Are you serious? They were homecoming fodder in 4 games, lost to Vandy, and almost lost to USA. They lost to what we now know was a poorly coached and flat out bad UF team. That's 7 poorly coached games vs 2 decently coached games.
BTW, if those kinds of catches that won the USCe game had been common this year then you'd have a decent point. But when it takes a couple of circus catches that were not repeated.... it can be called a fluke.
Yeah. Looked good while Auburn set records against them, huh? They regressed over the course of the year. That's nice. I feel so much better now about 2nd worst scoring D UT has had since at least 1945.
And passed for less than any team since the one that got Fulmer fired. In the SEC, UT was 11th in scoring O, only 7th in rushing O, 13th in passing O, and 12th in total O.
Improved from what? It is wholly illegitimate to use '12 as a basis for comparison. That was the worst coached UT team I have ever seen and the worst underperformance of talent I have seen since at least UT's 2005 team.
Competing hard... beats Vandy. "Competing hard" avoids the complete rapes they endured vs Oregon, Bama, Mizzou, and Auburn.
Unless of course you are saying the players played their tails off and the coaching failed them?
Then you weren't watching because UT's D with no better personnel played their tails off for Wilcox.
No. It simply doesn't.
I said before the season that Auburn had good talent. I didn't know Malzahn would be that good.
If you think talent was how Mizzou thumped UT... you are out of your mind. UT was thoroughly outcoached and the team looked unprepared.
Vandy wasn't that good. That game should have been a two TD win.
More BS. The D was historically horrible. Talent was always going to be a limiting factor but does not come close to justifying how bad they were.
The O was often unimaginative. Execution was often poor and did not appear to improve over the course of the year.
I saw improvements but they were swamped by things that either were worse or failed to improve. And if you can't see that... then pull that beam out of your eye before worrying about the speck in mine.