right away. A season ago, Kentucky not only allowed 219 passing yards per game, it managed just 9 interceptions all season. The new guys add depth, and Kentucky could give up a similar number of yards but manage a handful more interceptions and change the season entirely.

4. Getting over the Tennessee hump

Some around Kentucky football have wondered why the massive respect continues for Tennessee over Kentucky despite the Vols’ generally lackluster results in the last 15 years. The improvement shown by Josh Heupel’s squad is part of that equation, but part is that the Vols have still had Kentucky’s number even during a downward spiral with that program and an uptick for UK. The last time UK went to Knoxville, the Wildcats won 34-7, but it was also their first win there since 1984. In 2 of the past 3 seasons, 1-score losses to Tennessee in Lexington rankled the Big Blue Nation. In 2018, Tennessee stomped the best Kentucky team in decades, 24-7, with a very mediocre squad. There’s really no reason Kentucky hasn’t played better against Tennessee, and if Mark Stoops wants to hang on to the No. 2 spot in the East, UK needs to win again in Knoxville.

5. Play Georgia for the SEC East

Kentucky and Georgia finish SEC play head-to-head in Lexington on Nov. 19. Back in 2018, Kentucky hosted Georgia in the game that decided the East title. The Wildcats were oddly flat in a 34-17 loss — one of a few times in recent seasons that a Stoops team did not look ready for its opportunity. Frankly, it felt like Kentucky didn’t know how to handle playing a game that decided the division. It hadn’t done so before, but it would love a second bite at that particular apple in 2022. It’s certainly not unrealistic. A Georgia team that’s 6-1 in conference play could face a 5-2 Kentucky team for all the marbles (or 7-0 and 6-1, if you’re optimistic). Now, getting there is more than half the fun. But Kentucky would love another chance to pull off the big upset on its schedule for a prize that it hasn’t reached since the SEC expanded to divisions in the early 1990s. You’ve got to play the big games to win them.

The disaster scenarios:

1. Levis gets hurt

Observers around UK’s practices have expressed concerns with the release speed of backup QBs Deuce Hogan (a transfer from Iowa) and Kaiya Sheron. Neither has meaningful game experience, and with the transfer of Beau Allen, one or both would be next into the fray if Levis went down. Yes, Kentucky football has emerged from the days when a single injury could take the Wildcats out of being competitive. But being without Levis would send UK back to the ground-and-pound days of prior Stoops teams, and it could easily lower expectations from 10 wins to, say, 8.

2. Scangarello struggles calling plays

It wasn’t that long ago that Eddie Gran and a cloud of dust was UK’s offensive system. Gran did a phenomenal job patching together offenses in 2016 and 2019 after quarterback injuries, but Kentucky went to Coen to try to inject some NFL-style attacking into the offense. It worked a year ago, but Scangarello is a wild card, too. Can he call a game as well as Coen? Very possibly not. The wunderkind worked his way back to the Super Bowl champions after a year in Lexington for a reason. Managing to get 104 receptions for Robinson when the entire stadium knew he’d be targeted was impressive. Scangarello has more weapons, if not necessarily bigger weapons, and has looked good so far. But the SEC is unforgiving, and offensive struggles could be big because Stoops’ defense is a little greener than usual.

3. A young defense doesn’t grow up fast on the line

The hardest part of recruiting is probably the biggest guys. The transfer portal will immediately confirm the ability of athletic receiver/back/defensive back types. There just aren’t many 300-pound-plus guys who can run. Kentucky replaces its entire starting defensive line, and while the guys doing the replacing — Justin Rogers, Tre’vonn Rybka and Octavious Oxendine — have big credentials and have shown flashes of production, they’re all sophomores. UK really needs at least one of the above players to step up dramatically. Given that UK is now plugging in 4-star recruits instead of “who’s that” recruits, the odds are good. But if the defensive line guys haven’t grown up, SEC running attacks will take notice in a New York second.

4. Fumbling at Florida

Winning in Gainesville could vault Kentucky into a massive start and a real shot at the SEC East. The bad news is that 2018’s victory in The Swamp was Kentucky’s first since 1979. This Gators team looks more like one from 1979 than the squads rolled out by Steve Spurrier or Urban Meyer. Winning on the road in the SEC is never easy, and Kentucky’s hopes for a big season largely hang on picking up a win in The Swamp. But if the Wildcats struggle, they could easily start the year 3-2, which would put them on the outside of the SEC East hunt and probably looking at an 8- or 9-win season as the ceiling.

5. Losing Stoops

Sometime early in the 2022 season, Stoops will pass Bear Bryant for the most victories ever by a UK football coach. But with John Calipari taking potshots at his program, particularly if UK goes, say, 8-5 and unleashes some mild grumbling from the fan base, Stoops could easily decide he has done what he can do. Kirk Ferentz isn’t getting any younger, and getting a good but not great program over the highest hurdle looks much easier in the Big Ten (and Stoops’ alma mater) than it does in Lexington. More than wins and losses, the continuity provided under Stoops has been key to UK’s improvement, and the guess here is that various UK athletics officials are crafting a polite written statement for Coach Cal affirming that very point.