We win ugly and it hurts us?

#80
#80
JMSqb11 said:
Right. But I somewhat understand why he thinks he can ease back at times and depend on us just getting out of the game with wins.

I really am shocked at him having that good of a record in one score games.
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I would not be riding the line on that one score thing with our defence this year. there's plenty of teams capable of biting us in the butt. we don't have the same defence as the last 3 years. Heupel needs to not let off the gas until we have at least a 3 score lead in the 4th
 
#81
#81
mudhen said:
Vols/ Razorbacks 2025. Tennessee 34, Arkansas 31. THAT was an ugly win. We barely pulled it off. Another 5 minutes of play and we could have easily lost. My complaint has nothing to do with the game, just other perceptions of it in the press. Which I and many others of us read. To ME, part of the experience is reading the columnists, both negative and positive. Sometimes they have insights that I may have missed. And "trope"? Getting a little existentialist, aren't we? It's all in good fun.
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Ole Miss' win over Wazzu was ugly. Our win over pig was just close.
I don't think it being close really hurt us. We'll have opportunities to raise our ranking starting Saturday.
 
#83
#83
LittleVol said:
About Banks:

I think he handicapped himself this offseason.
Aside from the soft defense when we get a lead- he’s called good games with the talent he has.

We’re not very upperclassman talented at DT. We’re damn sure not talented at safety.
Jakobe Thomas has 37 tackles and 4 INTs for #2 ranked Miami.
Christian Charles has 22 tackles for #17 ranked Virginia.

Why the hell aren’t those two guys still in Knoxville?? What was the thinking there?
Thomas and Turrentine should have been starters with Farooq and Charles rotating in.

This isn’t scheme this is Roster Management.

Same with DT We lost 4 guys and basically had to move Bailey to DT and get lucky Nate Robinson.?? What is the thinking there??

Our defense would be very much different with Thomas and Charles rotating in. I don’t get it. I don’t understand WHY they let that happen…
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wondered this same thing w the DTs
 
#84
#84
A very good chance Big 10 only gets 3. Penn State is out. Not sure Mich or USC can get there. Plus, I only see 1 ACC team going unless Miami throws the ACC CG. There are 2 extra spots even if ND wins out.
 
#85
#85
wmcovol said:
Tennessee has won a TON of football games punting the ball in that situation. In fact, that’s the only sensible call. The only thing wrong was Ross didn’t kill the ball inside the 20, which normally he’s great at and the defense went totally stupid.
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With last years defense, I agree. 22 yards worth of field position with a top10 defense can be the difference between no points and 3 points.

With this years defense, ranked last in the SEC in yardage allowed etc, it was a poor decision. We score on that possession and we have a blowout on our hands up by 24 points. CJH goes for 4th downs all the time around the positive 40yd line just outside FG range. He goes for it more often than not as long as its 5yds or less. We punted and net 22yds, then went into prevent defense with 8mins left in the game and watched Arkansas walk the ball down the field in big chunks for 14 unanswered points. I was there. It wasnt pretty. I am as optimistic as any rational person on this board. Love this staff and our team. That doesnt mean they dont make mistakes or that we can't talk about them. I hope CJH is here another decade because he will win a Title or 3. Doesnt mean he didn't have horrible clock management at the end vs UGA this year, or that he made a poor decision to take his foot off the gas with that 4th down and the entire last 8mins of the game. We still won, and thats great. We are 1 made 42yd FG by Gilbert...from his preferrred hash mark no less...away from being undefeated and ranked #1 or #2.

This was never gonna be a national championship year. The majority of VN posters, by a wide margin, picked us to go 9-3 preseason like I did. The SEC media picked us to finish 9th in the SEC. We have outperformed everyone's expectations...can still lose 2 more games and miss the playoffs and nobody has a rational reason to be upset because we still performed better than literally anyone nationally thought we could this year. The vegas over/under and national expectations were 7.5wins out of 12. Doesnt mean CJH and staff dont make mistakes from time to time. He would tell you that himself and has said so repeatedly post game this season. I appreciate his honesty and love the guy.
 
#86
#86
If we are talking/griping about moving only one spot up in the rankings….where were we supposed to go?? There’s 5 SEC teams ranked in top 10 ahead of us. Two undefeated. 3 one loss. And one of those beat us. There are 6 total in Top 10 still undefeated. We beat an unranked Ark by 3. UGA beat and I ranked AU by 10. LSU beat an unranked SoCar by 10. One can argue they should have both showed stronger. But end of day we blew a big lead so there wasn’t much eye candy in all three games. So we were not going to jump GA or LSU. OK was the only top 10 team to lose and drop out of top 10 because they got hammered by an unranked Texas. So there was only one spot for everyone to move up. Couldn’t really drop Oregon too much further cause IU was a Top 7 team.
 
#87
#87
marcusluvsvols said:
With last years defense, I agree. 22 yards worth of field position with a top10 defense can be the difference between no points and 3 points.

