Recruiting Football Talk VII

[Orange.]

@InVOLuntary @Smyrna ATL Vol If Banks does move on, what is the optimal timing?

Some key dates coming up:
Portal (entry) opens: Dec. 4.
Bowl practices begin: ?
Signing day: Dec 20.
Gator Bowl: Dec 29.
Portal (entry) last day: Jan. 3.

 

[knoxvol52]

I will be feeling good soon....daughter just brought me some egg nog and rum to add to it...Happy Holidays...

 

[Orange.]

AP: I’m gonna go yes and depends on Seaton

To me that reads like we will have a Top 10 class without Seaton...

and/or we're going to land him...

so that's interesting

To me, it reads like we won't without Seaton; and he thinks we get Seaton.

 

[Orange.]

I will be feeling good soon....daughter just brought me some egg nog and rum to add to it...Happy Holidays...

Cheers to you and your daughter!

 

[Orange_Crush]

Lol!!! What do you expect the mouth piece of UT football to say? We lost out on talent because we didn’t pony up or we didn’t recruit well enough? Of course they will say that.

Biggest recruiting pitch we have is our players. And players talk to other players. Heupel treats players like family and we have a good atmosphere for players. These kids realize it was all fluff once signed somewhere else.

Who do you want me to believe? You or Heupel? I mean, I don't really need to believe anyone one way or the other. I have highly suspected that it was a major issue in recruiting.

But let's just be honest here. It's reported that the coach says, "Yah. The threat of major pay-for play sanactions, and the negative recruiting that surrounded that--well, it had a huge effect on recruiting."

Or some anonymous poster on an internet forum that denies it with nothing more than a...?

 

[Volbucky]

Fun!

Portal recruiting is more fun than regular ol' crootin'.

Immediate impact! Hoe enticing!

Spread that orange propaganda Heup! Reel them in!

Who doesn’t love enticing hoes.

 

[Orange_Crush]

if you can’t use stats than what can you use?

When you start refusing stats, you have to keep refusing more data.

"We didn't even have an average defense."

"Well, actually, the stats indicate that we were above average."

"I know what I saw, besides those stats were against scrubs."

"This is awkward, but... Who were the other teams' stats against? Seen that way, maybe our defense was well above average?"

Strength of Schedule:

 

[volbeast33]

Conjecture and hearsay!

Feelings?

 

[LotteryPick]

While I agree the offense doesn’t help the defense at all. The point of the defense is to be aggressive and get the ball back to our high powered offense. Which means creating havoc and getting turnovers. Our defense is not that at all. It lets teams have 7-10 minutes drives on occasion and killed our offense having a chance to get a rhythm. We sit two high all the time to not be beat deep, but why not creep one up to try for a pick or be more exotic with blitzes? I think we should be ok with the occasional deep pass for a two minute scoring drive instead of an 8-10 minute drive that gets the offense cold and limits possessions.

The athleticism of the back 7 has been hurting them all year. I’d love to see different looks, but it’s hard to get to the QB when your guys aren’t explosive enough.

I think that’s changing with the younger guys getting more work next year.

 

[Jimmy Football]

When you start refusing stats, you have to keep refusing more data.

"We didn't even have an average defense."

"Well, actually, the stats indicate that we were above average."

"I know what I saw, besides those stats were against scrubs."

"This is awkward, but... Who were the other teams' stats against? Seen that way, maybe our defense was well above average?"

View attachment 597128

What am I looking at here?

 

[Orange_Crush]

The athleticism of the back 7 has been hurting them all year. I’d love to see different looks, but it’s hard to get to the QB when your guys aren’t explosive enough.

I think that’s changing with the younger guys getting more work next year.

Man, it also seemed like our DL were getting mugged all year. If there was chronic uncalled holding against this defense, and the back end had to rely on soft zones due to mismatches, that's a recipe for disaster.

 

[Orange_Crush]

What am I looking at here?

Sorry, that's UT's strength of schedule. We had the 8th hardest strength of schedule, while being top-50 in things like scoring defense, etc... And the stats were ignored because we supposedly created those stats against scrubs. The question is, if we're comparing our stats to everyone else, and we had the 8th hardest schedule...?

 

[Vfl2407]

AP hinting that we already have some (good) guys that have reached out about coming to Tennessee that have not entered the portal yet.

This is the BEST news I’ve heard all week. Please let it be true

 

[JohnnyD1024]

 

[Orange.]

He said this morning, that he's talked to some of the guys from the 22 class, that went elsewhere, and they have told him they wished they'd picked UT. Said the investigation played a significant role.

