Doug Mathews secondary suggestion

I just don’t know if I can believe this. There is no way that Heupel doesn’t want a dominant defense. Why would prefer an average bend but don’t break scenario that keeps the ball out of the offenses hands? That’d be like owning your own store and being happy you sell just enough to keep the doors open. I imagine he wants a defense that will shut teams down, get off the field on 3rd (and 4th downs) and get the ball back to the offense so we can score even more. Florida had the perfect recipe to almost pull off the upset which is possess the ball as long as possible and limit our offenses possessions. It almost worked. Think about it, if we stop just 2 of those 4th down conversions, that game is probably 52-14 or worse. So I don’t buy that Heupel just wants a defense that can get a few stops here and there. He wants both sides of the ball to be the best they can be.

Absolutely, he wants both offense and defense to be the best they can be. The problem is, the overall talent of the defense is not at the level that it needs to be. Heupel can't do anything about that but recruit better players. That is what he is doing. Remember that most of the players on the field were not recruited by Heupel.
This. We play what appears to be a "soft zone" most of the time. If the QB has time, he just waits for the receiver to get into the open spot, add to that our lack of speed and for whatever reason, inability to make a tackle in the secondary, and you get what UF did to us the whole game. Maybe the game plan was to play zone and keep an eye on Richardson, I don't know, but our defense was much more aggressive against Pitt. Play man and bring more pressure...its more risky, but I'd rather get burnt trying to get to the QB than by allowing the QB to hit wide open receivers.

You are exactly right. The game plan was to keep Richardson from beating TN with his feet. The reason for that was Richardson had not thrown the ball very well prior to the TN game. Coach Mathews noted that he had watched Florida's first three games and Richardson threw the ball much better against TN than he expected. I'm sure the TN staff was thinking the same thing.
 
We listened to the show on the way back from Knoxville. My main takeaway with his observations about the secondary: we just don’t have the players and/or the athleticism on the back end. We don’t play either zone or man well at all. Guys out of position too often. Little situational awareness. We didn’t get a hand on a FL pass one time, except for the final interception. And, finally, we are terrible at tackling in the secondary.

Plenty of room for improvement. And we have 13 days to work on these things before LSU. We might see some new blood out there come game time.
Coach Mathews made a point to say that guys weren't out of position. That is a problem that has been improved greatly from last season. They just aren't SEC top level talent.
 
When the celebrations stop, I would imange that several coaches will be cringing watching the replay in the film room. I would have to think that given two weeks to scheme/prepare that we should see a marked improvement in zone and man coverages, tackling, blitz packages, and special teams. Time will tell. GBO!
Coach Mathews noted that after reading the drive chart, Coach Banks probably woke up in a sweat during the middle of the night. He said that happened to him a couple of times during his coaching career.
 
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I agree with Doug somewhat. Move Calloway to CB .
McCullugh and Flowers continue to get beat in coverage. Two veterans that are used to being beat all game long. But they dominate in practice. Bench them
Move Charles back to safety.
Hadden has a shaky game but, he still made plays as well against Florida and otherwise has been very good all the other games

CB Hadden
CB Calloway
FS Charles
SS Slaughter
ST McDonald
How do you know Calloway would be better? He hasn’t played it in college and appears he would be a project at best.
 
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I agree with Doug somewhat. Move Calloway to CB .
McCullugh and Flowers continue to get beat in coverage. Two veterans that are used to being beat all game long. But they dominate in practice. Bench them
Move Charles back to safety.
Hadden has a shaky game but, he still made plays as well against Florida and otherwise has been very good all the other games

CB Hadden
CB Calloway
FS Charles
SS Slaughter
ST McDonald
Hadden cannot tackle, watch UF’s 1st TD.
 
For the 4-3 guys out there, that defense is effectively dead. Unless there is a te in the game, you are at a disadvantage in the passing game. You are insta subbing into nickel packages when the offense has 4 wr on the field.
I know everyone hates watching the offenses dink and dunk and run for yardage, but that is intentional by the defense.
There is a prevalent theory, actually factual, that yards do not win games. Time of possession does not either. Points do. And, the more plays an offense is on the field during a series, the less likely they are to score touchdowns. If you give up no plays of 20+ yards on a series, you won’t lose the series. With our offense scoring quickly, if we don’t give up big play touchdowns early in the game, we start stressing offenses and dictating what they do. This was exactly what we saw this game except for the last five mins of the game. Once we get ahead and it is late, they have to throw it right into the deep coverage which we are sitting on.
It is opposite of the complimentary football of the 80s and 90s, but our Offensive pressure now dictates the defensive style we run. Think Golden State warriors. They made so many threes that other teams had to shoot them too in higher numbers, which the warriors were waiting for, and thus fell further behind.
That is an interesting theory. I will have to think on that a while but you may be on to something 🤔
 
