DiderotsGhost
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2011
- Messages
- 4,632
- Likes
- 23,555
Being a Tennessee Vols fan reminds me of Buddhism's "Four Noble Truths":
After the Oklahoma game, I didn't think it was possible to have a more devastating loss than that one. I was wrong. Two games later, and we find an even more awful way to lose. I'm not converting to Buddhism, but being a Tennessee Vols fan could very accurately described as "suffering."
Jancek and the First 50 Minutes. When we went up 27-14, I thought to myself, Jancek looks like a genius right now. As good as our defense has looked in the past two seasons, I thought we looked absolutely dominant in the first 50 minutes of this game. Jancek looked like a top 5 DC in the nation.
4th Quarter Jekyll/Hyde Defense. Jancek continued looking like a genius in the last 10 minutes of the game ... except on 4th down. On 1st through 3rd down, our defense looked like the best in the nation. On 4th down and long, it looked like one of the worst. Wtf happened? It seems like Jancek backed off on bringing the pressure on 4th down, which may have been a huge mistake. It's so difficult to know how to evaluate the defense after this game. On a score of 1 - 100, we were around a "95" for 95% of this game, but the other 5% of the time, we were maybe a "20."
Don't Blame Debord. I gave Debord a lot of heat after the Oklahoma game. The criticism he's getting after this game is unwarranted. Debord outcoached his counterpart on the Florida sideline. Sure, the game plan was very conservative, but we called a few trick plays, and we were running right over Florida's defense for most of the game. My only real complaint was that Debord got too conservative on the next to last drive of the game, calling all run plays, and not throwing in a pass. If I thought Debord deserved a 3/10 for the OK game, I'd give him an 8/10 for this one.
Do Blame Pass Protection. The reason we're running the ball constantly is poor pass protection. You can't blame Debord for that ... at least not yet. I thought Debord did a much better job game-planning around the weak pass protection this game. We just lost anyway.
Dobbs Passing is Still Mediocre. While the pass protection has its share of problems, even when Dobbs had good protection, he was frequently off-target. He's really looking like a run-first, last, and always QB right now. After the Oklahoma game, I thought the problem was 80% the pass protection and 20% Dobbs. Now, I'm thinking it's more like 50-50. As much as I hate the idea, I'm tempted to say that we need to be playing Dormady a little bit more, so that we can at least mix things up; sort of an Erik Ainge / Brent Schaeffer type deal.
JRM! MVP of the defense. Can't say enough good things about him. He played great.
Jalen Hurd. Florida knew we were going to run it almost every single play and still had trouble stopping Hurd.
Wide Receiver U. Unless we can figure out how to get the ball to some wide receivers soon, I think we're going to struggle to recruit WRs in the future. Weak pass protection or not, it's getting a bit ridiculous.
The WR Pass. My favorite play of the game.
Jauan Jennings Can Do It All. We knew he was capable of throwing the ball, but that tackle on special teams was one of the most impressive things I've seen a "Wide Receiver" do. I can see why he was originally considered a Safety prospect.
Wtf was up with the Timeouts? I was literally screaming at the TV on both of Butch's 4th down timeouts. Why give Florida the time to draw up a 4th down play when they are going to punt? Why give them time to reconsider their field goal try? I don't care if the defense wasn't perfect ... YOU NEVER GIVE THE OPPOSING TEAM A FREEBIE! These timeouts, to me, indicate a lack of strategic thinking on Butch's part. He's thinking "my defense is flawed" rather than "calling a timeout gives the opposing coach a huge advantage." You just have to live with small errors sometimes and Butch really was trying to be a perfectionist here to our detriment.
Wtf was up the extra point? It's easy to say "hindsight is 20/20", except this was just really really obvious to anyone not named Butch Jones. Why would you go for an extra point to go up 13 points with 10 minutes left in a slow grind-em-out game? This would've been a more defensible call against Oklahoma, or say a team like Texas Tech, where you know there could still be several more scores left in the game. It made no sense against a more methodical Florida team. You can't always go "by the chart." Just as playing conservatively against a high-powered offense makes no sense, calling an extra point against this Florida team made no sense. There's virtually no situation where they are going to have 3 more possessions, and get a TD, FG, and FG.
The Refs Deserve an "F" at the End of the Game. I'm not blaming the refs for our failures, but HOLY CRAP! What was up with the clock at the end of the game? They ran off 10 seconds before stopping the clock to reset the chains? Then they kept running the clock on out of bounds plays. I've been watching college football for 25+ years and I have never seen such blatant clock mismanagement by the refs.