In other words, rival staffs lied to them. We pretty much knew to assume that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[PlanetVolunteer]

How about this

Pretty much everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and we still went 8-4. That's some serious growth. Can you imagine if everything that could go wrong went wrong in year one? That's some 5-7 stuff right there..

The hand wringers ignoring the ridiculous amount of injuries we have had puzzles me. Losing over half of your best players either for the year or parts of the year can by itself ruin everything, especially when you aren't UGA or Bama. Even they didn't have injury issues like that and he'll Bowers came back from tightrope faster than anyone in history of course

If we had the same amount of injuries last year we don't go 11-2. Not a chance.

The concerning thing was our inability to handle adversity. We couldn't do that all year long. Maybe against A&M and Kentucky, but there were four games where we just completely died. From the coaching to the players.

That is the number one thing that needs to be addressed

That and....getting some shiny new portal players!

 

[jakez4ut]

I think so too. We've really not beaten anyone with a pulse. Defensive statistics are not indicatitive of this defense.

Do you really believe next year's defense will be better? I know we have to wait to see what happens in the portal but unless we just have a crazy portal I don't see us improving much personel wise.

i think it's all relative.

it's hard to judge our defense thru the normal/traditional lens because CJH favors volume of possessions over time of total possession offensively, so inherently our defense is going to be out there more, with more opportunities to fail.....weird way of saying it, but it's true.

if CJH is getting, by the standards his offenses have set, 35-40+ a game, then the defense realistically only has to get 2-3 stops per game to put real pressure on the opposing offense.

so, what helps a CJH defense, in the SEC, is depth. you can't keep guys fresh if they're playing 80ish defensive snaps a game. so depth matters a lot. quality depth matters if we're going to win the SEC or anything beyond that. i think we can all agree we aren't there yet depth wise.

but, a lot like last year, we were able to do that more often than not, we scored alot, and simply by putting teams in chase mode, it helped the defense out. we didn't do that at all this year, offensively the worst year ever by a CJH team, and it exposed our defensive problems. and i think it contributed (along with some personnel limitations) to taking some of the aggressiveness out of Bank's play calling as well.

so to me, strictly speaking on defense, i think (outside of the aforementioned depth issue) there are 3 things that start to matter more than others when looking at our defense as good or bad:
1. overall scoring defense
2. red zone efficiency...opponents kicking a FG isn't a bad thing when our offense is doing what it's supposed to
3. 3rd and 4th down conversion %...which is why that's my biggest gripe about our defense...just make somebody punt.

so you ask me if i think our defense will be better next year? depends on what you mean by better...but i'd first look at the other side of the ball and if we get the offense going like what should be "normal" under CJH, i'll say "yes". if it's like this year, then a hard "no".

of course there's a lot of personnel details that need to be clarified, but that won't happen right now....i'm gonna feel pretty good about the DL, hopeful about some of the youth in the defensive backfield, and in wait and see on the LB's.

 

[KB5252]

Take that ya filthy commies!

You just made Ras angry

 

[jakez4ut]

VQ says Vols will be going "heavy" in the portal this year

hope we have the war chest loaded up

i think our short term success is completely dependent on how well we do in the portal this year....this is an important off season for that imo.

we just dont' have the depth yet, and if we have to throw a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds out there out of necessity, especially at key positions on the OL and secondary.....and even WR....oof. trial by fire.

really hope we hit the portal hard and get some quality guys to come in and contribute and not just be bodies.

 

[jakez4ut]

He said this morning, that he's talked to some of the guys from the 22 class, that went elsewhere, and they have told him they wished they'd picked UT. Said the investigation played a significant role.

i remember talking bout that during that cycle....there was a lot of "future transfer" type posts in several recruit threads......gonna be interesting to see how much of that plays out.

 

[InVOLuntary]

i think it's all relative.

it's hard to judge our defense thru the normal/traditional lens because CJH favors volume of possessions over time of total possession offensively, so inherently our defense is going to be out there more, with more opportunities to fail.....weird way of saying it, but it's true.

if CJH is getting, by the standards his offenses have set, 35-40+ a game, then the defense realistically only has to get 2-3 stops per game to put real pressure on the opposing offense.

so, what helps a CJH defense, in the SEC, is depth. you can't keep guys fresh if they're playing 80ish defensive snaps a game. so depth matters a lot. quality depth matters if we're going to win the SEC or anything beyond that. i think we can all agree we aren't there yet depth wise.

