That "awful" defense of ours...

[VFL-82-JP]

...that did this:



That turrible defense that gave us 14 of the 34 points we scored in regulation. Not just with the West/Josephs scoop & score above, but also Colton Hood's pick six in the first half.

That awful defense that harried and harrassed Miss State's QB so badly, he ended up with a QBR of 22.9. (!!!!!!) [our Joey was once again in the upper 60s]

That poor defense that was at least half of the equation for a victory...on the road...against an undefeated SEC foe.

Man, to have our problems. We are blessed to have our problems.

Go Vols!

 

[THEONLYTENISEE]

Not too many DC’s would want to pair with our offense.

 

[ALLVOL 4LIFE]

FIRE THEM ALL!

 

[Tman44]

The D held when it mattered, for sure. This D can be elite once everything gets put together, even without being at full strength. I see that game as just about as bad as it could get, in all aspects. There were plenty of offensive woes, defensive misses and bad calls by the zebras. At the end, we came out with a W. This should help us only get better. Go Vols!

 

[VAVol85]

That scoop and score was a thing of beauty. They also hit the QB so hard toward the end of the 4th quarter that I think he was a little lost during their final series in regulation.

 

[Other_Guy]

They've played against 3 pretty good offenses and there's only 2 for sure bad offenses on their schedule. Arkansas is hit or miss.
The SEC looks more like the big 12. I know there was only 7 points scored in the second half, but Bama and Georgia dont have the same defenses as before. No one currently does outside of probably Ohio state.

 

[joevols89]

Dline was great at pass rush last night. Awful at setting the edge on run defense (UGA and Syracuse already exposed this). They at least did bow up the last quarter and OT against the run have to give credit for that.

 

[EastTNVol6240]

They made a few great plays. They held when it mattered in OT. They also let a mediocre MS score way too many points. It’s a W. But a W with a lot to clean up.

 

[Volador]

Good to see the 1st team D play hard all four quarters. They held Ms State on 1st and Goal from the 6 for four downs. All else aside, that was a thing of beauty, esp w all those damn cowbells calling home their girlfriends for dinner!

 

[adam.vol]

Bama held Georgia to 21.
ASU held State to 24.

Our defense is tied with Southern Miss for holding Ms State to 34.
Our defense is one better than Marshall’s (45) holding Georgia to 44.

We have to create turnovers to keep up because we’re unable to get enough stops for the offense to keep up, while scoring 50+ ppg.

Your turn again.

 

[xpsyclonex2002]

That's great and all but that defense has issues. They got 14 points and saved the game. I'll take it. But they got gashed over and over by a team that shouldn't have been able to do it. I get that this is the SEC and we play top caliber opponents. But we made Mississippi state's offense look on par with Georgia. I think anybody thinking objectively could know that that is not true. I don't know if it's road jitters. I don't know what the root evil is. I'm not saying we need to fire coaches. But something just isn't right on defense this year. I'll take the win, but if we play like this against Florida, we're going to get our a$$es handed to Us by another inferior team.

 

[vavolfan6]

We had a good pass rush, but did not defend the run well when it seemed predictable that MSST was going to lean on it. State's QB wasn't getting past hist first read, but we held guys back in coverage instead of selling out to stop the run. I didn't like this approach. Even then, I would expect us to be better in taking away the run by just going straight up against State, but we did not.

 

[CNCVol88]

They made a few great plays. They held when it mattered in OT. They also let a mediocre MS score way too many points. It’s a W. But a W with a lot to clean up.

They were given an incredibly short field on every TD except for one. Gotta have some perspective here. It was a weird game. That odd shaped ball doesn't always bounce in ways you'd expect.

 

[CNCVol88]

We had a good pass rush, but did not defend the run well when it seemed predictable that MSST was going to lean on it. State's QB wasn't getting past hist first read, but we held guys back in coverage instead of selling out to stop the run. I didn't like this approach. Even then, I would expect us to be better in taking away the run by just going straight up against State, but we did not.