Don't Blame Medley. Medley actually had a good game. I don't understand why some people are blaming him. There are very few kickers in the NCAA that can hit a 55 yard FG. Medley came within a few feet of pulling it off. If anything, Medley would've been a hero if he hit that FG and bailed out the rest of the team.
Stop Claiming Florida is Awful. So sick of people claiming that Florida is 'the worst team ever.' On a talent-to-talent basis, we were about even with Florida coming into this game. Florida is probably the 3rd or 4th most talented team we'll face this year. It doesn't excuse the loss, but let's avoid exaggerations here.
How Did We Lose? Writing about this game, I'm even more baffled as to how we lost. We dominated the majority of this game. Our defense played spectacular 95% of the time. Our offense became predictable and Florida still couldn't stop us. I'm not even sure who to blame. We had numerous chances to stop them on 4th downs and failed. Sure, our defense had a lot of big lapses but I've got to put this loss mostly on Butch Jones. When you ask "who made the most inexcusable errors?", it was Butch with the horrendous timeouts, the extra point call, and poor game management.
Don't Pass Too Many Judgements Yet. I've been one of the most outspoken advocates for patience here on VN. It's not that I think Butch is a "guaranteed success." Rather, I think the OregonVol "anyone who doesn't win a national championship in Year 2 should be fired" mentality is extraordinarily destructive and counter-productive. No coach could've turned this mess around in the first two years. Both Jim Harbaugh and Mark D'Antonio had significant struggles in their first 3 seasons at Stanford and Michigan State, respectively. Butch has built this program back up, even if he's proving to be a questionable game day coach. These have been the two most frustrating losses in the Butch Jones era, but we still have 2/3 of a season left to go. If Butch goes on to beat Alabama or Georgia, I'm willing to wager that some of the sins will be forgiven. In my book, he deserves a 4th season so long as we don't totally collapse this year. But if we keep suffering humiliating losses like this, we will certainly have to go back to the drawing board.
Arkansas vs Tennessee. Two desperate teams next week. I haven't used the term "must win" yet, but I think Arkansas is a must win game after the debacles against Oklahoma and Florida. Particularly when you consider that Arkansas is basically a wounded animal right now.
It took me about 5 days to get over the Oklahoma loss. I feel like this one could last even longer than that. I'm hoping Butch can fix his game-day issues soon or this is shaping up to be a long season.
After the Oklahoma game, I didn't think it was possible to have a more devastating loss than that one. I was wrong. Two games later, and we find an even more awful way to lose. I'm not converting to Buddhism, but being a Tennessee Vols fan could very accurately described as "suffering."
Jancek and the First 50 Minutes. When we went up 27-14, I thought to myself, Jancek looks like a genius right now. As good as our defense has looked in the past two seasons, I thought we looked absolutely dominant in the first 50 minutes of this game. Jancek looked like a top 5 DC in the nation.
4th Quarter Jekyll/Hyde Defense. Jancek continued looking like a genius in the last 10 minutes of the game ... except on 4th down. On 1st through 3rd down, our defense looked like the best in the nation. On 4th down and long, it looked like one of the worst. Wtf happened? It seems like Jancek backed off on bringing the pressure on 4th down, which may have been a huge mistake. It's so difficult to know how to evaluate the defense after this game. On a score of 1 - 100, we were around a "95" for 95% of this game, but the other 5% of the time, we were maybe a "20."
Don't Blame Debord. I gave Debord a lot of heat after the Oklahoma game. The criticism he's getting after this game is unwarranted. Debord outcoached his counterpart on the Florida sideline. Sure, the game plan was very conservative, but we called a few trick plays, and we were running right over Florida's defense for most of the game. My only real complaint was that Debord got too conservative on the next to last drive of the game, calling all run plays, and not throwing in a pass. If I thought Debord deserved a 3/10 for the OK game, I'd give him an 8/10 for this one.
Do Blame Pass Protection. The reason we're running the ball constantly is poor pass protection. You can't blame Debord for that ... at least not yet. I thought Debord did a much better job game-planning around the weak pass protection this game. We just lost anyway.
Dobbs Passing is Still Mediocre. While the pass protection has its share of problems, even when Dobbs had good protection, he was frequently off-target. He's really looking like a run-first, last, and always QB right now. After the Oklahoma game, I thought the problem was 80% the pass protection and 20% Dobbs. Now, I'm thinking it's more like 50-50. As much as I hate the idea, I'm tempted to say that we need to be playing Dormady a little bit more, so that we can at least mix things up; sort of an Erik Ainge / Brent Schaeffer type deal.
