I respectfully suggest that you guys are playing checkers ... this is a chess. Not disrespecting Doug M at all. He has to put some words out there regularly. He has an opinion and I respect that. I suspect if he was the DC at Tennessee his take would be very different. He only knows what he sees. He does not know the players limitations.
[Note to all: I hate soft defense!!!! My reputation as a player...my play earned me the moniker of 'The Punisher.' I made up for my lack of skill, with punishing play. My attitude was he was going to catch it and I had every intention of making him pay dearly for his catch.]
USF harassed AR and he displayed poor passing skills. BUT USF LOST the game!
UT tried to limit his running and he put his passing skills on display. BUT TN WON the game!!!
Will you concede that players who are 'trying to do to much' - play slow and/or make poor decisions.
Will you concede that slow dbs should not play man to man?
My synopsis:
Heupel is a 5 year head coach ... he is still learning on the fly. Some of this is on him!
The scheme we tried to execute against Florida did not work as we imagined it. There were several issues, some of them were player limitations related, some were players NOT doing what they were supposed to do. Some of it was AR making perfect throws.
Players 'inherit' a mindset against teams. We are in Ky players head ... even when it looks like they should win ... they don't ---- because they think something will happen and TN will beat them again. And it happens! (That is a good thing!)
But the counter part is also true, we have a bunch of players who HAD never beaten Florida ... guess what ... that 'monkey is now dead.'
The defense was ugly. But we WON.
We get to look at and fix as many of the issues as we can having WON the game. Players will get better. Some a little bit, some a lot.
But the bottom line, this is chess; we sacrifice things all the time, the goal is to cover our weaknesses, try to leverage an advantage, and WIN BABY ...... even if it is ugly!
Oh and by the way, everyone bringing up Pickens - you need a refresher course. Carl Pickens was a WR AND DB in High School. He intercepted 15 passes in his high school career. He understood defense, Tennessee did not just throw him over on that side of the ball on a whim! And did you know, that even with his previous defensive experience ... players were sometimes still having to tell him where to line up!
And the coup de grace, in high school, he punted, he returned punts, returned kickoffs, played free safety and DB and wide receiver. NOW, tell me which TN offensive player has that kind of pedigree????