Recruiting Forum Football Talk IV

Status
Not open for further replies.
#133,515
#133,515
This is the data that suggests to me that we have good coaching for our run defense but not enough talent and/or depth to hang with good/elite teams. Last year we played 8 unranked teams and 5 AP ranked teams (final AP rankings). The data is from CFBstats. The 8 unranked teams were Bowling Green, Florida, Tennessee Tech, Missouri, South Carolina, South Alabama, Vanderbilt, and Purdue. The 5 ranked teams were Pittsburgh (13), Ole Miss (11), Alabama (2), Kentucky (18), and Georgia (1).

There were only 13 teams in all of FBS that played 5 or more AP ranked teams last year, Georgia (6), Alabama (5), Baylor (5), Iowa State (5), Mississippi State (5), Utah (5), Nebraska (5), Indiana (5), Auburn (5), Louisville (5), Penn State (5), Tennessee (5), and Texas (5). Of course Georgia and Alabama’s numbers are sort of inflated by the SEC championship game and College Football Playoff, not that I wouldn't mind if the same could be said about us.

There were a total of 117 FBS teams that played at least one team that finished in the final AP top 25 rankings. There were 130 FBS teams that played various numbers of unranked teams.

This is how our run defense fared against each group (unranked/ranked) in the respective national rankings:

ScreenHunter 837.png

Technically when we played Florida they were ranked #13 but that doesn’t count as they finished the season unranked. When they lost to Kentucky Mullen lost what support he had remaining in the fan base and when he lost to LSU he fired the defensive coordinator and offensive line coach. At that point he lost the team which would end with his termination as well.

Three days ago Athlon published an article looking at the returning starters for SEC teams taking in to account what players had left their respective teams up to that point, for whatever reason. It doesn’t count as returning starters transfers who have joined the teams. These are their numbers and explanation:

Roster management in the era of the transfer portal has changed how teams can reload, improve or build going into a new coaching tenure. Returning starter data isn't necessarily the best way to judge teams going into a year, but it does provide interesting insight into strengths and weaknesses. Each year, Athlon Sports compiles returning starter data for its college football preview magazine. Players starting the last six or seven overall games are considered a returning starter. Also, some discretion is used, including returning from injury, split starters at a specific position, or other applicable reasoning for considering a player a starter.
Click to expand...

* Tennessee's eight returning starters on offense are tied for the most in the SEC East. That number includes likely All-SEC quarterback Hendon Hooker and 1,000-yard receiver Cedric Tillman.
Click to expand...
* The Volunteers bring back six starters on defense, but three of the departing starters - safety Theo Jackson, cornerback Alontae Taylor and lineman Matthew Butler - had at least 20 career starts.
Click to expand...

ScreenHunter 838.png

We're a year ahead of Florida and we get them at home. LSU is in deep deep trouble. Kentucky lost their offensive line and secondary. Georgia lost their defense. We get Alabama at home. I mean we've got some work to do ourselves but relatively speaking I like where we're at as we approach the coming season. jmo.
 
  • Like
Reactions: OrangeGlasses731, SmokinBob, barrylee and 19 others
#133,516
#133,516
ChattaTNVol said:
We all know that one of the keys to our improvement this year is developing a 4-man pass rush and Heupel and staff have noted this a number of times already as we go through spring. It is a heavy point of emphasis.

Roman Harrison gave us a bit of a peak behind the curtain in his recent media appearance. He said in our dime package this year the four guys up front are him, Omari Thomas, Tyler Baron, and Byron Young. From last year that was 131 tackles, 24 TFLs, 11.5 sacks, and 17 QB hurries. He didn’t say where exactly each was lining up, just that they were the four. Hopefully we find at least 4 more guys like that for our rotation up front this year. jmo.

In his post scrimmage media appearance South Carolina’s Shane Beamer was asked how Rattler did. Beamer said he did good and then later in the interview said they had a number of interceptions and a bunch of dumb throws. smh.

Recently I was rewatching our game with South Carolina from last year and on the crawl at the bottom of the screen they were tracking the Texas Oklahoma game, the very game where Rattler lost his job with the Sooners. Ironic.

This tweet from yesterday got quite the reaction from the Carolina message board as you might imagine.

Click to expand...

The comments are great.
1649338227582.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: OrangeGlasses731, VolsDoc81TX, captainfalcon777 and 13 others
#133,523
#133,523
Was going to wait for the kid to announce it himself but Rick Barnes pretty much let the cat out of the bag in a press conference this morning, expect Quintin Dibounje to move on to East Carolina. That's been in works for a long time now and is not a surprise to anyone in the program. That's the other one we have been hinting at.
Click to expand...
-Rob Lewis
 
  • Like
Reactions: OrangeGlasses731, SmokinBob, VolsDoc81TX and 19 others
New posts
Status
Not open for further replies.
Advertisement



Back
Top