DiderotsGhost
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- Nov 28, 2011
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OVERVIEW
Win #7. This was a solid win against a dangerous team. A win is a win, but overall, we played a lot better versus Mizzou than we did versus South Carolina. This is the first time we've hit 7 wins at this point in the season since 2007.
Conservative Game Plan. Thought our game plan this week was fairly conservative, but I also think that was exactly the way to go against Mizzou's struggling offense. Our ratio of runs to passes was about 2:1 and we certainly erred on the side of caution.
We Won the Turnover Battle. Before the game, I thought the turnover battle would be one of the keys for us. Mizzou has one of the best defenses in the nation and a lackluster offense. The last thing we wanted to do was hand them free points on turnovers. We had 0 turnovers, whereas Mizzou had 2, so that's a big win for us.
OFFENSE
Our Run Game was Spectacular. This was our best performance of the season in the run game. Our O-line played great and Hurd tore apart an extremely good Missouri run defense. Its one thing to put up 249 rush yards on Kentuckys porous run defense; its quite another to put up 248 on one of the best run defenses in the nation. Glad weve got Hurd for another year, because hes proving to be one of the best RBs in the nation.
The O-line is Looking Very Good. For all those saying our O-line sucks, youre either blind or youre still stuck back in 2014. Our O-line was the worst in the SEC last year. Starting out this season, we had middle-of-the-pack run blocking and below-average pass protection. Here were are in November, with several major injuries on the OL, and playing two true Freshmen, and our O-line continues to improve every week. This week, I thought our run blocking deserved an A- and pass protection was about a B+. Were still a few steps away from being elite, but Id consider our O-line to be in the top half of the SEC now. It has a chance to be special in 2016 and / or 2017.
Passing Game Continues to Struggle. It didnt matter much given that we were able to run right over Mizzou, but the passing game continues to have significant issues. Dobbs was 16-24 for 89 yards, which is sort of an odd stat. He looked sharp on short throws, but his accuracy on deep and intermediate passes continues to be a problem, which is why his completion % looked OK, but his actual yards throwing the ball not so much. Not sure what the solution is, but Dobbs can be an elite QB if hed just get his accuracy issues sorted out. Right now, I'd probably rate Dobbs as maybe the 4th best QB in the SEC, with Dak Prescott, Brandon Allen, and Chad Kelly all above him. If he could improve his passing however, he has the potential to be the best in the SEC next season.
Clock Management. Everyone who has read me on here knows Im positive about Butch & Co. If theres one issue this season that Im still a bit frustrated with, however, its clock management. Up 19-0 at the end of the 3rd Quarter / start of the 4th, we started playing more conservative. That made total sense against an offense that couldnt put up points and against a defense struggling to stop our run. But why did we run hurry up with the clock at 40 seconds in the 3rd? Why snap the ball on a punt at 16 seconds at the beginning of the 4th? It sometimes feels like we cant transition to the slow game. Playing conservative in that situation makes sense, but our coaches need to get the clock management element of playing conservative down. No reason to snap the ball on a punt with 16 seconds left.
Struggled in the Red Zone. It's a fair criticism that we struggled a lot in the red zone against Mizzou. We came in with a conservative game plan against a team struggling on offense, so getting FGs was still important. Nevertheless, would've liked to have seen us get more TDs and settled for fewer FGs.
DEFENSE
Our Defense is Playing Elite. Speaking of misguided criticism here on VN, our defense is elite at this point. Too many people are saying our defense is weak based on yardage stats, which pretty much ignores everything that actually matters. In defensive efficiency, we were ranked #22 before this game and that ranking should improve. When you consider our strength of schedule, thats very impressive. We are close to being a top 10 defense.
JRM. Continues to be an absolute beast. Hes the MVP of our defense and I think hes significantly helped Darrin Kirklands development. If JRM enters the NFL Draft, I wish him the best, but I certainly would love to have him back one more season for purely selfish reasons.
Kahlil McKenzie's Breakout Party. KM struggled some early on and has been playing better over the past few weeks. This game really seemed like his "breakout party" to me. He dominated on the D-line, getting a big sack, and helping control Mizzou's run game.
We Dominated on the Line. Speaking of Mizzou's run game, they only rushed for 88 yards on 30 attempts. Pretty impressive performance by our D-line overall. In fact, you could say we dominated on both lines against a major opponent for the first time in a long while.
SPECIAL TEAMS, RATINGS, and VANDY
Special Teams Strength Paying Dividends. Mizzou preferred to punt towards the sidelines, rather than allow Cam Sutton to touch the ball, which often gave us 10 20 extra yards in starting position. So even if we didnt have a big punt return, our previous big punt returns gave us better field position.