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TRUST ME, its Martinez, just look how bad Mosely was at Tennessee and went to Frisco (NFL) and got coached up. Martinez teaches the players to just follow the receivers and just don't let them get behind you and dont turn your head around but if the WR catches the ball then try and rip it out and if not then make the tackle. It was like that under Butch JOnes also (secondary was horrible then) and these are different players.
 
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It was the scheme more than anything. We stubbornly stuck with soft zone coverage even after Florida was having success. We went after their running game and shut it down. Gave up a ton through the air.

So simple. So elegant. And so correct.

Tennessee played zone probably 90% of the time. Why? They dared Richardson to beat them. They wanted him to make correct reads, correct throws, make him go through his progressions and stop their run game (and Richardson's scrambling). Remember Matt Corral killing us all game with the run? It's because we played man most of the game.

Tennessee played soft cover 2/cover 3 most of the game with some blitzes mixed in. Richardson made some stupid good throws (that first TD was an insane play). There were some coverage breakdowns on the back end. We also didn't get enough pressure (the enemy of zone defense is lack of pressure with your front 4). But hey, we only gave up 21 points through 3.5 quarters. It was a pretty good game plan till the end.

I will say. We got way too conservative in the fourth quarter once we got up 17. They dialed back the blitzes and the DE's were told to contain more than pin their ears back. I'm sure an adjustment will be made.
 
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TRUST ME, its Martinez, just look how bad Mosely was at Tennessee and went to Frisco (NFL) and got coached up. Martinez teaches the players to just follow the receivers and just don't let them get behind you and dont turn your head around but if the WR catches the ball then try and rip it out and if not then make the tackle. It was like that under Butch JOnes also (secondary was horrible then) and these are different players.
Not a fan of the hire either. Good recruiter but bad coach.
 
By the way, all this "woe is me" about the secondary and Tennessee is giving up 7.0 YPA, which is 50th in the country. Against two Power 5 teams. Is that elite? Absolutely not. But for example that's better than South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, and Vanderbilt. So let's not go full blown panic.

Also, Florida was playing for big plays and their OL did a good job protecting Richardson. They didn't run short stuff, they were running deep routes and hoping to give Richardson room and lane to use his athleticism to create. Richardson was 24/44. You'll take 10 YPA every single time, so overall Florida would be happy with that. But if you give up a 54.5% completion usually that's a good day on defense.
 
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There are two things I could argue for that could schematically help out:

1) Blitz more on third down. Banks has been bad getting off the field on third down. He coaches like how I play NCAA 14: Send four and play cover 2/cover 3 and pray your 4 get to the QB. That’s not working enough. I think sending 5 might be help.

2) Subbing McDonald/McCullough out on passing situations. They’re good run supporters but they lack the athleticism you like to cover, especially with how much zone we run. Maybe going with something like Burrell/Charles/Hadden at CB with Flowers and Turnage at Safety could help. Or instead of going with 2 LB’s/5 DB’s, more 1 LB/6 DB’s looks. Move McCollough to the box and add a 3rd safety or 4th CB. Sometimes a sub package can cover deficiencies.
 
Never liked Martinez. He is the weak link on this staff and his players are the weak links on this team. Wish he was gone tomorrow. I’m sure there are a lot of good secondary coaches out there that would love to be at Tennessee for a few hundred thousand a year………..
 
Byron Young.
I probably missed it but the game came down to Byron's tackle of AR on the last play of the game. This caused him to throw a "wounded duck" toward the end zone between the 2 open UF receivers, where the UT guys were camped out. Byron doesn't make that hit, UF probably gets the TD and UF wins 39-38. Talk about a game of inches...
 
Carl Pickens is the only guy I’ve ever seen as a Vol who could be prolific both ways. Switching mid-season has rarely produced SEC-level results.
Someone on UT's staff is looking ahead. They've taken a highly ranked receiver from the '22 class and have been practicing him at safety since he's been here. Cameron Miller is his name. I think Turrentine will be a good DB. People seemingly forget the bad shape we were in following Pruitt's blunder and all the players lost to transfer. Also we didn't show much during the UF game. UT's defense is better than what it showed against the gators, imho.
 
