Recruiting Forum Football Talk III

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That is the sand mountain culture he grew up in as well. Rough country up there.
I lived in the heart of Sand Mountain for almost seven years and your statement is blatantly wrong. It is just like everywhere else, sure..there are some real penisnoggins around, but most people were salt of the earth.

The place I live in now is infinitely worse as far as people go. Regular Sand Mountain people are no better or worse than anywhere else I have lived.
 
Saw something where a fan was saying there's a theory that it all started with the HEX Rohan Davie's Mom (Jamaican) put on us after her son went down during the UT vs LSU SEC Championship game back in 2001... The backup came in the second half (Mauk??) and balled out to give them the win... we imploded the second half. Kept us out of the 2001 Natty... Since then our Football program has skidded downward and has never recovered...
One of our boosters needs to find her, go see her, and "make it right" to get this curse off our backs.... like ASAP....

Saw something? SAW SOMETHING? Are you kidding? That is common #%$@$@ knowledge and that curse has had some serious legs. Next one of us that goes to Jamaica, please, PLEASE find someone to reverse this evil voodoo cloud that continues to hang over Neyland.
 
Saw something? SAW SOMETHING? Are you kidding? That is common #%$@$@ knowledge and that curse has had some serious legs. Next one of us that goes to Jamaica, please, PLEASE find someone to reverse this evil voodoo cloud that continues to hang over Neyland.
@tnhunter 10

Vacation is over. You have an assignment.
 
I was studying the game stats of the MO matchups with UK & SC while Heupel was there to see if I could figure out what was holding them back in those 4 games. In both years MO was best in the conference at not allowing sacks and not allowing tackles for loss. They were a heavily penalized team both years but I don’t know what those infractions were. They were inconsistent on 3rd down conversions but even when they approached 50% they still lost. In 3 of the games they committed a combined 8 turnovers and only gained 1. In the 4th game (against UK) they gained 2 turnovers and didn’t lose any but still lost.

One metric that we will have to get used to is Time of Possession.

Here are the Time of Possession numbers for the MO/UK and MO/SC matchups in 2016 & 2017.

2016 MO 20:34 UK 39:36
2016 MO 23:50 SC 36:10
2017 MO 22:24 SC 37:36
2017 MO 23:51 UK 36:09

These aren’t outliers. In 2016 MO ranked #128 in Time of Possession for the year and in 2017 MO ranked #129. At UCF in 2018 the Knights offense ranked #127 in TOP, in 2019 it ranked #126, and in 2020 it ranked #109. (In fairness to Josh, I should note that a Frost let UCF ranked #107 in TOP in 2016 and #106 in 2017. Also Shannon was I think the DC under Frost and Heupel wasn’t permitted to replace him when he took the head job. One other note to include is that while Josh never beat UK or SC while he was at MO with Drew Lock, neither did Dooley in 2018 in Lock’s final year).

Remember Arkansas in 2015. The Razorbacks kept the ball and our offense had precious few possessions. Our defense couldn’t get them off the field and even though Evan’s opening play kickoff return is one of the enduring highlights of UT Football our offense was at a decided disadvantage from the start. A lot of fans often complain about the amount of time a defense has to stay on the field due to the poor performance of the offense, well, the offense we have now is designed to strike quick and turn it over to the defense. That can backfire if you get behind early on. jmo.

I’ll be surprised if Josh changes that this go round. The thing to pay attention to though is not the time per se but rather the number of plays for the defense because ball control is about milking the clock. While we may be going fast the other guys may end up trying to go slow to shorten the game. Mostly they will do that by keeping the ball on the ground and letting the clock run which I think means the key to our success in the win column is still on defense, and in particular, stopping the run. jmo.

Last point. I'm under the impression that Josh had free reign to choose his own DC this time around which will have been the first time in either his coordinator career or his head coaching career. Stoops fired Josh to protect his brother, the DC at OU at the time. Eventually the DC was fired. Odom, a DC guy, was the HC at MO. Shannon is a well seasoned DC. This is clearly I think the first time Josh has had an opportunity to structure a defense to compliment his offensive philosophy. It will be insightful to see what that looks like. jmo.
 
I didn't realize this but according to the Palm Beach Post Danny White forced Randy Shannon on Heupel as the defensive coordinator at UCF. I had seen some muttering about who White wanted to hire for Heupel here and I also heard that Heupel had pushed back. I don't know what criteria an administrator uses to make sophisticated technical hires but if what the PBP reported is true I don't want to think about us having another Dave Hart "let's get the LB coach at Alabama to be your defensive coordinator."

Anyway, I'm glad that I read somewhere that Heupel had pushed back this time. White had said in an interview that Josh would be able to hire his own team. I figure since it's out there Josh has some leverage, at least for the time being. jmo.

So I'm still digging for more info to sort of inform my vision of our prospects with this staff. I've read a lot of articles. I start by searching for everything that doesn't include Tennessee because we know after a new hire is made we get the wall to wall sales pitch. I found one article from this past year, a Clay Travis type article, where the writer went totally over the top calling for Heupel to be fired after I think it was the 2nd loss of the 2020 season at UCF. If anyone recalls Clay's profanity-laced tirade against Butch Jones in 2015, well, you get the idea.

So in looking at the good and bad it comes down to this. This clip from an article more than a decade ago I think fairly describes who Josh Heupel is from an overall consensus perspective, outliers notwithstanding. jmo.

I doubt DW stayed out of the staff hires this time. In 12-36 months, after disappointing performance, we’ll hear about which coaches were forced on Heupel and how this time CJH will finally get to hire a hand picked staff. That will buy him some more time anyway. It’s all a big ruse.
 
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Yep - it's so weird to think about that 2019 season in hindsight. He loses to Mississippi State and I think Fulmer was ready to step in.

I don’t know if it would have happened even then. I got a theory that Fulmer and Pruitt became tied to the hip by all the shadiness. “If I go down, you’re going with me,” type deal. Might explain why Fulmer was digging in his heels so hard about keeping Pruitt. Might also explain why things had to go down the way they did in order to get past it.
 
I lived in the heart of Sand Mountain for almost seven years and your statement is blatantly wrong. It is just like everywhere else, sure..there are some real penisnoggins around, but most people were salt of the earth.

The place I live in now is infinitely worse as far as people go. Regular Sand Mountain people are no better or worse than anywhere else I have lived.

Aren't you around Tampa area?
 
No..I was in T-Bay from 01-07 and 13-15, but I lived in NE Alabama from 07-13, and we moved to Harlan Kentucky in 15.

Interesting. I lived in Tampa for almost 20 years and now am in North Alabama. With your previous comment, I thought you were referring to Tampa. Some salt of the earth. Lots of crazy there.
 
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