From the Erik Ainge show today:
(Note: Yesterday was all about HS sports. I didn’t really hear anything I thought would be all that related to our upcoming season).
Last night Ainge was on TV saying JG was going to be the starting QB. “I don’t know that,” he said. “No one told me that. I don’t make that decision. That’s just my opinion but we get so wrapped up in here we take it is as fact. I understand why someone would look at all the questions from last year around this team and go ‘they could be great, they could be terrible’. Who knows?”
Joel weighs in by saying that he was on a program with Jimmy Hyams last night and Jimmy said he hasn’t seen anything to make him think KC can take the job away from JG. Ainge reiterates his belief that you can lose a job in shorts but you can’t win a job in shorts. He said he believes that when KC was brought in the staff actually believed he could be the starting QB this year and they would be able to do more with him. Joel said that’s what he thought too but then Guarantano put on 20 pounds of muscle, then Guarantano had a really good spring, Guarantano was the offensive MVP of the Orange & White game, and Keller Chryst didn’t come in until the summer. He says he don’t think it’s a knock on the coaching staff that it’s looking like Guarantano is going to keep his job. He thinks it’s a credit to JG because he thinks JG understood KC was brought in to seriously contend for the starting QB job. JG answered the bell. If JG is named the starting QB against WVU, which at this point, Joel believes he will be, kudos to him because he’s earned it. He doesn’t think KC is a bad QB. He thinks KC can play football in the SEC and he thinks he can be fairly good at it. He thinks all this means that JG has raised his level by what he’s had to do during the offseason to get ready for this.
Ainge weighs in saying Helton has spent a lot of time with Guarantano and he sees Guarantano loves football, wants to get better, is living in the film room, living in the weight room, putting on 20 pounds, is like a sponge learning everything he can. That makes it fun for Helton to coach and teach that guy.
Caller calls in to ask about where Maleik Gray is playing this year. Ainge said he’s a tweener meaning there’s a spot for him they just have to find it because he’s super athletic. He may not be fast enough to play free safety. He’s probably more like a strong safety. Ainge said 90% of his HS highlights he’s playing up around the line of scrimmage, blitzing off the edge. Ainge seemed to suggest that he might be a good nickel if he had more weight. He said he doesn’t foresee the move to offense to be a lasting change. The gist is that Gray is a very talented kid and it make take some time for us to figure out where to best use him. The guys point out that it is probably a good thing for Tennessee that the staff thinks they have enough in the secondary without him, enough to go up against some of the highly skilled receiving corps we will face this year.
Caller asks about running backs. Ainge says he doesn’t think London has looked as good as Chandler so far. Ainge says we have a good backfield but at Tennessee we’re expecting to have a great backfield. That’s our history. Joel says he likes the skill positions on offense at Tennessee.
So there’s a Peyton Cutclism regarding who gets touches that Ainge learned and wants to share. So Ainge is playing offensive coordinator, something he learned in an offseason training drill, from Cut when Peyton would come back. It’s a self-scouting tool. There’s a famous saying, “Think Players, Not plays.” In crucial situations, make sure it’s your best players that are making plays with the football. So first question, who are the top couple running backs? Obviously Chandler. We all know that. Ainge says the 2nd guy is whoever turns out to be the best of the rest. No matter who it is, he says, they’re definitely a tier down from Chandler. Chandler has breakaway speed, he’s tough, and he runs hard. They reminisce about the Kentucky game.
Tight End next. Ainge thinks TE will be by committee. He says Wolf, Pope, and DWA. He says we’ll be in 11-personnel almost all the time and so you’re not going to ask any one of these guys to play 70 snaps a game. He says a lot of people thought Witten was under-utilized while he was here but in distributing touches, you had a 2nd round draft pick running back, Kelly Washington, and Dante Stallworth. So anyway for us this year, Ainge is saying TE is by committee and this is not one of the guys you will game plan for. There’s no one in the TE room that you’re going to make a game plan for and say we have to get him the football. He said DWA maybe has potential to be that kind of guy but he’s definitely not right this minute, not for this year.
Wide Receivers are next as we build our touch list.
They go off on a tangent bemoaning the fact that Alvin Kamara didn’t have a more prominent role on our touch list. That was evidence, they say, of a significant deficiency in our game planning.
