PHILADELPHIA — Not much changed in the ending.

The Philadelphia 76ers walked off their home floor again, with a bevy of New York fans again chanting “Let’s Go Knicks,” after another road win by Tom Thibodeau and company in the City of Brotherly Love. This time, Karl-Anthony Towns got the walk-off love as he left the court at Wells Fargo Center with his dad in tow, quickly followed by Josh Hart and Miles McBride.

Joel Embiid and his Sixers had long since left the floor.

Their season, already off to such a horrendous start, filled with injuries and doubts and an awful moment of confrontation, continued its spiral Tuesday in a 111-99 loss to the Knicks, dropping Philly to 2-8. But this is where Philadelphia hopes things bottom out.

Well, maybe that comes Wednesday, when the undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers play here.

For now, all the Sixers have to comfort themselves was Embiid’s return to action Tuesday after he missed the first six games of the season while continuing to rehab his left knee, followed by a three-game suspension levied by the NBA after Embiid shoved a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist during a postgame incident Nov. 2. The columnist had written several incendiary opinion pieces about Embiid’s conditioning but also referenced Embiid’s late brother Arthur and Embiid’s son, also named Arthur, in an Oct. 23 column. That set off the 30-year-old Embiid.

Tuesday, Embiid was far from his dominant self. He was rusty, finishing just 2-of-11 from the floor, scoring 13 points in 26 minutes. His old, and perhaps now former nemesis, Towns, had the upper hand all night, finishing with 21 points and 13 rebounds. Towns finished the game for New York, while Embiid sat the last few minutes to keep him from racking up more than the 25 to 30 minutes the Sixers had plotted for him pregame.

“You can do whatever you want in practice and scrimmage, but the game is a different story,” Embiid said afterward. “I’ll be fine.”

His words, a franchise’s worries.

Embiid hasn’t been fine most springs, when championships are decided, after suffering injuries late in the regular season or in the playoffs. Last year, he missed two months with a meniscus injury in his left knee, then suffered a bout of Bell’s palsy during Philadelphia’s series loss to the Knicks. So the Sixers and their superstar agreed this season he’d be held out of a bunch of regular-season games to give him the best chance of getting to April and May healthy. The organization’s misrepresenting statements cost the Sixers $100,000, but one doubts they cared much. Embiid says playing is up to him, but of course, it isn’t, not really.

Yes, Embiid played for Team USA in the Olympics, including a huge game against Nikola Jokić and Serbia in the semifinals, showing up when the United States needed him most. But that stint was two-plus months before the start of training camp, and the time off showed.

Against New York on Tuesday, he missed his first five shots from the floor, not scoring a field goal until he hit a 3-pointer with nine minutes left in the third. Embiid, as ever, got to the line, making 8 of 8 free throws in the first half. But Embiid was noticeably lagging throughout the second half. He was pulling on his shorts after his first stint of the second half. And though he asked the crowd to rise up late in the third quarter, he couldn’t lift up Philly in the fourth, as New York pulled away.

“When he’s playing well, he’s kind of got command of the game at the offensive end,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said afterward. “He’s either creating good shots for himself or creating a lot of defensive schemes against him, which is creating much easier shots for our guys. That’s part of rhythm, that’s part of conditioning, all that kind of stuff. He’s a great shooter. That’ll come back, too, I think.”

The Sixers now have to hot-wire their hopes of finding continuity with yet another new core group.

Paul George, the premier free-agent acquisition of the offseason, is just coming back himself from a preseason bone bruise that cost him the first five games of the season. He looked great Tuesday, though, looking exactly like the silky smooth scorer and facilitator the Sixers hope he can be, finishing with a game-high 29 points. But guard Tyrese Maxey, who took such a big step last season playing alongside Embiid, missed his third straight game with a pulled hamstring. It doesn’t leave Nurse a lot of time to evaluate who plays best with whom.

For example: Philly brought in Guerschon Yabusele, who starred on the French national team in the Olympics, helping lead Les Bleus to a silver medal. He was sensational. The Sixers hoped he could play for them in small-ball units at center. And with Embiid out, they got a good long look at him. Through the first nine games, he shot better than 43 percent on 3s on decent volume. Now, though, Nurse will have to play Yabusele and Embiid together, with Yabusele playing more power forward. The shots are different. The rhythm is different. Whom Yabusele now guards at the other end is different.

