I had a hard time telling whether Phil was trying to sit on a 1-point lead in the first half or LSU was playing lights-out defense after UTK's first drive of the half. You already mentioned the running on first, and often second, down so I won't get into that. It seemed like they had a good think going most everytime they used the G-Gun and I am not sure why they did not call it a few moer times. For the most part I thought that tonight was an excellent demostration of the Fulmer stratgey of playing so as not to let the other team dictate the tempo of the game and in the end it almost worked, or at least almost got the Vols to overtime. Truth is though, that i thought LSU should've scored 24 points in the first half and I did not think UTK's defense could keep it up for two halfs. Hat's off to the defense :hi:.
i'll say this...........the style of football we've played for the past month and a half, has been th equivalent of walking on a clfif's edge.
i too wondered..........are we really salting away this 1 pt lead? surely not?
but either way, the way the plays were called on 1st down, it begs the question. and when you walk a fine line like we do in close games, you simply cannot afford mistakes. and in the 4th qtr..........we made them, LSU didn't. that's the difference in the game.
as much praise as i gave arian foster last week, i thought his running in the 2nd half was tenative at best, and he didn't turn up field. EA looked lost at times and fired some balls that had no business being fired off.
bottom line, our "playmakers" didn't make plays. we were in a close game for all the marbles with a more talented team. maybe that's part of it...maybe we set ourselves up for that with our style of play.........i dont' know.
all i know is that we had 2 huge mistakes at the worst possible times. and that's how we LOST this game. yes, we LOST it more than LSU won it. we handed it to them on a silver platter. and that pisses me off more than anything. if LSU had just lined up and made plays all night long, that'd be one thing....but they didnt'. we lost the game. they didn't win it.