Give Medley credit. He was 4 for 5 on FGs in a game where field goals ended up being key.
We're Playing Better on the Road. Continuing a theme this season, we seem to play better on the road. If you think about our best "outperformance" games on offense: Bowling Green (in Nashville), @ Florida, vs Georgia, @ Kentucky, and @ Mizzou. Only one of those games was played at Neyland. Our worst performances on offense were all at Neyland: Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina, and North Texas. I do think the field at Neyland is hampering our offense, which relies on a lot of misdirection runs and superior speed and quickness.
Conference Standing. We're in a big 5-way tie for 5th place overall in the SEC right now (based on SEC record). LSU, Arkansas, Miss State, and Texas A&M are all 4-3 as well. Also worth noting that Georgia is in 4th at 5-3, and we beat them head to head.
Sagarin Rating = 18th. Our Sagarin ranking has held steady for 4 consecutive weeks now. We're still 18th after this win. For perspective, undefeated Iowa is 17th, Michigan State is 15th, Oregon is 19th, and LSU is 22nd. Let's be honest, VolNation, if we were in the Big Ten West, we might be in contention for the playoff this season. We're still not quite where we want to be, but this is a very good team that continues to improve, and easily the best Vols team since 2007.
Two Of Our Opponents Playoff Bound? There's a decent chance that two of our opponents will make the college football playoff. If Alabama beats Auburn and wins the SEC Championship game, they are almost certainly in. Oklahoma also had yet another big win this week (vs TCU), even though they lost their starting QB with concussion symptoms. Next week, Oklahoma has the Bedlam rivalry with Okie State; if they win that, there's a good chance they're in. While our four losses are disappointing in one sense, it speaks volumes that two of those losses may come to top 4 teams.
Vanderbilt. Call me crazy, but after the Bama game, I was more worried about Vanderbilt than any other team. On paper, Vandy is far from the best team on the back end of our schedule. However, they have an incredibly good defense (ranked #5 in defensive efficiency) and they just have a knack for playing us close. Hopefully we'll have the field in better shape next week, because our "home field disadvantage" isn't helping. Regardless, I dont care if we win by 1 or 50, so long as we beat Vandy.
That's all I got for this week.
GO BIG ORANGE!
Win #7. This was a solid win against a dangerous team. A win is a win, but overall, we played a lot better versus Mizzou than we did versus South Carolina. This is the first time we've hit 7 wins at this point in the season since 2007.
Conservative Game Plan. Thought our game plan this week was fairly conservative, but I also think that was exactly the way to go against Mizzou's struggling offense. Our ratio of runs to passes was about 2:1 and we certainly erred on the side of caution.
We Won the Turnover Battle. Before the game, I thought the turnover battle would be one of the keys for us. Mizzou has one of the best defenses in the nation and a lackluster offense. The last thing we wanted to do was hand them free points on turnovers. We had 0 turnovers, whereas Mizzou had 2, so that's a big win for us.
OFFENSE
Our Run Game was Spectacular. This was our best performance of the season in the run game. Our O-line played great and Hurd tore apart an extremely good Missouri run defense. Its one thing to put up 249 rush yards on Kentuckys porous run defense; its quite another to put up 248 on one of the best run defenses in the nation. Glad weve got Hurd for another year, because hes proving to be one of the best RBs in the nation.
The O-line is Looking Very Good. For all those saying our O-line sucks, youre either blind or youre still stuck back in 2014. Our O-line was the worst in the SEC last year. Starting out this season, we had middle-of-the-pack run blocking and below-average pass protection. Here were are in November, with several major injuries on the OL, and playing two true Freshmen, and our O-line continues to improve every week. This week, I thought our run blocking deserved an A- and pass protection was about a B+. Were still a few steps away from being elite, but Id consider our O-line to be in the top half of the SEC now. It has a chance to be special in 2016 and / or 2017.
Passing Game Continues to Struggle. It didnt matter much given that we were able to run right over Mizzou, but the passing game continues to have significant issues. Dobbs was 16-24 for 89 yards, which is sort of an odd stat. He looked sharp on short throws, but his accuracy on deep and intermediate passes continues to be a problem, which is why his completion % looked OK, but his actual yards throwing the ball not so much. Not sure what the solution is, but Dobbs can be an elite QB if hed just get his accuracy issues sorted out. Right now, I'd probably rate Dobbs as maybe the 4th best QB in the SEC, with Dak Prescott, Brandon Allen, and Chad Kelly all above him. If he could improve his passing however, he has the potential to be the best in the SEC next season.