Nurse got exactly what he wanted to see late in the first quarter, when Embiid returned after a few minutes on the bench, drew two Knicks to him at the top of the key and fed an open Yabusele on the wing for a 3. But that was the only shot Yabusele hit all night in seven attempts.

Still, it’s crystal clear how formidable the Sixers can be when Embiid gets back to his old self, flanked by a healthy George and Maxey; solid role players such as Kelly Oubre Jr., Yabusele, Caleb Martin; rookie Jared McCain, who’s utterly fearless; and vet stashes such as Reggie Jackson, Kyle Lowry and Andre Drummond. Philadelphia’s offensive potential is staggering once everyone is healthy, so the Sixers are doubly fortunate their awful start hasn’t buried their playoff chances in the less-than-fully-functional Eastern Conference; the Sixers entered play Tuesday just a game out of the Play-In round.

George knows the pressure Embiid is under. He was a franchise player for the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, and then a co-franchisee with the LA Clippers alongside Kawhi Leonard. That weight of being the man feels like you’re wearing a burlap jersey and concrete Nikes.

“I think it’s no pressure for him,” George said. “He is the piece. He is The Process. I think he just finds his way, as he should. We’re here to kind of keep things going afloat until he gets back to himself. But I don’t think there’s pressure for him to do anything extra. He’ll find his rhythm as the games go on, as we learn how to play off of him and play around him. I’ve seen it in practice, so I know he’s not too far off.”

I asked Embiid if the urgency of the 2-8 start, and the ticking down of his prime years, is pushing him to come back sooner rather than working through the regular season more slowly, as had been the long-term plan. He recalled his rookie season, after he’d missed two years rehabbing following multiple foot surgeries. Embiid roared out of the gate, finishing third in Rookie of the Year voting — even though the Sixers held him out of all but one game of the second half of the season.

“We were still really competitive,” he said of what became a 28-54 season. “And even that year, if they would have let me finish the year, I thought we actually had a chance of making the playoffs. So, urgency, sure. But you’ve also got to understand, we haven’t been healthy. Everybody’s getting back. Like I said, based on how it’s gone the last couple of years, with us on the floor (together), I think we’ve got a pretty good chance.”

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” William Butler Yeats wrote a century ago, about something else entirely. But it’s up to Embiid to make sure people here don’t start seeing a connection.

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(Photo: David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)

LEXINGTON, Ky. — This began with a threat. Not a thinly veiled threat. No. This was about as direct as it gets.

Mark Pope, all 6 feet and 10 inches of him, stood tall, pushing his shoulders back. Considering his size, his shaved head, and his background — a decade spent banging around the paint as a journeyman NBA center back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, when freedom of movement was a foreign concept and survival required withstanding elbows in the chest — he should be an imposing figure. Except Pope has this way of being impossibly likable. He looks and sounds like a human exclamation point. He throws around adjectives like he’s writing the latest “Hardy Boys” volume. Everything he sees or hears is brilliant! Or incredible! Or the greatest thing ever! Mixed in with the overloaded enthusiasm is the reality that Pope is, even though he’ll never admit it, an intellectual. He can spend hours discussing philosophy or theology. In a past life, he was a Rhodes scholar candidate on his way to becoming a doctor. He is, as his former coach Rick Pitino says, “smarter than 99 percent of college basketball coaches.”

Add it all up and Pope, no matter how big, isn’t intimidating.

That’s why the threat wasn’t his.

“I’m fair game, but if you say anything about the girls,” Pope warned, shaking hands inside his office at the University of Kentucky, half-smiling, eyes moving cautiously, “Lee Anne will burn your house down.”

Welcome to the Pope Family. There’s your postcard.

Last spring, they were scattered. Each one in his or her own world. Lee Anne was in Texas, visiting a brother in the hospital. Ella, the oldest, was off embarking on early professional life. Avery, then a college junior, was heading into tennis practice at Brigham Young University. Layla, a BYU freshman, was in Salt Lake City, prepping for that night’s Utah Jazz-Houston Rockets game, her makeup half-done for a dance team performance. Shay, the youngest, was home in Provo, Utah, in the throes of high school volleyball practice.

And Dad? He was in a job interview with Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart.