Yeah and they only had one long sustained drive that ended in a TD. I think we knew they wouldn't beat us by pounding the rock and so we made sure shapen couldn't throw it over our heads.

 

[marcusluvsvols]

The D held when it mattered, for sure. This D can be elite once everything gets put together, even without being at full strength. I see that game as just about as bad as it could get, in all aspects. There were plenty of offensive woes, defensive misses and bad calls by the zebras. At the end, we came out with a W. This should help us only get better. Go Vols!

If we just had our 2 starting Corners in Mc oy and Gibson...Hood likely starts at Nickel. This defense would be top 10 nationally. We would be undefeated and have a legit chance to win a Title. Even with just 1 of Moi/Hobbs back at DT.

I believe this firmly. Those are both NFL corners. Sadly I dont think we see either of them back this year. Gibson definitely not...but that likely means we have him next year which will be great IMO with McCoy gone .

This defense is not as bad as they have looked at times and theyre getting better. Not worse. GO VOLS

 

[theFallGuy]

They made a few great plays. They held when it mattered in OT. They also let a mediocre MS score way too many points. It’s a W. But a W with a lot to clean up.

You just refuse to give State any credit for being a much better team. They are clearly better than mediocre. Stop basing it on last year's win loss record.

 

[vavolfan6]

Yeah and they only had one long sustained drive that ended in a TD. I think we knew they wouldn't beat us by pounding the rock and so we made sure shapen couldn't throw it over our heads.

They were also able to maintain possession and force us into bad field position by running so effectively. Becuase of that our offense couldn't get in rythm and stalled out many times. We didn't even start a possession any better than then our own 26 yard line until OT.

Also, failing to stop the run in the redzone when the field is even more condensed is even more telling. MSST state just bulldozed their way into the endzone multiple times when in the redzone.

 

[Behr]

Bama held Georgia to 21.
ASU held State to 24.

Our defense is tied with Southern Miss for holding Ms State to 34.
Our defense is one better than Marshall’s (45) holding Georgia to 44.

We have to create turnovers to keep up because we’re unable to get enough stops for the offense to keep up, while scoring 50+ ppg.

Your turn again.

He doesn't need a turn his post was in response to all the comments about how terrible our defense is. Why dont some of you understand that?

Did you post this in response to the "Banks sucks" comments? Or the "our defense sucks" comments? You could have.

Our defense did some things right too, as you pointed out, but you and many others dont want to talk about that unles there's a "but" following it.

He didn't say our defense is Elite and needs zero improvement.

 

[Vol8188]

Yeah, the defense complaints are nonsense. Defense put our offense in a position to win the game by scoring 21 points overall.

Defense wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t horrible and as we get starters back it should be better

 

[WiseOlVol]

It was frustrating to see them run the same rushing play over and over successfully. Took us 3 quarters to stop it.

 

[bigorangepoppa]

This game worried me all week long. A team that won 2 games last year, starts this season 4-0, it's a home game with the white out, playing a team ranked in the top 25. They wanted to make a statement with this game, and almost did, the adrenaline was flowing, the cowbells were going all game long. That was a recipe for disaster for Tennessee, but they made the plays when it mattered.

 

[CNCVol88]

They were also able to maintain possession and force us into bad field position by running so effectively. Becuase of that our offense couldn't get in rythm and stalled out many times. We didn't even start a possession any better than then our own 26 yard line until OT.

Also, failing to stop the run in the redzone when the field is even more condensed is even more telling. MSST state just bulldozed their way into the endzone multiple times when in the redzone.

Our offense wasn't able to get into a rhythm because kits hands saw a medusa and turned to stone and the refs killed multiple drives. A review over one yard that stopped a house call, the phantom PI just to make a couple

 

[Tman44]

They've played against 3 pretty good offenses and there's only 2 for sure bad offenses on their schedule. Arkansas is hit or miss.
The SEC looks more like the big 12. I know there was only 7 points scored in the second half, but Bama and Georgia dont have the same defenses as before. No one currently does outside of probably Ohio state.

I'm afraid the new way to spell Arkansas is t-r-a-p-g-a-m-e