I’m watching Alabama-Tennessee 2022 on my day off.
It looks like a completely different offense than last year
Got to have a few things and all of them are about our ability to go with tempo.
Widely reported that the center owns protections at tempo. Cooper was really good with that. Need Pendleton to be able to handle that stuff. If it falls to Joey, we are slower.
OL has to be able to keep up. Heard was so out of shape last year we had to go at a snails pace to keep him on the field.
Got to be able to have productive first down plays through the air. If you watch '22, if we have a strong first down play to open the series, we almost always move the chains. As soon as that happens we are up tempo and are in the endzone 8 plays later. It's like a 100% conversion rate from productive first down play to touchdown.
Hendon was not perfect, but he had a great grasp of the offense and was stellar in the pocket. He had such a good feel for pressure and when/where to escape. That kept us out of negative plays and gave us time to take shots. And when we took shots, we had one of those freakazoids. Everyone knew 11 was going to get deep, but no one could do anything about it.
I am not of the belief that we have all of those things present this year. I think we are going to be tempo in spots, run the ball, lean on the defense. Would love to be wrong. 22 offense was some of the most fun I've ever had watching any Tennessee team.