Soon their cell phones were buzzing. Text messages in the family group chat. Pope told his wife and four daughters he needed them on a call. He mentioned a Zoom. No, no, one of the girls replied. Just start a group Facetime. OK. Everyone scrambled to find a quiet spot to talk, a little privacy. But then — where’s Shay? Volleyball practice wasn’t over yet. As the youngest, she is, of course, the favorite. They couldn’t start without her. Finally picking up her phone, Shay found a screen flooded with alerts. “Oh, my gosh.”

The call could hardly handle their collective wavelength. Wide eyes stared at screens, stared at one another. There was smiling, some lip-biting. Finally, Dad asked, “How do we feel if I go to Kentucky?” The tears started rolling.

This wasn’t a done deal yet. Pope told his family, “Listen, if anyone isn’t OK with this, I will stay at BYU.” He meant it. And he needed to hear from everyone on the call. He went around one by one.

Each daughter looked at her dad and saw a man who, in the moment, had somehow lassoed his whole life history and pulled it all together. Mark Pope was born in Omaha, Neb., to a family that followed his dad’s career. Don Pope took a job with Union Pacific in New York in the 1970s, when Mark was a kid. Then he took a job with Burlington Resources in Seattle. Don and his wife, Linda, raised six kids in Bellevue, Wash. Mark grew tall, starring on the basketball court, and accepted a scholarship to the University of Washington in 1991. Two years later, his coach was let go, setting off a chain of events that, you will learn, somehow led to his life unfolding with a charmed bliss he could never have imagined; and, ultimately, shaping the direction of college basketball’s winningest program — the Kentucky Wildcats.

So, yes, it was a big question.

Lee Anne went first, telling her husband she loved him and was proud of him. Yes. Then each of the girls. Yes. Yes. Yes. Go Cats.

Shay went last, sort of hiding her face from the screen. As the baby, she’s the only Pope girl who didn’t previously move around a lot as a kid, instead growing up primarily in Utah, spending her whole life in a singular world. Everyone on the call knew a move would impact Shay the most. Changing high schools, new friends, living in a huge spotlight. Hard stuff for a 15-year-old.

Shay peeked at the screen so her family could see her. Yes.

“I knew what Kentucky was, because my dad has talked about it so much, but I didn’t really get it,” Shay says now. “I was sad, but … it’s just, I love my dad, and he’s … he’s my favorite person, you know? This is, like, his actual dream. And that’s bigger than me being mad or sad about having to leave my friends, right?”

Outside the family, there once existed a prevailing thought that maybe Pope wasn’t the man for arguably the biggest job in college basketball. It was April, to be exact. Back when all hell broke loose.

First, John Calipari, Kentucky’s second all-time winningest coach behind Adolph Rupp, pulled an all-time vanishing act, trading years of growing animosity for an out-of-nowhere move to Arkansas. The general feeling was shock, but understanding. Both sides — Cal and the Cats — probably needed a fresh start. If anything, those in Lexington were excited. It was assumed the program would land some big-time name. Scott Drew. Dan Hurley. Bruce Pearl. Or maybe even a demigod like Billy Donovan or Jay Wright.

But then Drew said no. And Hurley said no. Pearl and others were non-options, weighed by prohibitive contract buyouts. Donovan wasn’t willing to talk until after the NBA season. Wright was a pipe dream.

That led Barnhart to Pope. The fifth-year BYU head coach was a Kentucky legend; symbolically, maybe more so than athletically. He first arrived in Lexington in 1993, when Pitino brought him in as a transfer, hoping he’d be the glue guy for a team ready to win a national championship. Pope had started for two seasons at Washington, but would come off the bench for the dynamic, dynastic Kentucky teams of the mid-90s. A fire hydrant in the middle of a collection of Cadillacs — Tony Delk, Antoine Walker, Walter McCarty, Derek Anderson, Ron Mercer. He was co-captain of the 1996 national title team. He set screens like a door jamb, grabbed every loose ball and defended like a madman. All told, Kentucky went 62-7 in his two seasons. Pope earned a place in Wildcat lore and was drafted with the 52nd overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft.

But, head coach? Of Kentucky? Pope had a nice four-year run at Utah Valley, and went 110-52 at BYU, but — c’mon. He never won a league championship. He never won an NCAA Tournament game. His 2023-24 team successfully navigated BYU’s difficult jump from the West Coast Conference to the Big 12, but flamed out in the first round of the big dance, losing to 11th-seeded Duquesne.

Kentucky fans are notoriously demanding and chronically online. The response to Pope’s emergence as head coach went as follows: He’s too unproven. He can’t recruit. The job is too big for him.