Clock Management. Everyone who has read me on here knows Im positive about Butch & Co. If theres one issue this season that Im still a bit frustrated with, however, its clock management. Up 19-0 at the end of the 3rd Quarter / start of the 4th, we started playing more conservative. That made total sense against an offense that couldnt put up points and against a defense struggling to stop our run. But why did we run hurry up with the clock at 40 seconds in the 3rd? Why snap the ball on a punt at 16 seconds at the beginning of the 4th? It sometimes feels like we cant transition to the slow game. Playing conservative in that situation makes sense, but our coaches need to get the clock management element of playing conservative down. No reason to snap the ball on a punt with 16 seconds left.
Struggled in the Red Zone. It's a fair criticism that we struggled a lot in the red zone against Mizzou. We came in with a conservative game plan against a team struggling on offense, so getting FGs was still important. Nevertheless, would've liked to have seen us get more TDs and settled for fewer FGs.
DEFENSE
Our Defense is Playing Elite. Speaking of misguided criticism here on VN, our defense is elite at this point. Too many people are saying our defense is weak based on yardage stats, which pretty much ignores everything that actually matters. In defensive efficiency, we were ranked #22 before this game and that ranking should improve. When you consider our strength of schedule, thats very impressive. We are close to being a top 10 defense.
JRM. Continues to be an absolute beast. Hes the MVP of our defense and I think hes significantly helped Darrin Kirklands development. If JRM enters the NFL Draft, I wish him the best, but I certainly would love to have him back one more season for purely selfish reasons.
Kahlil McKenzie's Breakout Party. KM struggled some early on and has been playing better over the past few weeks. This game really seemed like his "breakout party" to me. He dominated on the D-line, getting a big sack, and helping control Mizzou's run game.
We Dominated on the Line. Speaking of Mizzou's run game, they only rushed for 88 yards on 30 attempts. Pretty impressive performance by our D-line overall. In fact, you could say we dominated on both lines against a major opponent for the first time in a long while.
SPECIAL TEAMS, RATINGS, and VANDY
Special Teams Strength Paying Dividends. Mizzou preferred to punt towards the sidelines, rather than allow Cam Sutton to touch the ball, which often gave us 10 20 extra yards in starting position. So even if we didnt have a big punt return, our previous big punt returns gave us better field position.
Give Medley credit. He was 4 for 5 on FGs in a game where field goals ended up being key.
We're Playing Better on the Road. Continuing a theme this season, we seem to play better on the road. If you think about our best "outperformance" games on offense: Bowling Green (in Nashville), @ Florida, vs Georgia, @ Kentucky, and @ Mizzou. Only one of those games was played at Neyland. Our worst performances on offense were all at Neyland: Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina, and North Texas. I do think the field at Neyland is hampering our offense, which relies on a lot of misdirection runs and superior speed and quickness.
Conference Standing. We're in a big 5-way tie for 5th place overall in the SEC right now (based on SEC record). LSU, Arkansas, Miss State, and Texas A&M are all 4-3 as well. Also worth noting that Georgia is in 4th at 5-3, and we beat them head to head.
Sagarin Rating = 18th. Our Sagarin ranking has held steady for 4 consecutive weeks now. We're still 18th after this win. For perspective, undefeated Iowa is 17th, Michigan State is 15th, Oregon is 19th, and LSU is 22nd. Let's be honest, VolNation, if we were in the Big Ten West, we might be in contention for the playoff this season. We're still not quite where we want to be, but this is a very good team that continues to improve, and easily the best Vols team since 2007.
Two Of Our Opponents Playoff Bound? There's a decent chance that two of our opponents will make the college football playoff. If Alabama beats Auburn and wins the SEC Championship game, they are almost certainly in. Oklahoma also had yet another big win this week (vs TCU), even though they lost their starting QB with concussion symptoms. Next week, Oklahoma has the Bedlam rivalry with Okie State; if they win that, there's a good chance they're in. While our four losses are disappointing in one sense, it speaks volumes that two of those losses may come to top 4 teams.
Vanderbilt. Call me crazy, but after the Bama game, I was more worried about Vanderbilt than any other team. On paper, Vandy is far from the best team on the back end of our schedule. However, they have an incredibly good defense (ranked #5 in defensive efficiency) and they just have a knack for playing us close. Hopefully we'll have the field in better shape next week, because our "home field disadvantage" isn't helping. Regardless, I dont care if we win by 1 or 50, so long as we beat Vandy.
That's all I got for this week.
GO BIG ORANGE!