Yes, Matthews became DC before the Bama game in 1988. Tenn was 0-5 and lost to Bama 28-20. Then Tenn closed out the year winning 5 straight, vs weaker opponents and went 11-1 in ‘89 losing to Alabama. Defense was the problem as offense was LOADED. Majors demoted Matthews who quit instead & went to Vanderbilt. Majors hired Larry Lacewell as DC
Thank you for clarifying, I forgot about the demotion.
 
I just don’t know if I can believe this. There is no way that Heupel doesn’t want a dominant defense. Why would prefer an average bend but don’t break scenario that keeps the ball out of the offenses hands? That’d be like owning your own store and being happy you sell just enough to keep the doors open. I imagine he wants a defense that will shut teams down, get off the field on 3rd (and 4th downs) and get the ball back to the offense so we can score even more. Florida had the perfect recipe to almost pull off the upset which is possess the ball as long as possible and limit our offenses possessions. It almost worked. Think about it, if we stop just 2 of those 4th down conversions, that game is probably 52-14 or worse. So I don’t buy that Heupel just wants a defense that can get a few stops here and there. He wants both sides of the ball to be the best they can be.

Also, the "don't break" part is the most important aspect. We broke a lot Saturday.
 
Someone on UT's staff is looking ahead. They've taken a highly ranked receiver from the '22 class and have been practicing him at safety since he's been here. Cameron Miller is his name. I think Turrentine will be a good DB. People seemingly forget the bad shape we were in following Pruitt's blunder and all the players lost to transfer. Also we didn't show much during the UF game. UT's defense is better than what it showed against the gators, imho.

I hope Miller ends up being good. I thought he looked more like a Safety than a WR on his HS film. I'm about ready to give Turrentine a shot at S. Flowers and McCollough are what they are.
 
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Coach Larry Slade was our last great secondary coach

Slade was awful. He had a lot more talent to work with, but they constantly underachieved. Kevin Ramsey was the last good DB coach UT had. He was the DB coach from 95-98, and did well enough in that spot to land the DC job at Georgia.
 
I agree that Martinez isn’t the greatest secondary coach around. As far as this game goes, it looked to me like they played a soft zone to try to contain Richardson and didn’t do a good job with it. Lost contain on him way too many times and the pass rush wasn’t consistent. But this is what I do not understand. How people can say it’s not a talent and depth issue just baffles me. We’ve got inexperienced DB’s playing significant minutes. If Burrell is starting and if there is any suggestion of switching WR’s to defense, that tells you all you need to know about the talent level. Burrell can’t cover me and I’m not sure Haddon can tackle me. Our LB starters are OK but there is no depth. And their cover skills are suspect. Martinez may not last but I don’t care who the coach is. The issue is not going away until we get more talent on defense. Just the way it is.
 
TRUST ME, its Martinez, just look how bad Mosely was at Tennessee and went to Frisco (NFL) and got coached up. Martinez teaches the players to just follow the receivers and just don't let them get behind you and dont turn your head around but if the WR catches the ball then try and rip it out and if not then make the tackle. It was like that under Butch JOnes also (secondary was horrible then) and these are different players.
I can't stand the fact that our defenders can"t never get turned around and locate the ball in flight. A lot of PI calls go against us for that very reason. Secondly we never seem to line-up inside (leverage), against a receiver and pop the receiver at the line thereby disrupting any inside slant and timing. This alone, (if we had the athletes), forces receivers to try out routes which are harder throws for QB's. Do you really have to be elite to learn these basic techniques ? Better coaching and more athletic players should be the remedy. LBers too, then we can start talking championships.
 
What’s concerning is the amount of Florida receivers running so wide open…no DB within several yards. AR floated several passes that hung up in the air and nobody around to contest the throw. Tackling was atrocious to boot..
Will be interesting to watch for LSU game. I think part of guys being wide open was scheme to keep AR contained running the ball and keep everything in front of us…that part generally worked but we are not a good zone team. Hoping for greater mix of man and blitzing for lsu. We aren’t good enough to not be aggressive. I think their logic was we can score almost at will, and make gators play mistake free ball with long drives…and they obliged us.
 
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