They talked about Tyler Byrd and said if you didn’t involve him in the game he was the type of player who would fade into the game. (I think it means he would begin to tune out). They talk about Robert Meachem and if you didn’t get him the ball in the first quarter and he didn’t feel super involved he would kind of be like Tyler Byrd and disappear mentally. Ainge said Meach would get so jacked up before a game he’d be throwing up on the sideline, lot of nerves, lot of anxiety. Ainge said he and Cut would at half time look at what they had done in the first half and come up with a new touch list for the 2nd half. The reason, he said, Meach had to have the ball in the 1st quarter is like taking the lid off for a basketball player or in baseball where a batter takes a strike or two before he starts swinging. He also said, regarding Hardesty that you had to get him some touches if you were ever going to get him “lathered up”.
Now getting touches for specific players has to align with what the defense is doing so you’re not really just arbitrarily dishing out touches. So when the defense gives you an opportunity you have to try to work according to your touch list and that has to do with the QB making his reads and getting the offense into the right play.
Anyway back to our wide receivers, Ainge doesn’t think Brandon Johnson fits that mold where he’s on the touch list but he does think you want him engaged.
So our touch list is Ty Chandler, Jauan Jennings, Marquez Callaway, & TE by committee, in that order.
Jauan obviously needs to get back in football shape but we know he’s a gamer and when the ball is in his hands he can do special things. If he is engaged and happy and playing hard he is as valuable to this football team as anybody out there.
Ainge says he’s watched film of the WVU defense and he’s been to our practices and he says we’re so much bigger, faster, & stronger, it’s not even funny. It’s crazy, he says. Daniel Bituli looks like an NFL linebacker. Darrin Kirkland Jr looks like an NFL linebacker. Shy Tuttle & Kyle Phillips look the part. Ainge thinks Darrell Taylor is about to blow up this year. He said he was serious.
Ainge said he thinks everything is going to come down to how fast the players (linebackers and backs) can learn the schemes that Pruitt wants them to learn. If they can figure it out with all the different ways he’s going to disguise coverage that’s the question. They’ve never been taught like this before so we’re asking a lot from these guys, especially in one offseason. It’s been done before though, he says.
Ainge points out that the 3 specific players he has identified for the touch list is the fewest amount of players he’s ever had. Joel asks what is the average number of players for the touch list?
Ainge is going to use his experience in 2006 as an example. On that team we had a lot of good players, including Arian Foster, Montario Hardesty, Lamarcus Coker (for a while), and Jayson Swain….
Ainge goes off on a tangent talking about Swain having the best hands of any receiver he’s known. He said when the receivers were on the Jugs machine swain would get him to throw the ball to him so it was more real, from 10 yards away as hard as Ainge could throw it so he could get the feel of the ball. Ainge said he did that one time with Dave Hooker and it was like a kidney punch to the guy. He was down on the ground gasping for air.
Back to the 2006 touch list, you’ve got Robert Meachem, a 1st round draft pick, and Bret Smith who was a 3rd down and touchdown catching machine. Tight End in 2006 was by committee so no one on the touch list from that group. So 6 guys on the touch list in 2006 plus the TE committee. .
They go off on tangent because some guy from CBS posts a list of teams with the most rushing yards in the playoff era that still lost the game. The most was Georgia Tech. They rushed for 535 yards in a loss. Kentucky is at #5 on the list having rushed for 443 yards in a loss, and Missouri is #8, losing after rushing for 420 yards. All 3 teams lost to Tennessee, GT in ’17, and Kentucky & Missouri in ’16. Joel says that means we can give up 400 yards rushing and still win. Ainge says we don’t need to make a habit of that. Joel adds we can give up 500 passing yards to Will Grier and still win by 20.
Caller calls in to jump on the 8-4 bandwagon and Ainge points out that if we are 4-0 after Florida the hype train will be immense. Because of all the positive energy, Ainge says if we do get to 4-0, he doesn’t think we lose 3 of the next 4. Joel said he’s said all along if Tennessee beats WVU we automatically become a 9-3 team. The outlook of the season totally changes if Tennessee finds a way to beat the Mountaineers.
Joel thinks the team laid down last year so most normal historical comparisons may not apply. Ainge thinks this team reminds him of his 2006 team a lot. He says we need to see how it shakes out. He used the Cal game of that year when we were expected to get steam rolled as a comparison to us going into the WVU.
Ainge says he thinks Guarantano is going to be such a good player that we are going to want him to be a redshirt senior and not jump to the NFL early. He said while Dobbs is the last QB to beat Florida he believes before JG leaves we’ll be saying Guarantano is the last QB that beat Alabama. He said he thinks we’re going to remember #2 for a really long time and it’s not just because he was a QB here. It’s because he’s going to do something here that keeps his name memorable.