All of those things could very well be true.

Barnhart hired him anyway.

Now the keys to the kingdom are in the hands of a coach unlike any other in program history. He’s a coach who is, above all else, Lee Anne’s husband, and dad to Ella, Avery, Layla and Shay. He’s a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s the first UK graduate to serve as head coach since Basil Hayden — a 1922 grad who coached the Wildcats in 1926-27. (Joe B. Hall, who led Kentucky to the 1978 national championship, transferred to, and graduated from, Sewanee.)

Sitting in his office, the 52-year-old looks around like a puppy encountering snow for the first time, and says, can you believe this? Like he wants it to feel like a shared experience.

“This is so awesome,” he adds. “And yet, believe it or not, it feels totally natural to me.”

Lynn Archibald first became aware of Mark Pope sometime in the late 1980s. He began recruiting the 6-foot-9 center from Bellevue (Wash.) Newport High School as University of Utah head coach. Then, after being let go in 1988-89, continued the recruitment as an assistant on Bill Frieder’s staff at Arizona State.

It was a long line of suitors. Pope was among the best Class of ’91 high school players in the West. Maybe a notch below Jason Kidd and Cherokee Parks, but high on the list of top recruits nationally. In November 1990, he broke hearts by choosing hometown Washington over a list including California, Arizona, Syracuse, Utah and Kentucky. Arizona State wasn’t in the picture, but Archibald still thought highly of Pope. He typed up a letter congratulating him and welcoming him to the Pac-10 Conference.

That’s how Archibald did things. Old-school. He was self-made and appreciated those who were the same. His coaching career was the byproduct of a knockabout college playing career — some time at Utah State, a year at El Camino Junior College, a degree from Fresno State. He found some work coaching in the California prep ranks in the ’60s and threw himself into it. He dutifully attended camps conducted by Long Beach State head coach Jerry Tarkanian, who eventually hired him. Archibald spent two seasons at Long Beach State, then filled an opening at Cal Poly, then reunited with Tarkanian in 1974, joining his staff at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Two years in the desert were followed by one season at USC, then five as Idaho State head coach.

This would be Archibald’s life’s work — chasing the profession. Along the way, he and his wife, Anne, had two sons, Beau and Damon, and a daughter, Lee Anne.

After being let go at Idaho State, Archibald spent 1982-83 as Jerry Pimm’s assistant at Utah. He was surprised when Pimm took a job at Cal Santa Barbara that April, and more surprised when Utah asked him to take over. At the time of Archibald’s promotion, Tarkanian told The Salt Lake Tribune, “He is the finest person I know and is a great coach. Everybody loves him.” There are reams of quotes like this about Archibald. He was handsome, funny and curious. As a Mormon with a worldly view, he was a pioneer in international recruiting — tapping Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Nigeria for players.

Archibald’s family was part of every team he coached. Lee Anne saw Utah players Mitch Smith, Manny Hendrix and Kelvin Upshaw as superheroes. She changed schools every few years and rarely complained. She was a coach’s kid.

There was one last move, this time in 1994. Archibald returned to his home state of Utah, filling an assistant spot at BYU — the perfect place to settle with a family in full bloom. The Archibald kids were off chasing their own dreams by now. Lee Anne was on her way to New York City for, get this, a job as David Letterman’s personal assistant. Damon landed a scholarship to play ball at Boise State. Beau was a talented high school player, on his way to a scholarship at Washington State. Life was good.

So you understand why Lynn Archibald didn’t tell them, why he made his wife promise to keep the secret. Prostate cancer wasn’t going to define his final years. He didn’t want the kids to make their life decisions based on him being sick. He didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. So he wouldn’t tell them until he absolutely had to.

Archibald died in May 1997. Only 52. Lee Anne and her brothers were there for the final weeks. Looking back, she says now that, had she known about her father’s diagnosis two years earlier, she likely wouldn’t have lived in New York, or started her career — exactly all the things her dad didn’t want her to give up. She wonders where life would’ve taken her.

Because Lynn Archibald gave his kids the freedom to keep on living in his final years, a perfect series of dominoes all fell in order. In 1998, Damon Archibald met Mark Pope at the Pete Newell Basketball Camp. Immediately, he was floored to come across what he would describe as, essentially, the male version of his sister. Damon, who had never previously set up his sister with anyone, let alone another basketball player, wrote down Lee Anne’s phone number and gave it to Mark.

Mark, a member of the Indiana Pacers, called Lee Anne during the 1998 NBA player lockout. The two did what people did back then — phone calls on landlines and email exchanges. Around that time, Letterman told Lee Anne he needed help setting up a charity. It would be based in his home state. To get it off the ground, she’d need to take regular trips to Indianapolis.

They met later in 1998; married in 1999. Then came the girls — Ella in winter 2001, when Pope was the starting center for the Milwaukee Bucks; then Avery, during Pope’s brief stint with the Knicks; then Layla, when he was with the Denver Nuggets, then Shay in 2009, when Pope was out of the league, in medical school.

As it turns out, in another life, Pope might have ended up as a 6-foot-10 emergency room physician. Except, one day, not long after Shay was born, while studying orthopedic surgery at Columbia, Mark came home one day to tell Lee Anne that the younger students around him felt about medicine the way he felt about basketball. Lee Anne, with blind certainty, responded that there was only one option.

“Burn the ships,” she says, 15 years later.

So at 37, with four kids, Pope dropped out of med school and took a job on Mark Fox’s coaching staff at the University of Georgia. Title: Assistant to the director of operations. Salary: $24,000 for the year.

Lee Anne understood the ride ahead. That her family was about to subscribe to wins and losses, and to sharing their dad’s time with waves upon waves of young men, and to job changes beyond their control — from Georgia, to Wake Forest, to an assistant gig at BYU in 2011, to Utah Valley in 2015, and back to BYU. She was now a coach’s wife. And she was more equipped to do that than anyone imaginable.

That joke? The one you might be thinking of? Something like, “Oh, you think coaching Kentucky is hard? Trying raising four girls.” Yeah, Pope has heard it before.

It usually plays out something like this. The family is packed in an elevator, or standing together in an airport, or waiting in line at a coffee shop, minding their own business, when the old trope comes up. Some guy sees Pope, sees the wife, sees the four daughters, and quips, “Sheesh, sorry, man,” or, “Man, got your hands full,” or whatever other empty-headed zinger seems like a good idea.

But Pope doesn’t do tropes. Instead, things get very uncomfortable, very quickly. Pope has, according to Lee Anne, never laughed, never played along. Not once. Not ever. Instead, he clenches his jaw, narrows his eyes and spits back. “Are you kidding me, man? This is the best. Do you know how lucky I am?”

It’s in that moment that old jokes go to die and the Pope girls are reminded who their father is. Understanding the coach requires understanding the father, and Pope is equipped with the emotional maturity that comes with balanced realities.

“All these years, he’d be with his boys all day, then home to his girls, who all adore him,” Lee Anne Pope says. “But the thing is, he’s the same guy in both settings. It’s not like he hangs it up at the door.”

They all have their stories. They usually come with tears. The Pope family isn’t one to hide emotions.

Ella, for instance. Sitting on a couch in her dad’s office, arms wrapped around a pillow, she remembers a ride to school one day in grade school. She had created a video that was to air throughout the school that day. Opening her laptop, watching it one last time on the drive, she was hit with a wave of nerves. She closed the laptop, turning ghost-white. Pope, realizing what was happening, slowed down to a stop, pointed to Ella’s stomach, all twisted in knots, and said, “That’s it. That’s the feeling. That’s when you know you care and when you know you’ve worked at something. That’s the best.” She’s never forgotten it, never forgotten that passion is worth pursuing, worth manifesting, worth feeling. She remembered it when she was the only Pope girl to pursue basketball, earning a scholarship to Ohio University.

Avery thinks of her dad’s ability to be there, right where she could see him. Those tennis matches in the deep heat of California or Arizona, the sun rippling off the court. Other parents parked as close as possible and sat in air-conditioned cars. But Mr. Pope? He watched out in the sun because Avery was out in the sun. He didn’t sit because she didn’t sit. He wouldn’t yell or make a scene or even stand out. He would instead intently watch each point, Avery says, “living and dying for every moment.” He’s always had that way of appearing from out of nowhere. Earlier this year, soon after Pope was named Kentucky head coach, she was scheduled to give a farewell talk to her LDS Church ward in Provo in preparation for her upcoming two-year mission in El Salvador. She was scheduled to speak for, at most, 15 minutes.

“He had a million things going on, and it made no sense for him to fly across the country, but there he was,” she says. “I’ve always felt like, in my life, there have been so many different times where it would be OK if he wasn’t there. But then he’s there. And it just happens over and over and over again.”

