Here's where things might get rough...

[VFL-82-JP]

Coming into the season, most folks here were predicting we'd go 4-8, or 5-7, or at best 6-6. Not many were predicting better.

Well, we now have 6-6 all but locked in. Great job, lads. Great job, coaches. Real proud of all of you. AND if we can pull one win out of the next four games, we exceed most folks' expectations. That's the good news.

The bad news is, this next four weeks (five, counting the bye week) are going to be a real challenge.

-- The Ole Miss game is going to be a shootout. The Rebels got 52 points today. We got 45. It wouldn't surprise me for next week's scoreboard to look something like that. Trouble is, shootout games can go either way. Last one to hold the ball wins, kind of thing. I'm not nearly as confident of a W next week as I have been these past two.

-- Bama, goes without saying, they're just on a different tier from most of college football.

-- Kentucky, I think we got. This is, in my mind, the pretty solid 7th-win card. I wouldn't mind if we got to 7 off Ole MIss, but Kentucky is I think our best shot.

-- UGa, lot like Bama minus the offense. Their defense is just smothering.

And Nega-Vols, control yourselves. A lot of this is going to look ugly. We are not going to be in control much of the time in these four games. We're going to be in dog fights, at best, and some of them will likely be beat-downs. Calm down. Breathe. Let's see how we come out the other end. And keep the big picture in mind.

Go Vols!

Alright, we survived the gauntlet. Bruised a bit, sure, but we're still a team, a good team, with good lads who care about and can depend on each other, and smart coaches who have a solid plan for the future.

That four-game stretch was every bit as challenging as we knew it would be, but we did get one W out of it.

I know a few folks took the original post of this thread as a loser mentality, abdicating victories in advance or whatever. It wasn't intended that way, but was meant to be a sober assessment of our chances through the Ole Miss - Bama - Kentucky - Georgia (all four ranked at the time) dance card.

We did okay, though. About as good as reasonable folks could expect.

Now we get to eat a couple of cupcakes to finish the regular season, then make our way to hopefully a nice bowl game in a warm spot with a quality opponent that we can whup the socks off of.

Well done, lads. You carried through the gauntlet well.

Go Vols!

 

[RDU VOL#14]

 

[Behr]

View attachment 411757

It's a no win situation.

 

[barknoxbrawler]

Alright, we survived the gauntlet. Bruised a bit, sure, but we're still a team, a good team, with good lads who care about and can depend on each other, and smart coaches who have a solid plan for the future.

That four-game stretch was every bit as challenging as we knew it would be, but we did get one W out of it.

I know a few folks took the original post of this thread as a loser mentality, abdicating victories in advance or whatever. It wasn't intended that way, but was meant to be a sober assessment of our chances through the Ole Miss - Bama - Kentucky - Georgia (all four ranked at the time) dance card.

We did okay, though. About as good as reasonable folks could expect.

Now we get to eat a couple of cupcakes to finish the regular season, then make our way to hopefully a nice bowl game in a warm spot with a quality opponent that we can whup the socks off of.

Well done, lads. You carried through the gauntlet well.

Go Vols!

Are you posting about football or Futball? With all the lad talk, I wasn’t sure.

 

[tntar heel]

Yeah, man, I don't blame you for blasting back at me. Under other circumstances I might've posted exactly what you just did. I get it.

But here's why I did.

The Air Force does this thing when they're taking paratroopers to a drop zone in a C-130. They're flying along at like 250 or 300 knots, sometimes doing what they call "terrain avoidance" flying, pretending they're in the Grand Canyon, juking left and right, making those 52 soldiers in the back of the plane sick to their stomachs for an hour or more. Heh, damn Air Force.

Then suddenly, they stop juking. Go straight and level. The plane feels like it "pops up" a few hundred feet higher in the air. And then it's like they've just hit the brakes, the whole plane loses speed dramatically, for like 10 seconds. We used to call it the three-minute slowdown, because it usually seemed to come about 3 minutes before we jumped. I don't know what the right name for it is. What they're doing is slowing down to 130 knots, our jump speed. Then the loadmasters open the jump doors, and the paratroopers start doing all the stuff they need to do to get ready to jump. Things just feel different after that 3-minute slowdown. It's a phase transition.

We're about to hit this season's 3-minute slowdown.

Not that we're jumping out of the season or anything, still half the regular season left to go. The analogy isn't that good. But things are just gonna feel different these next few weeks. The challenges are going to be harder. We're going to be less in control, things are going to feel more like they're happening TO our lads rather than being done BY them.

That's not a criticism. It's nothing against our team. They'll be just as good and determined and hard-working as ever. It's just that it might FEEL like they're not, because the competition has been dialed up.

I don't mean to be negative. I hope we win all four of these games between here and Kentucky. Just saying, let's keep the faith with our team even if things sometimes don't go our way.

But yeah, I get you. You're right. No reason to be negative, things are going well.

Go Vols!

You forgot about the A$$holes missing Sicily DZ and putting you in the trees

 

[VFL-82-JP]

You forgot about the A$$holes missing Sicily DZ and putting you in the trees

I swear that one night, the air force flew that drop zone east-west. A third of us were in the trees on the east side, and a third in the trees on the west. I bet they were laughing all the way back to the Pope O club.

They ever do that to you?

I don't know how that translates to Georgia's defense smothering Hendon & Crew, but, well, most analogies break down entirely sooner or later, heh.

Go Vols! All the Way!