Florida streak (split)

See, your primary "look who got drafted" argument is easily shot down, and has been many times, you just refuse to acknowledge it. As 99 said, Jeff "freaking" Driskel was just drafted....you know, the Florida QB who 2 years ago in Neyland threw picks deep in his own territory and finished with 59 yards passing and an 8.4 QBR.....the same guy who transferred out of the SEC to Louisiana Tech..... HE was drafted last month and HE was easily the worst player on the field that day. And despite a two-score lead at home, going into the 4th quarter vs a very average Gators team with a backup QB that ain't ever getting drafted, Tennessee still lost.

Do I have to also recount the facts of last year's blown 2 score lead in the 4th quarter vs Gators team with a RS freshman, a MASH unit OL and a first year head coach/staff?

No one denies they're a flawed team. Its the reason why our flawed team has been able to hang with them.

But for all their offensive flaws. The last 2 Florida teams also had 2 of the best defenses in the country. Its possible all 11 defensive starters we faced last year will be drafted. So even though Florida may have fielded an FCS quality offense, they did have a NFL caliber defense. That should count for something.

I'm not saying Florida is a juggernaut. I just don't think we were. Thus it's hard to expect to beat a team that is at best even with us in talent level.

If we lose again this year and Florida doesn't turn out to be some juggernaut, I'll agree with you.

I just find it hard to say that a team with 0 players drafted in 2 years should've beaten a team with 15 players drafted.
 
See, your primary "look who got drafted" argument is easily shot down, and has been many times, you just refuse to acknowledge it. As 99 said, Jeff "freaking" Driskel was just drafted....you know, the Florida QB who 2 years ago in Neyland threw picks deep in his own territory and finished with 59 yards passing and an 8.4 QBR.....the same guy who transferred out of the SEC to Louisiana Tech..... HE was drafted last month and HE was easily the worst player on the field that day. And despite a two-score lead at home, going into the 4th quarter vs a very average Gators team with a backup QB that ain't ever getting drafted, Tennessee still lost.

But he wasn't terrible last year at La-Tech.

Jacoby Brissett (another Florida QB) was also drafted this year. If they were included in the official Florida number, that's 9 players originally recruited by Florida drafted in 2016. And 8 players drafted in 2015.

17 players total in the last 2 years who started their careers at Florida got drafted. Compared to ZERO at Tennessee.

You can whine and misdirect all you want. But the facts are the facts. Florida has recruited better talent than Tennessee. And has put more guys into the NFL. Yes their coaching sucks sometimes. Yes guys underachieve. But they still have had a HUGE talent advantage over us.
 
And if I remember correctly we went 5-7 that year.

Don't throw rocks if you live in a glass house.

A 5-7 team has no right to expect wins over a 4-8 team.

When 2 bad teams meet, someone has to win. Thats what happened that year.

That team was historically bad. If I remember correctly we were a horrible spot away from going bowling. we should have beaten Florida that year, just like the last two years.
 
But he wasn't terrible last year at La-Tech.

Jacoby Brissett (another Florida QB) was also drafted this year. If they were included in the official Florida number, that's 9 players originally recruited by Florida drafted in 2016. And 8 players drafted in 2015.

17 players total in the last 2 years who started their careers at Florida got drafted. Compared to ZERO at Tennessee.

You can whine and misdirect all you want. But the facts are the facts. Florida has recruited better talent than Tennessee. And has put more guys into the NFL. Yes their coaching sucks sometimes. Yes guys underachieve. But they still have had a HUGE talent advantage over us.

Briesset played at NCSU for two seasons. i had completely fogotten he was ever on a FL roster until they said it at the draft.

it doesn't count. and Driskel was all everything coming out of HS. i do think his fate was sealed by pathetic recruiting on offense and even worse development of that offense...how many OC's did 'champ have at FL? 3?

anyway...FL doesn't get credit for either of those guys!!!:salute:
 
That team was historically bad. If I remember correctly we were a horrible spot away from going bowling. we should have beaten Florida that year, just like the last two years.

No. They had an epic amount of injuries that year that mostly occurred after our game.

Stop trying to rewrite history. Florida started that year ranked #10. They just came off a 11 win season. Injuries ravaged the team. Something like 12 starters were lost to season ending injuries.
 
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Briesset played at NCSU for two seasons. i had completely fogotten he was ever on a FL roster until they said it at the draft.

it doesn't count. and Driskel was all everything coming out of HS. i do think his fate was sealed by pathetic recruiting on offense and even worse development of that offense...how many OC's did 'champ have at FL? 3?

anyway...FL doesn't get credit for either of those guys!!!:salute:

Whether they get credit or not isn't my point.

My point is Florida has had better athletes. Better players. Better clay to mold from. That's the reason I'm not too hung up on this lil streak. There is nothing surprising about it.