With this years defense, ranked last in the SEC in yardage allowed etc, it was a poor decision. We score on that possession and we have a blowout on our hands up by 24 points. CJH goes for 4th downs all the time around the positive 40yd line just outside FG range. He goes for it more often than not as long as its 5yds or less. We punted and net 22yds, then went into prevent defense with 8mins left in the game and watched Arkansas walk the ball down the field in big chunks for 14 unanswered points. I was there. It wasnt pretty. I am as optimistic as any rational person on this board. Love this staff and our team. That doesnt mean they dont make mistakes or that we can't talk about them. I hope CJH is here another decade because he will win a Title or 3. Doesnt mean he didn't have horrible clock management at the end vs UGA this year, or that he made a poor decision to take his foot off the gas with that 4th down and the entire last 8mins of the game. We still won, and thats great. We are 1 made 42yd FG by Gilbert...from his preferrred hash mark no less...away from being undefeated and ranked #1 or #2.

This was never gonna be a national championship year. The majority of VN posters, by a wide margin, picked us to go 9-3 preseason like I did. The SEC media picked us to finish 9th in the SEC. We have outperformed everyone's expectations...can still lose 2 more games and miss the playoffs and nobody has a rational reason to be upset because we still performed better than literally anyone nationally thought we could this year. The vegas over/under and national expectations were 7.5wins out of 12. Doesnt mean CJH and staff dont make mistakes from time to time. He would tell you that himself and has said so repeatedly post game this season. I appreciate his honesty and love the guy.
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Unfortunately Heupel doesn’t have the benefit of knowing Ross will kick the ball in the end zone like you do. As I said, Ross is great at killing the ball inside the 20. You assume they get the first down & score the TD but you don’t know that. The defense was horrible the last 7 minutes of the game but they’d been very strong the first 23 minutes of the 2nd half.
 
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#88
#88
wmcovol said:
Unfortunately Heupel doesn’t have the benefit of knowing Ross will kick the ball in the end zone like you do. As I said, Ross is great at killing the ball inside the 20. You assume they get the first down & score the TD but you don’t know that. The defense was horrible the last 7 minutes of the game but they’d been very strong the first 23 minutes of the 2nd half.
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All of this is true. No argument here. We got 4 stops in a row on defense in the 3rd quarter mostly. I am honestly amazed that we won that game when we only got 7points from the 3 fumbles we recovered. Against an Arkansas team that has scored on everybody except when they quit in the ND game. Glad we escaped with a victory. This Arkansas team would go 8-4 or better in the big10.
 
#89
#89
sjt18 said:
Yes. If two 11-1 or 10-2 teams are in the SEC CG with 3 or 4 other 10-2 teams then they're not all getting in. I actually don't think it would be right to punish a team that lost the CG to finish 10-3 behind other 10-2 teams.
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Based on how little the conference championship game losers actually dropped last year (and in prior years of the CFP committee), I doubt they would.

They’ve only been dropping the CG losers 1-2 ranking spots. Likely as a means of showing some grace for (or in recognition of) those teams all having to play an extra 13th game against a good opponent while the other teams didn’t.

Unless the 10-2 teams were all literally right behind the CG loser, that seems to say they’d still have the 10-3 team ranked ahead. (And if there somehow was a logjam of 3-4 10-2 teams literally in the 3-4 spots behind the CG loser, it’d then just be the 10-3 team moving dropping behind 1, maybe 2, of those teams…but most likely that would be it at worst.)
 
#90
#90
TrueOrange said:
Based on how little the conference championship game losers actually dropped last year (and in prior years of the CFP committee), I doubt they would.

They’ve only been dropping the CG losers 1-2 ranking spots. Likely as a means of showing some grace for (or in recognition of) those teams all having to play an extra 13th game against a good opponent while the other teams didn’t.

Unless the 10-2 teams were all literally right behind the CG loser, that seems to say they’d still have the 10-3 team ranked ahead. (And if there somehow was a logjam of 3-4 10-2 teams literally in the 3-4 spots behind the CG loser, it’d then just be the 10-3 team moving dropping behind 1, maybe 2, of those teams…but most likely that would be it at worst.)
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bottom line on this is that a whole lot of this mess will clean itself up if we JUST BEAT BAMA and let all these other conference games play out.

Ole Miss - still has to play 2 ranked teams on the road
TAMU - still has to play 3 ranked teams, two of them on the road
Bama - plays three ranked teams plus the iron bowl on the road
Georgia- plays three ranked teams
LSU - plays 4 ranked teams
Tennessee - plays three ranked teams and it's entirely possible that OK and Vandy are no longer ranked by the time we play them. and 2 of those three games are at Neyland
Missouri - no, just no
Oklahoma - also no

IMO, after this week, Tennessee has one of the easiest paths to the playoffs in the SEC. they literally just have to not screw it up and win the games they are favored to win.
 
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