Layla remembers coming home upset one day in the sixth grade, telling her parents a boy in school called her “the B-word.” The following morning, a surprise guest speaker was scheduled. The class door swung up at 1 p.m. and in came coach Mark Pope and six members of the Utah Valley State basketball team. “Today we’re going to talk about respecting women,” Pope said to a room of wide eyes and deep silence. They spoke to the class for nearly an hour. On the way out, Pope introduced himself to the boy who had insulted his daughter. He shook his hand, maybe offering an extra squeeze.

“I mean, we were in sixth grade!” Layla says now, laughing hard. “It was incredible. I was like, oh my goodness, this is the greatest day of my whole life. But that’s my dad. He’s, like, the most protective, loving person ever. And the only time you’ll ever really see him truly mad is if you did anything to hurt me or my sisters or my mom.”

Shay loves to tell the story of the cash advance. Back in Utah, she had the idea to order DoorDash to school, then upsell the food in the cafeteria. She called her old man. “Dad, I have this idea, but I don’t have any money.” Pope, without hesitation, responded. “Love it. You’re a genius. I’ll give you a hundred dollars to get started.” The money came via Venmo and Shay started moving product. Capitalism in action. “It worked perfectly,” she says. That is, until Lee Anne’s phone rang, with a school official saying her daughter was essentially operating a racketeering outfit in the caf.

“Apparently,” the official said to Lee Anne, “one of Shay’s parents was involved in funding this.”

“He’s just the best,” says Layla, now a 16-year-old sophomore.

The stories go on and on. The Pope women speak of their father like an amusement ride. He has a way of mastering moments, the few that he gets, to make the most of them. He’s an experience, one that blocks out all the other noise.

“Even if we have a million eyes on us,” Ella says, “my dad makes it feel like it’s just us.”

Kentucky coach Mark Pope is presented a plaque after winning his first game at Rupp Arena on Nov. 4. (Michael Hickey / Getty Images)

Over the summer, Pope met with local Lexington media for an offseason news conference. He leaned into the most relatable version of himself. The ex-NBA player who says he wasn’t much of a basketball player. The Rhodes scholar who says he isn’t very bright. In that news conference, he pressed play on the role he’s presented for as long as he can remember.

“A bit casual, maybe a little self-deprecating,” he now says. “That’s my armor.”

The media session wrapped up and, on the way out, Pope asked longtime Kentucky basketball media relations director Deb Moore for feedback. “How’d that go?” Moore told Pope that he was good, then paused, and added one passing thought. “But at some point, in this job, you’re going to have to take yourself a little more seriously,” she said.

The point — Kentucky, for as incredible and passionate and dedicated as it is, can also be ruthless. It’s a place where a vulnerable disposition is ripe to be weaponized. It’s a place where, once the wins and losses start coming, the coach with the clipboard is no longer seen as a person. He’s a target.

Pope was furious. “Deb, you don’t know me yet …” he popped back.

The two didn’t speak for the next three days. Pope continued to bake and Moore wondered if she’d gone a step too far. But then came Sunday, a trip to church, and some time for Pope to think.

“It had sat with me and sat with me and sat with me,” he says. “I finally came to realize, this matters to people in a different way. Like, this job is bigger than me. This job is more important than me. Really, there’s a little reverence to it. But that’s a new role for me. I’ve always eschewed that a little bit. Because I just want to be reachable and connect with people. Now I need to find a balance.”

In reality, Pope understands all this more than anyone Kentucky could’ve hired. The few times Big Blue lost during his time as a player, Pope retreated to the Cat Lodge, the team’s housing facility, and cried alone. It was the pressure of being captain. It was the pressure of answering to Pitino. It was the pressure of being 2,400 miles from home, in a place so hard-wired to every bounce, every play, and every breath of Kentucky basketball.

He gets it. And he welcomes it.

“I think he will handle it better than all of us,” Pitino says of himself and other former Kentucky coaches. “Because he’s so grounded and he’s such a spiritual person. I think he’s going to handle it beautifully. He knows it so well.”

The faithful are giving Pope a chance. His return to Lexington last spring was greeted with a raucous introduction that filled Rupp Arena — all 23,500 seats — to the brim. He is, after all, one of them.

But Lee Anne knows there are still doubts. And she knows the honeymoon will only last so long. And she knows her family is in a spotlight so big that not even an amusement ride can block it out. This, though, she says, is what they’re all built for. It’s why they all said yes on that family call. It’s why they believe in the coach.