There's a reason I started following this team intensely once again in late 2014. That's when we finally started looking like a team again.

Before Butch's 2014 and 2015 classes, there was no reason to expect anything great from Tennessee.
 
Whether they get credit or not isn't my point.

My point is Florida has had better athletes. Better players. Better clay to mold from. That's the reason I'm not too hung up on this lil streak. There is nothing surprising about it.

There's a reason I started following this team intensely once again in late 2014. That's when we finally started looking like a team again.

Before Butch's 2014 and 2015 classes, there was no reason to expect anything great from Tennessee.
now, that i agree with.
 
...

There's a reason I started following this team intensely once again in late 2014. That's when we finally started looking like a team again.

...

I know you've admitted this before, D4H, but I've refrained from saying anything until now. Just gotta echo what others have already said: shame, shame, bad "fan" who doesn't stay true in the lean years. I would encourage you to be a faithful and true Vols fan for the rest of your life, not a fair-weather fan only. :good!:
 
No. They had an epic amount of injuries that year that mostly occurred after our game.

Stop trying to rewrite history. Florida started that year ranked #10. They just came off a 11 win season. Injuries ravaged the team. Something like 12 starters were lost to season ending injuries.

How about you stop making excuses for Florida. We should have beaten them 2 out of 3 years, arguably 3. Going back to the ORIGINAL discussion of how they have owned us over the past 30 years, it's more than just talent, UT has a mental lapse when it comes to the gators and needs to get over it to prove they can beat them consistently
 
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I know you've admitted this before, D4H, but I've refrained from saying anything until now. Just gotta echo what others have already said: shame, shame, bad "fan" who doesn't stay true in the lean years. I would encourage you to be a faithful and true Vols fan for the rest of your life, not a fair-weather fan only. :good!:

I'm sorry. Its just hard to passionately invest in a team when there is no hope.

Before these back to back top 5 classes there has been no hope.
 
How about you stop making excuses for Florida. We should have beaten them 2 out of 3 years, arguably 3. Going back to the ORIGINAL discussion of how they have owned us over the past 30 years, it's more than just talent, UT has a mental lapse when it comes to the gators and needs to get over it to prove they can beat them consistently

How about you stop ignoring FACTS.

Florida suffered from a ton of injuries after our September matchup in 2012....FACT

Florida has put more guys into the NFL and recruited better than Tennessee the last decade...FACT

Until last year we haven't been a favorite against Florida....FACT

I don't think you guys appreciate how terrible a state Tennessee football has been the last 10 years or so.
 
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I'm sorry. Its just hard to passionately invest in a team when there is no hope.

Before these back to back top 5 classes there has been no hope.

And you wonder why people have a hard time taking you seriously...

here's a tip, you should probably stop admitting you're a bandwagon fan.
 
How about you stop ignoring FACTS.

Florida suffered from a ton of injuries after our September matchup in 2012....FACT

Florida has put more guys into the NFL and recruited better than Tennessee the last decade...FACT

Until last year we haven't been a favorite against Florida....FACT

I don't think you guys appreciate how terrible a state Tennessee football has been the last 10 years or so.

As you are a self admitted fair-weather fan, you have ignored the FACT that UT is 6-24 vs Florida the last 30 years. That's a FACT. Recruiting cannot explain that because we have recruited on par with them over that time span. It's not like we are recruiting on par with Vandy. We've had some really good/great football teams in 30 years.

It's a mental thing. No other way to describe it
 
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How about you stop ignoring FACTS.

Florida suffered from a ton of injuries after our September matchup in 2012....FACT

Florida has put more guys into the NFL and recruited better than Tennessee the last decade...FACT

Until last year we haven't been a favorite against Florida....FACT

I don't think you guys appreciate how terrible a state Tennessee football has been the last 10 years or so.

it's not that any of those things are in dispute, but you do give a lot of credit to FL for just being FL.

the FL teams we've lost to the last 3-4 years are a far cry from the Urban Meyer/Tim Tebow/Steve Spurrier/Danny Wurfiel FL teams that were truly very good.

and yes, we've also been at a program low point during the end of the Fulmer/Kiffin/Dooley years.
 
Interesting. It must be a great response since you have no credible counter.

It required no specific response/counter. It was so ridiculously stupid and invalid that it spoke for itself.

But, if I must..... on one hand you constantly harp on about how Tennessee should lose to Florida because the Gators have all these great NFL draft picks....why, no one should ever expect us to beat the "formidable" Gators because of those stud NFL draft picks that they have that we just haven't. It's ALL about the draft picks according to D4H.

And then it's pointed out that Jeff Driskel, who spent 4 full seasons at Florida, who turned in the worst QB performance I've ever seen this side of Nathan Peterman 2 years ago in consecutive win #10 in Neyland, was indeed just drafted into the NFL, therefore pretty much laying your primary argument about "draft picks" to complete waste.

But then you, D4H, actually double down and say that doesn't count because he transferred to LaTech.....where he killed it against teams like Southern, Florida International and Texas-San Antonio.......Lol!! You just can't make this stuff up.
 
As you are a self admitted fair-weather fan, you have ignored the FACT that UT is 6-24 vs Florida the last 30 years. That's a FACT. Recruiting cannot explain that because we have recruited on par with them over that time span. It's not like we are recruiting on par with Vandy. We've had some really good/great football teams in 30 years.

It's a mental thing. No other way to describe it

It can explain the last 11 matchups.

That's all I'm talking.

I don't know anything about what happened in the 90s to make a determination.
 
it's not that any of those things are in dispute, but you do give a lot of credit to FL for just being FL.

the FL teams we've lost to the last 3-4 years are a far cry from the Urban Meyer/Tim Tebow/Steve Spurrier/Danny Wurfiel FL teams that were truly very good.

and yes, we've also been at a program low point during the end of the Fulmer/Kiffin/Dooley years.

But that's the point.

Even if Florida hasn't been good, we haven't either. We've lost to Kentucky and Vanderbilt in the last 5 seasons. That never happened before.

Even if Florida is no longer Florida, we're in no position to expect to beat ANYONE.
 
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It required no specific response/counter. It was so ridiculously stupid and invalid that it spoke for itself.

But, if I must..... on one hand you constantly harp on about how Tennessee should lose to Florida because the Gators have all these great NFL draft picks....why, no one should ever expect us to beat the "formidable" Gators because of those stud NFL draft picks that they have that we just haven't. It's ALL about the draft picks according to D4H.

And then it's pointed out that Jeff Driskel, who spent 4 full seasons at Florida, who turned in the worst QB performance I've ever seen this side of Nathan Peterman 2 years ago in consecutive win #10 in Neyland, was indeed just drafted into the NFL, therefore pretty much laying your primary argument about "draft picks" to complete waste.

But then you, D4H, actually double down and say that doesn't count because he transferred to LaTech.....where he killed it against teams like Southern, Florida International and Texas-San Antonio.......Lol!! You just can't make this stuff up.

???

No. I said he didn't count toward Florida's 7 players drafted in 2016. Even if he sucked at Florida, he was still surrounded by 15 players who got drafted in 2015 and 2016.

You can point to any single player on Florida's roster and say he sucked. Treon Harris this year was terrible. But that still doesn't change the fact he was surrounded by alot of really good defensive players. Alot like Driskel. And it's those future NFL studs littering Florida's roster that have beaten us.
 
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It can explain the last 11 matchups.

That's all I'm talking.

I don't know anything about what happened in the 90s to make a determination.

And that's why you're naive to the entire rivalry.

And I've already shown in this thread previously that there have only been three years over the past 10 that Florida has had a hands down far and away better recruiting class.
 
And that's why you're naive to the entire rivalry.

And I've already shown in this thread previously that there have only been three years over the past 10 that Florida has had a hands down far and away better recruiting class.

The way I saw it they've out recruited us 7 or 8 of the last 10 years. With 2014 and 2015 being the only years we finished ahead of them.

You're the one creating this "hands down" qualification. You might not think having the #1 class vs the #9 class is "hands down" better. Well I do.
 
It can explain the last 11 matchups.

That's all I'm talking.

I don't know anything about what happened in the 90s to make a determination.

that's kind of hte point. this futility against the Gators goes back 25 years (since 1990 when they've been on the schedule annually). going further back than that is kind of point less cause we didn't play them very often prior to the SPurrier years.

5-20 over that time span, and i can tell you that for the better part of the 90's we did out recruit them, we definitely put more players in the NFL, and we still managed to go on a 6 game losing streak to them.

and i can say with 100% certainty that the reason was our program's "play not to lose" mentality vs. their program's "we're gonna kick your azz, and then tell you about it" mentality.

and it's carried over for the entirety of the Fulmer years, in to what is now knows as the dark days of Kiffin/Dooley, where mentality was trumped by coaching turmoil and lack of talent.

well, now we're back to (the last 2-3 years anyway) to what seems to be a close gap in talent, and yet we've still managed to continue the streak AT LEAST 2 years too many.

i've said it before, and as someone that's seen each of those 25 games, our program has to get over the hump mentally. that's not a reflection of the current players or coaches, every coach that's been here in the last 25 years has been a part of this "streak", and the current 11 game streak. so for it to change, there has to be a group led by people that can get over it. i do think this group is the group that can lay that foundation and have it carry over to the next group and so on.

that's a culture issue, and i think the culture, is and has been heading in the right direction from a 'winning program' standpoint.

and it's set up for this year to be the year that we hit the reset button and start over.
 
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