JRM! MVP of the defense. Can't say enough good things about him. He played great.
Jalen Hurd. Florida knew we were going to run it almost every single play and still had trouble stopping Hurd.
Wide Receiver U. Unless we can figure out how to get the ball to some wide receivers soon, I think we're going to struggle to recruit WRs in the future. Weak pass protection or not, it's getting a bit ridiculous.
The WR Pass. My favorite play of the game.
Jauan Jennings Can Do It All. We knew he was capable of throwing the ball, but that tackle on special teams was one of the most impressive things I've seen a "Wide Receiver" do. I can see why he was originally considered a Safety prospect.
Wtf was up with the Timeouts? I was literally screaming at the TV on both of Butch's 4th down timeouts. Why give Florida the time to draw up a 4th down play when they are going to punt? Why give them time to reconsider their field goal try? I don't care if the defense wasn't perfect ... YOU NEVER GIVE THE OPPOSING TEAM A FREEBIE! These timeouts, to me, indicate a lack of strategic thinking on Butch's part. He's thinking "my defense is flawed" rather than "calling a timeout gives the opposing coach a huge advantage." You just have to live with small errors sometimes and Butch really was trying to be a perfectionist here to our detriment.
Wtf was up the extra point? It's easy to say "hindsight is 20/20", except this was just really really obvious to anyone not named Butch Jones. Why would you go for an extra point to go up 13 points with 10 minutes left in a slow grind-em-out game? This would've been a more defensible call against Oklahoma, or say a team like Texas Tech, where you know there could still be several more scores left in the game. It made no sense against a more methodical Florida team. You can't always go "by the chart." Just as playing conservatively against a high-powered offense makes no sense, calling an extra point against this Florida team made no sense. There's virtually no situation where they are going to have 3 more possessions, and get a TD, FG, and FG.
The Refs Deserve an "F" at the End of the Game. I'm not blaming the refs for our failures, but HOLY CRAP! What was up with the clock at the end of the game? They ran off 10 seconds before stopping the clock to reset the chains? Then they kept running the clock on out of bounds plays. I've been watching college football for 25+ years and I have never seen such blatant clock mismanagement by the refs.
Don't Blame Medley. Medley actually had a good game. I don't understand why some people are blaming him. There are very few kickers in the NCAA that can hit a 55 yard FG. Medley came within a few feet of pulling it off. If anything, Medley would've been a hero if he hit that FG and bailed out the rest of the team.
Stop Claiming Florida is Awful. So sick of people claiming that Florida is 'the worst team ever.' On a talent-to-talent basis, we were about even with Florida coming into this game. Florida is probably the 3rd or 4th most talented team we'll face this year. It doesn't excuse the loss, but let's avoid exaggerations here.
How Did We Lose? Writing about this game, I'm even more baffled as to how we lost. We dominated the majority of this game. Our defense played spectacular 95% of the time. Our offense became predictable and Florida still couldn't stop us. I'm not even sure who to blame. We had numerous chances to stop them on 4th downs and failed. Sure, our defense had a lot of big lapses but I've got to put this loss mostly on Butch Jones. When you ask "who made the most inexcusable errors?", it was Butch with the horrendous timeouts, the extra point call, and poor game management.
Don't Pass Too Many Judgements Yet. I've been one of the most outspoken advocates for patience here on VN. It's not that I think Butch is a "guaranteed success." Rather, I think the OregonVol "anyone who doesn't win a national championship in Year 2 should be fired" mentality is extraordinarily destructive and counter-productive. No coach could've turned this mess around in the first two years. Both Jim Harbaugh and Mark D'Antonio had significant struggles in their first 3 seasons at Stanford and Michigan State, respectively. Butch has built this program back up, even if he's proving to be a questionable game day coach. These have been the two most frustrating losses in the Butch Jones era, but we still have 2/3 of a season left to go. If Butch goes on to beat Alabama or Georgia, I'm willing to wager that some of the sins will be forgiven. In my book, he deserves a 4th season so long as we don't totally collapse this year. But if we keep suffering humiliating losses like this, we will certainly have to go back to the drawing board.
Arkansas vs Tennessee. Two desperate teams next week. I haven't used the term "must win" yet, but I think Arkansas is a must win game after the debacles against Oklahoma and Florida. Particularly when you consider that Arkansas is basically a wounded animal right now.
It took me about 5 days to get over the Oklahoma loss. I feel like this one could last even longer than that. I'm hoping Butch can fix his game-day issues soon or this is shaping up to be a long season.
Last edited:
