OneManGang
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Tennessee vs The Maxims vs Oklahoma
For chrissakes people! GET A GRIP.
Let your humble scribe set the wayback Machine to last year's tussle with the Missouri Tigers:
Playing an SEC schedule is a war of attrition. There will be injuries. Highly-touted players will prove to be not all that. Teenagers and young adults will do breathtakingly stupid things. A look at the Tennessee starting lineups from Utah State and Missouri reveals that twelve of the twenty-two starters from the first game are either now playing in a different position or are no longer there. This is why the elite teams in the SEC are two-deep (and in certain cases three-deep) at EVERY position with guys who could start most anywhere else. A glance at the 1999 Tennessee Media Guide reveals a roster crammed with players who would go on to the next level. No Vol fan can say that of the 2014 edition.
This is what it takes.
This is what Butch Jones is building to, but Tennessee is nowhere hear that level at present.
I stand by that. Our 2015 Vols are better, undoubtedly. However, there are still many bricks to be laid before Tennessee is once again mentioned in the litany of elite college football programs. The Vols are getting there, but they haven't arrived yet and effusive pre-season hype and speculation can't change that.
The Vols didn't run out of time against the Sooners.
They ran out of people.
Its primary opponent in the desperate battles of the early days of World War II in the Pacific was a legend. For virtually all of 1942 and much of 1943 the skies over China and the Pacific belonged to aircraft designer Horikoshi Jiro's elegantly lethal Mitsubishi A6M Type 0 fighter, more popularly known as the Zero.
By contrast the Grumman F4F Wildcat was portly, angular, slower and less maneuverable. Both planes first flew in their definitive forms in 1939. The A6M was a winner from the beginning while Grumman's fighter actually had lost a US Navy fly-off competition against the disastrous Brewter F2A Buffalo the previous year. Worse yet, the Wildcat had actually started out as a biplane design!
The F4F showed promise, though, and the Navy had its own doubts about Brewster as a manufacturer and as a design house (doubts borne out during the war) and told Grumman to keep working on the Wildcat. By 1940 the F4F-3 was accepted and was ordered into mass production for service on the Navy's carriers and with land-based Marine squadrons. The stubby little fighter was ready and in fleet service in the nick of time.
It wasn't the best, but it was what the Navy had on 7 December 1941.
Grumman was already working on the Wildcat's successor which would clear the skies of Zeros in 1943 and 1944, the legendary F6F Hellcat. However, Hellcats weren't there in the bloody skies over Coral Sea, Midway and the Solomon Islands. Wildcats were.
Navy and Marine pilots soon learned how to exploit the Wildcat's superior firepower and ruggedness to counter the Zero. In particular Lt. Jimmy Thach developed a tactic called The Weave in which a two-plane element would continually reverse into each other to clear their tails and losses dropped rapidly.
F4F-3 Wildcat fighters of VF-5 in 1941. (US Navy)
The other advantage American pilots enjoyed was that after a combat tour they were sent back as instructors to teach other young pilots how to survive and win in aerial combat. Virtually no other WWII combatant did this.
No other WWII combatant was nearly as effective overall in aerial warfare as the Americans, either. Marine ace John Smith flew Wildcats from Guadalcanal. He was re-assigned to be an instructor. Naturally, Smith was upset and demanded to know when he could come back. The reply explained why Navy and Marine pilots scored lopsided victories in 1943 and 1944, Not until you have trained one hundred John Smiths.
When he came back, he flew a Corsair. (See last week.)
In 1941 the Japanese Navy boasted the best-trained fighter pilots in the world. By the end of 1943, virtually all of them were either dead or incapacitated by wounds. Their counterparts in the US Navy and Marine Corps were passing on combat skills to more American pilots.
One of the climactic naval battles of the Pacific War was the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of 1944. Navy pilots in their Hellcats called it the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. Japanese naval aviation was virtually eliminated.
The portly little Wildcat and its pilots made that victory possible during the desperate battles over Midway and the Solomons. They held the line until later and more powerful designs and their magnificently trained pilots could be fielded and win the final victory.
Tennessee's more powerful weapons in 2015 are the talented freshmen and sophomores from HeadVol Butch Jones's last two recruiting classes. The problem is that they are still freshmen and sophomores. Last year they were more concerned about who to take to the Homecoming Dance than in how to operate against Division One talent. Add to that the fact that an Oklahoma or an Alabama has a host of upper-classmen who are all-Conference or better in their own right to show these youngsters the ropes, and that Tennessee, at this point, does not.
But they will.
Tennessee clearly just ran out of gas in the third canto Saturday night. This was no fault of Coach Jones's conditioning program, it was the x-factor of college football. Oklahoma was able to shuttle players in and out with no noticeable drop off in talent and keep their starters fresh for the latter stages of the game. The Vols simply don't have that capability yet.
But they will.
So take a Chill Pill, remove yourself from the railing of the Gay Street Bridge, and enjoy watching the rebuilding of Tennessee football into what it was and should be.
So how did the team do compared to the Maxims?
1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
In order for a young but talented team like Tennessee to prevail against an opponent of Oklahoma's caliber, they needed to play nearly error-free football. They didn't. In his post-game presser, HeadVol Jones pointed out that Tennessee had far too many motion penalties and started too many drives in the hole.
2. Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way SCORE!
Yes they did, but the Vols simply didn't create enough of them. Nobody, not even the delusional fans who forecast an SEC-Championship year in 2015, thought 17 points was going to beat the Sooners.
3. If at first the game or the breaks go against you, dont let up PUT ON MORE STEAM!
Tennessee fought, scratched and rassled right up to the final gun. The critical factor was the fatigue factor that hit in the late third and in the fourth quarters. The loss of Maggitt and Kelly hurt.
4. Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.
Dobbs got hit six times and sacked thrice. Not good enough. Not nearly.
5. Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.
Did the Vols look better in '15 against the Sooners than in '14? Absolutely. However, Oklahoma, particularly in the later stages of the game, looked better as well.
Todd Kelly's interceptions were difference makers. One troubling defensive stat was that Jalen Reese-Maven had twenty-one total tackles with everyone else on defense in single figures. While one can appreciate his monster game, one also has to be concerned at the lack of a supporting cast.
Tennessee's high-flying run game from last week crashed to earth. Yes, Jalen Hurd had a hundred-yard game but Alvin Kamara was invisible and Dobbs finished with a dozen rushing yards net.
6. Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
Trevor Daniel is turning into a nifty punter. Aaron Medley still needs work.
7. Carry the fight to Oklahoma and keep it there for sixty minutes.
Nobody can really fault Tennessee's overall effort, however, Oklahoma also fought the whole sixty minutes-plus. Good teams do that.
One more take away. I've mentioned on several occasions that teams have to learn how to win big games. Tennessee has not had that advantage since sometime around 2007. Saturday was another case in point. The only way to learn how to win big games is to win big games. The Vols are still in the learning phase. (sighs)
Already the snarks (who most likely never played a down of football in their lives) are oinking (and there's no other word for it) that so-and-so had achieved x by this point in their coaching career at y university. Yeah, whatever. I would assert that none of them walked into the absolute disaster Jones walked into in 2013.
John Majors, at a similar point and without meaningful scholarship restrictions still took three years to even get to a bowl, let alone win one. He went 5-6 the next year. Jones is still ahead of schedule.
All indications are that Coach Jones has the Vols on the right track but, like the Navy in 1942, has to fight his battles with what he has, not the sleeker and more powerful models he'll have in a couple of years.
Brick by Brick, Baby!
MAXOMG
Suggested Reading:
Lloyd Jones, U.S, Naval Fighters
John Lunstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway
Barrett Tillman, The Wildcat in World War II
© 2015
Keeping Your Stories Alive
For chrissakes people! GET A GRIP.
Let your humble scribe set the wayback Machine to last year's tussle with the Missouri Tigers:
Playing an SEC schedule is a war of attrition. There will be injuries. Highly-touted players will prove to be not all that. Teenagers and young adults will do breathtakingly stupid things. A look at the Tennessee starting lineups from Utah State and Missouri reveals that twelve of the twenty-two starters from the first game are either now playing in a different position or are no longer there. This is why the elite teams in the SEC are two-deep (and in certain cases three-deep) at EVERY position with guys who could start most anywhere else. A glance at the 1999 Tennessee Media Guide reveals a roster crammed with players who would go on to the next level. No Vol fan can say that of the 2014 edition.
This is what it takes.
This is what Butch Jones is building to, but Tennessee is nowhere hear that level at present.
I stand by that. Our 2015 Vols are better, undoubtedly. However, there are still many bricks to be laid before Tennessee is once again mentioned in the litany of elite college football programs. The Vols are getting there, but they haven't arrived yet and effusive pre-season hype and speculation can't change that.
The Vols didn't run out of time against the Sooners.
They ran out of people.
---
Its primary opponent in the desperate battles of the early days of World War II in the Pacific was a legend. For virtually all of 1942 and much of 1943 the skies over China and the Pacific belonged to aircraft designer Horikoshi Jiro's elegantly lethal Mitsubishi A6M Type 0 fighter, more popularly known as the Zero.
By contrast the Grumman F4F Wildcat was portly, angular, slower and less maneuverable. Both planes first flew in their definitive forms in 1939. The A6M was a winner from the beginning while Grumman's fighter actually had lost a US Navy fly-off competition against the disastrous Brewter F2A Buffalo the previous year. Worse yet, the Wildcat had actually started out as a biplane design!
The F4F showed promise, though, and the Navy had its own doubts about Brewster as a manufacturer and as a design house (doubts borne out during the war) and told Grumman to keep working on the Wildcat. By 1940 the F4F-3 was accepted and was ordered into mass production for service on the Navy's carriers and with land-based Marine squadrons. The stubby little fighter was ready and in fleet service in the nick of time.
It wasn't the best, but it was what the Navy had on 7 December 1941.
Grumman was already working on the Wildcat's successor which would clear the skies of Zeros in 1943 and 1944, the legendary F6F Hellcat. However, Hellcats weren't there in the bloody skies over Coral Sea, Midway and the Solomon Islands. Wildcats were.
Navy and Marine pilots soon learned how to exploit the Wildcat's superior firepower and ruggedness to counter the Zero. In particular Lt. Jimmy Thach developed a tactic called The Weave in which a two-plane element would continually reverse into each other to clear their tails and losses dropped rapidly.
F4F-3 Wildcat fighters of VF-5 in 1941. (US Navy)
The other advantage American pilots enjoyed was that after a combat tour they were sent back as instructors to teach other young pilots how to survive and win in aerial combat. Virtually no other WWII combatant did this.
No other WWII combatant was nearly as effective overall in aerial warfare as the Americans, either. Marine ace John Smith flew Wildcats from Guadalcanal. He was re-assigned to be an instructor. Naturally, Smith was upset and demanded to know when he could come back. The reply explained why Navy and Marine pilots scored lopsided victories in 1943 and 1944, Not until you have trained one hundred John Smiths.
When he came back, he flew a Corsair. (See last week.)
In 1941 the Japanese Navy boasted the best-trained fighter pilots in the world. By the end of 1943, virtually all of them were either dead or incapacitated by wounds. Their counterparts in the US Navy and Marine Corps were passing on combat skills to more American pilots.
One of the climactic naval battles of the Pacific War was the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of 1944. Navy pilots in their Hellcats called it the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. Japanese naval aviation was virtually eliminated.