but, a lot like last year, we were able to do that more often than not, we scored alot, and simply by putting teams in chase mode, it helped the defense out. we didn't do that at all this year, offensively the worst year ever by a CJH team, and it exposed our defensive problems. and i think it contributed (along with some personnel limitations) to taking some of the aggressiveness out of Bank's play calling as well.

so to me, strictly speaking on defense, i think (outside of the aforementioned depth issue) there are 3 things that start to matter more than others when looking at our defense as good or bad:
1. overall scoring defense
2. red zone efficiency...opponents kicking a FG isn't a bad thing when our offense is doing what it's supposed to
3. 3rd and 4th down conversion %...which is why that's my biggest gripe about our defense...just make somebody punt.

so you ask me if i think our defense will be better next year? depends on what you mean by better...but i'd first look at the other side of the ball and if we get the offense going like what should be "normal" under CJH, i'll say "yes". if it's like this year, then a hard "no".

of course there's a lot of personnel details that need to be clarified, but that won't happen right now....i'm gonna feel pretty good about the DL, hopeful about some of the youth in the defensive backfield, and in wait and see on the LB's.

They could limit their time on the field by getting off on 3rd down. I'm not talking about 3rd and 2 I'm talking about 3rd and 10+. That failure alone is a major reason why I have zero faith in banks. He makes John Chavis blush when it comes to 3rd or 4th and long.

It's really a simple question. Do you think we could do better? I think we can do a lot better. Also, how long should it take? Year 4 doesn't look promising, so 5, 6, or 7 years?

 

[jakez4ut]

You mix and match. You don’t just play seniority who lack talent at some spots. Playing a walk on at DB against Georgia when you have 17 scholarship DBs is a cop out and plenty of young talent could have played. If they aren’t ready and can’t beat a walk on, then we aren’t recruiting the right players or our coaches are failing the players. We didn’t get blown out by Mizzou because of being decimated. Our defense couldn’t get off the field from the soft zone and Milton has killed on the confidence in our offensive players. UGA we were very injured.

More and more young players are playing in todays world of the portal. You either play the talent or they leave. Plenty of teams have freshmen that play a lot. You mix them with older players. It’s insane to me that Telander isn’t starting. Why isn’t Matthews, Conyer, and Gibson getting more run if you see your DBs constantly being beat? Why not try?

Pretty easy to see that Garner knows what he is doing and he recruited and plays a lot of good players. I blame a lot of the defensive issues on the coaches not getting better talent in three years for LB and DB. DL (especially the edges) will be top three in the SEC. It’s the only reason our defense isn’t ranked near dead last. Can’t keep blaming players when it’s year three and you have the portal IMO

AP has talked a lot about the rotations and who gets PT and who doesn't, and how much etc...i do think there's something to that, and it's a bit dumbfounding that in this day and age that we're not seeing more deliberate effort put in to getting more guys in.....hard to get better when you don't know what you need to get better at.....especially in game situations against live competition. not sure it's a fireable offense, but i think it should be on the list of "things that need improvement".

 

[Rishvol]

How about this

Pretty much everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and we still went 8-4. That's some serious growth. Can you imagine if everything that could go wrong went wrong in year one? That's some 5-7 stuff right there..

The hand wringers ignoring the ridiculous amount of injuries we have had puzzles me. Losing over half of your best players either for the year or parts of the year can by itself ruin everything, especially when you aren't UGA or Bama. Even they didn't have injury issues like that and he'll Bowers came back from tightrope faster than anyone in history of course

If we had the same amount of injuries last year we don't go 11-2. Not a chance.

The concerning thing was our inability to handle adversity. We couldn't do that all year long. Maybe against A&M and Kentucky, but there were four games where we just completely died. From the coaching to the players.

That is the number one thing that needs to be addressed

That and....getting some shiny new portal players!

Not to mention the obvious anti Tennessee agenda of the refs this year

 

[TN-POSSUM]

AP: I’m gonna go yes and depends on Seaton

To me that reads like we will have a Top 10 class without Seaton...

and/or we're going to land him...

so that's interesting

VQ says Vols will be going "heavy" in the portal this year

hope we have the war chest loaded up

AP hinting that we already have some (good) guys that have reached out about coming to Tennessee that have not entered the portal yet.

 

[Orange.]

Hubbs saying that Banks is back next year unless he gets a better job offer/opportunity elsewhere

I don't know that Hubbs would be willing to say otherwise, would he? It would nearly amount to an announcement and be a big media story in a hot little minute. Has he ever said something like that before in advance of the coaches? Idk; I'm asking.