“You know, somebody said to me, he’s goofy,” Lee Anne says, a little defense in her voice. “But no. He’s not goofy. He’s just — in a world where everyone is cool, he is not too cool. And there’s a big difference. He’s brilliant. He’s authentic. And he’s going to outwork everyone. I know it.”

The office door is closed and Pope makes one last thing clear. He didn’t make his family. His family made him. The biggest job in college basketball doesn’t change that. The heat that’s coming — playing Duke, traveling to his hometown to play Gonzaga in Seattle, battles in the SEC, the second-guessing, the fans swarming to social media, the exposure — will only be granted pieces of him. Never the whole.

“Being the coach at Kentucky,” he says, “if it’s everything you are, you won’t be any good at it.”

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

The Chicago Bears’ midseason offensive regression has raised concerns over Caleb Williams’ long-term viability as a franchise quarterback.

It’s important to be measured with this assessment, especially for Bears fans who have seen this movie a few times before. First, it’s fair to be critical of Williams’ recent flaws. Second, it’s also fair to point out that the struggles are not entirely Williams’ fault. And third, let’s not be hasty in burying a 22-year-old with nine career starts.

Williams has taken a league-high 38 sacks in part because he’s holding the ball too long and failing to trust his reads. But there have also been predictable issues with the offensive line, along with flaws in play designs (route spacing and timing) and play calls. Williams’ 15 sacks over the past two games are more than three teams have allowed all season — the most obvious sign of diminished confidence.

“He is doing the same things he did in college in terms of holding the ball and being inconsistent with his reads,” a rival executive said. “He could get away with running around, throwing the ball up for grabs, throwing across his body, and he had some success doing that. You don’t get away with that at the NFL level too often. I’m a little surprised they haven’t been able to clean some of this up.”

Another executive corroborated that evaluation.

“Their ability to protect him was going to be the question,” the second executive said. “He always held the ball too long, so you have to minimize pure dropback situations and support him with a run game, which improves the impact of your RPO, QB movement and play action.”

Williams was a magician at USC, drumming up comparisons to Patrick Mahomes with his off-schedule playmaking ability, and some of that has been on display with the Bears. Problematically, however, Williams seems to be relying too much on the improvisational stuff. It’s common for young quarterbacks to revert to their most comfortable tendencies when the pressure ratchets up, and that’s led to some of Williams’ problems.

99 + 41 = the 5th Pats sack today ‼️

📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/ppqt8toDbk

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 10, 2024

To combat that, the Bears need to proactively find ways to make Williams comfortable before things naturally become tense. The goal is to help him play without overthinking, to anticipate the throws rather than waiting to see the routes develop and to keep the offense on schedule.

That’s easier said than done, of course.

“It’s really tough, probably one of the most difficult things to do especially with a guy like that who is so used to holding it and running around to extend plays,” an offensive coach said. “It’s just repetition and emphasis. And at some point, it has to click. There’s really no easy way. It’s a process.

“They need to run some stuff that he’s comfortable with as well and give him some opportunities to extend things. It’s a huge challenge, regardless.”

The coach chalked it up primarily as “typical rookie” struggles with the timing and confidence in his reads, although the Bears’ offensive scheme needs improvement. Bears coach Matt Eberflus said Monday the team is evaluating whether offensive coordinator Shane Waldron will remain in his role as the play caller.

The defense was buzzing yesterday.@MikeDussault19 highlights the key contributors on the defensive side: https://t.co/TaT3E6RuXA pic.twitter.com/q9fL97HvpU

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 11, 2024

Williams’ issues have been magnified by another factor. The Bears’ three-game losing streak has included games against rookies Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye, both of whom have played very well and remain on an upward trajectory.

“The expectations on him were so high,” the coach said. “No way he was going to be able to match those.”

It’s enough for Bears fans to have flashbacks of Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields, highly drafted QBs who didn’t pan out because of poor evaluations or bad overall situations. Williams has the talent, but it’s on the organization to fully cultivate it.

They were on the right track for a while, improving to 4-2 after posting 71 points in back-to-back wins against the Panthers and Jaguars, but the team — and the offense in particular — has been flat since Daniels beat them with a Hail Mary in Week 8. The lull has exposed issues that extend beyond the rookie quarterback.

Williams’ exciting flashes suggest enough talent exists for him to still grow into a bona fide franchise quarterback. He was the consensus No. 1 pick before the draft for a litany of reasons, so the Bears’ evaluation holds up.

But they’ve got to keep working with Williams to ensure it works out the way they envisioned.

GO DEEPER

Who’s to blame on the Bears? Accountability for such a bad loss goes through whole franchise

Hey, Darnold

Sam Darnold is delivering the best season of his career, as coach Kevin O’Connell has tapped into the potential that made the QB the No. 3 pick in 2018. In all likelihood, Darnold has been productive enough that he’ll be the top quarterback in free agency, which means a monster contract should be in his future.

However, Darnold endured the type of performance Sunday against the Jaguars that will fuel skepticism as the Vikings gear up for the playoffs. He was 24-of-38 for 241 yards passing with no touchdowns and three interceptions.

GO DEEPER

Sam Darnold’s turnovers nearly doom Vikings in narrow win over Jaguars

The three picks were egregious. The first was just outside the red zone, while the other pair happened in the end zone. Darnold was targeting wideout Justin Jefferson on all three.

Darnold simply needs to play within himself to be successful. The Vikings have an outstanding defense, stars at the skill positions, a complementary running game and a high-level, QB-friendly scheme.

Darnell Savage brings in our third INT of the day!@darnellsavage_ | #MINvsJAX on FOX pic.twitter.com/Ch7HAtKn2h

— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) November 10, 2024

The 27-year-old merely has to make the plays that are available to him and stay safe with the ball. His accuracy was erratic throughout the 12-7 victory in Jacksonville, and all three interceptions took points off the board.

Worse, this was against a woeful Jaguars defense that entered the game ranked third worst in points allowed and second worst in both total yards and passing yards. They had two — yes, two — interceptions all season and allowed at least 28 points in five of their previous seven games.

Maybe it was just a bad day. Everyone has them. Tom Brady had three interceptions in nine games.

But if the Vikings are going to make any noise in the playoffs against much tougher defenses than the Jaguars, Darnold has to be much better and prove this was a fluke. If that happens, he’ll land a life-changing contract in the offseason.

Ripple effects in Jacksonville

The Jaguars have lost 13 of their last 16 games, and Trevor Lawrence was regressing before the left shoulder injury that kept him out Sunday. And the defense has gotten worse after head coach Doug Pederson made some offseason staff firings, which is a combination of factors that generally results in further change.

If the Jaguars are in the coaching market after the season, a couple of rival executives agreed Jacksonville could be a prime spot.

“You get to work with Trevor and try to help him put it all back together,” one of the executives said. “He hasn’t been great, but I still think he has all the tools to be a good quarterback. That’s going to be a job people should want.”

Lawrence signed a five-year, $275 million contract before training camp, but his numbers have trended in the wrong direction for the second season in a row. There have been issues with the Jaguars’ ground game and a myriad of mistakes littered throughout the offense, including drops and penalties that have plagued the group for the better part of two years.

The point is, Lawrence shouldn’t be shouldering so much of the blame. It would be a chore for any quarterback to play well in that situation. And there’s no denying how well he played in 2022, along with how much the Jaguars continuously rallied around him from late deficits.

No, Lawrence hasn’t lived up to the pre-draft hype as a generational type of quarterback, but no one can do it alone. If the Jaguars improve the operation around him, they’ll maximize the return on investment.

GO DEEPER

What we learned in NFL Week 10: Lions pull off stunner, Bears falling apart

Short term, if Lawrence continues to miss time, this presents an intriguing opportunity for Mac Jones. He didn’t play well against the Vikings, but Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores has made life hell for Brock Purdy, C.J. Stroud, Jordan Love and Aaron Rodgers this season. You’ll have to excuse Jones for a pedestrian outing in his first start with a new team in the 10th game of the season.

Problematically for Jones, though, the Jaguars visit the Lions this week and then come out of their bye against the Texans. That’s a grueling stretch for the former first-round pick who is hoping to use this as an audition for next season.

Jones could capitalize if Lawrence’s absence lasts longer, as the Jags close the season with the Titans, Jets, Raiders, Titans and Colts. If Jones can put together some good tape, he could work his way into a camp competition against a young QB, similar to the way Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith and Darnold have recently revived their careers. Otherwise, Jones will likely remain on the backup circuit for a while longer.

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(Photo of Caleb Williams: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)