The portly little Wildcat and its pilots made that victory possible during the desperate battles over Midway and the Solomons. They held the line until later and more powerful designs and their magnificently trained pilots could be fielded and win the final victory.
---
Tennessee's more powerful weapons in 2015 are the talented freshmen and sophomores from HeadVol Butch Jones's last two recruiting classes. The problem is that they are still freshmen and sophomores. Last year they were more concerned about who to take to the Homecoming Dance than in how to operate against Division One talent. Add to that the fact that an Oklahoma or an Alabama has a host of upper-classmen who are all-Conference or better in their own right to show these youngsters the ropes, and that Tennessee, at this point, does not.
But they will.
Tennessee clearly just ran out of gas in the third canto Saturday night. This was no fault of Coach Jones's conditioning program, it was the x-factor of college football. Oklahoma was able to shuttle players in and out with no noticeable drop off in talent and keep their starters fresh for the latter stages of the game. The Vols simply don't have that capability yet.
But they will.
So take a Chill Pill, remove yourself from the railing of the Gay Street Bridge, and enjoy watching the rebuilding of Tennessee football into what it was and should be.
So how did the team do compared to the Maxims?
1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
In order for a young but talented team like Tennessee to prevail against an opponent of Oklahoma's caliber, they needed to play nearly error-free football. They didn't. In his post-game presser, HeadVol Jones pointed out that Tennessee had far too many motion penalties and started too many drives in the hole.
2. Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way SCORE!
Yes they did, but the Vols simply didn't create enough of them. Nobody, not even the delusional fans who forecast an SEC-Championship year in 2015, thought 17 points was going to beat the Sooners.
3. If at first the game or the breaks go against you, dont let up PUT ON MORE STEAM!
Tennessee fought, scratched and rassled right up to the final gun. The critical factor was the fatigue factor that hit in the late third and in the fourth quarters. The loss of Maggitt and Kelly hurt.
4. Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.
Dobbs got hit six times and sacked thrice. Not good enough. Not nearly.
5. Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.
Did the Vols look better in '15 against the Sooners than in '14? Absolutely. However, Oklahoma, particularly in the later stages of the game, looked better as well.
Todd Kelly's interceptions were difference makers. One troubling defensive stat was that Jalen Reese-Maven had twenty-one total tackles with everyone else on defense in single figures. While one can appreciate his monster game, one also has to be concerned at the lack of a supporting cast.
Tennessee's high-flying run game from last week crashed to earth. Yes, Jalen Hurd had a hundred-yard game but Alvin Kamara was invisible and Dobbs finished with a dozen rushing yards net.
6. Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
Trevor Daniel is turning into a nifty punter. Aaron Medley still needs work.
7. Carry the fight to Oklahoma and keep it there for sixty minutes.
Nobody can really fault Tennessee's overall effort, however, Oklahoma also fought the whole sixty minutes-plus. Good teams do that.
One more take away. I've mentioned on several occasions that teams have to learn how to win big games. Tennessee has not had that advantage since sometime around 2007. Saturday was another case in point. The only way to learn how to win big games is to win big games. The Vols are still in the learning phase. (sighs)
Already the snarks (who most likely never played a down of football in their lives) are oinking (and there's no other word for it) that so-and-so had achieved x by this point in their coaching career at y university. Yeah, whatever. I would assert that none of them walked into the absolute disaster Jones walked into in 2013.
John Majors, at a similar point and without meaningful scholarship restrictions still took three years to even get to a bowl, let alone win one. He went 5-6 the next year. Jones is still ahead of schedule.
All indications are that Coach Jones has the Vols on the right track but, like the Navy in 1942, has to fight his battles with what he has, not the sleeker and more powerful models he'll have in a couple of years.
Brick by Brick, Baby!
MAXOMG
Suggested Reading:
Lloyd Jones, U.S, Naval Fighters
John Lunstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway
Barrett Tillman, The Wildcat in World War II
© 2015
Keeping Your Stories Alive
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