DG's Quick Takeaways After the NC State Annihilation

[farmdogvol]

Although our D looked great last night & seemed to pour through NCSs' Oline, don't think it will be as easy once we played some more experienced, 4-5 star olines. Great for what they did but the UGA's & Bama's of this world will prove far more difficult. Unless we stumble badly, I only see Bama & UGA as our biggest threat; but I think we beat Bama and 50-50 against UGA. Definitely going to be an exciting season. GBO!!!!

We do else do you think has 4-5 star o-lines other than UGA and Bama? NCST's O-line is as good as the Vols will see the rest of the year and better than some of the SEC O-lines the Vols will see.

 

[Carl Pickens]

don't want to wait, so let's be excited now, if we need to shift gears later that will be ok. we've had years to learn how to deal with disappoint

 

[SpaceCoastVol]

I think after the Kent State we will see if it’s going to be Brazzell or Thornton as the threat. Could be something different where we rotate more WR than past seasons.

We aren't going to learn anything from Kent State

 

[THEONLYTENISEE]

We aren't going to learn anything from Kent State

I actually enjoy these games, I get to see the upcoming talent. These guys add depth for a long season.

 

[DaddyChad]

Might be a hot take, but this game is Nico's floor.

Idk. He’s very good, still really young though. Young players can really screw the pooch at times especially at the qb position. I think he may end up being one of the greats though. Let’s see how it goes against a really great defense like Georgia and see if he forces stuff or takes what’s given. I really think we’ve got a national title contender possibly a Heisman winner but I’m not sure it’s going to be his first year.

 

[DaddyChad]

We aren't going to learn anything from Kent State

Learn a bit about our younger backups moreso than anything. Love these games to get younger guys some snaps and experience

 

[igotworms]

Now let’s not get too excited just yet.

Why
Myexcitement or depression (or anyone elses) has ZERO impact on this team

 

[igotworms]

Whatever you say, 'o king-maker, whatever you say.

Stupid

 

[SpaceCoastVol]

We do else do you think has 4-5 star o-lines other than UGA and Bama? NCST's O-line is as good as the Vols will see the rest of the year and better than some of the SEC O-lines the Vols will see.

Woooooieeeee that's a vol homer statement.

 

[farmdogvol]

Woooooieeeee that's a vol homer statement.

Other then Bama and UGA, who on UT's schedule has as experienced and as good of an O-line as NCST? Arkansas maybe comparable. NCST's O-line is better than UK, Vandy, K state , UTEP, and Florida. Probably just as good as Miss St and Arky. OK is still unknown as they are all inexperienced and young, but as of this moment they are probably just as good.

 

[xpsyclonex2002]

What did I love?
Our secondary has definitely improved. And our defensive line are absolute monsters. Lot of attitude. Lot of stupid penalties on both sides of the ball but a lot of that was effort penalties. Shoving people out of bounds clear into the cheap seats? Completely stupid. But boy you got to love to see that nasty attitude. As long as it don't cost us games, bully them SOBs around.

What scares me?
1. I don't see a deep threat on our roster. Squirrel is quick. But he's small. He's not winning any jump balls. No one is open. No separation. No one else stands out. Our TE's are significantly better than the last several years. This year will be a good season but it won't look anything like 2022. I don't see us raining hellfire on anyone outside of a division two school.
2. Nico looks like a statue in the pocket. I think he's waiting too long for the play to break down before he does something. Run it or throw it away. That 335 defense really through cold water on a lot of our offense. Our receivers could not get open and Nico was standing there giving them the benefit of the doubt.
3. Our running backs do a lot of dancing around in the backfield before they charge the line. I don't see that working against a top tier team.

 

[AdoptedVOL]

Sampson is the real deal. One of the better backs we’ve had in a while. Agreed that the defense is the best since Fulmer. Butch had a couple decent defenses but not like this group. Nico’s two INTs were kind of fluky. One was a tipped pass and the other he had his arm hit and the ball flew out. He’ll get better with the awareness and I thought he played really well otherwise. Excited for the rest of the season!

I see a little Barry Sanders in the way Sampson patiently waits for his line to create the alley then the reaction speed to take advantage. I know that’s a terribly high bar but that’s who I think of.

 

[Sudden Impact]

Look we adjusted to the potential opposing Defense presented on the field.
Not much more to worry about except some fans are creating an issue and buying in to the notion that this is a gimmick offense. GA Tech and Air Force ran offenses that we had to adjust for defensively and it kept them in the game. Now we run an offense that is complex and has alternatives. Very smart coaching.

Nice game prep by the Vols in anticipation. Saban prepared for it one year and the results were 50/50. The fact that an opposing defensive coach has to adjust and prepare for it is enough, but does not make it a gimmick offense.

3 lineman, 3 LBs sitting back and 5 sitting farther back. Run it get 3-4 yards given to you at a time
is a first down. LBs come in throw it to the TEs or Backs. It worked we won by 41 points end of story.

Whatever they want to call it is fine with me. All this happen because they could not defend our normal offensive scheme and when they used it in the past against other teams it worked adequately. If it is hard to defend it must be a gimmick.

 

[DC_Vol]

Anyone know what the Tennessee sideline warning was all about?

 

[BADGER_VOL]

Although our D looked great last night & seemed to pour through NCSs' Oline, don't think it will be as easy once we played some more experienced, 4-5 star olines. Great for what they did but the UGA's & Bama's of this world will prove far more difficult. Unless we stumble badly, I only see Bama & UGA as our biggest threat; but I think we beat Bama and 50-50 against UGA. Definitely going to be an exciting season. GBO!!!!

Of course they’ll prove to be far more difficult.

WE will prove to be far more difficult for them.

The question on the table isn’t “are we good therefore will we steam roll teams like Georgia and Bama?” Obviously not.

You build a program to be at the top fighting evenly with the best of the best.

Of course they’ll prove to be a hugely superior issue for our team on both sides of the ball. That’s obvious. No one is trying to argue that we are so good we’ll beat anyone by 30. We are considering “are we potentially good enough to go toe to toe against the best of the best and create as many or close to as many issues for them as they do for us?”

 

[chuck0303]

The thing I like about this offense is they can beat you in multiple ways. Take our deep throws away fine we’ll beat you with the TE’s and running game. Take the run away fine we’ll go over the top. And if all else fails Nico can burn you with his legs. Hard to stop it all

Also impressive to me is the blocking, and downfield blocking. Seems like on every play, regardless of where the action goes, everyone is blocking. Certainly helps for Sampson to get extra yards.

 

[DC_Vol]

Also impressive to me is the blocking, and downfield blocking. Seems like on every play, regardless of where the action goes, everyone is blocking. Certainly helps for Sampson to get extra yards.

You are correct. There were some sick lane opening blocks last night.

Also loved that block that ensured Brooks would get to the end zone untouched.

 

[Pride85]

We have some of the strangest fans. We ran the perfect gameplan for the defense we faced. We annihilated a top 25 P5 team with that gameplan. With that being said, we have armchair head coaches that are mad because it looks different that what we have looked like before. They would rather our play callers stubbornly throw deep passes into the strength of the defense, rather than take advantage of the gaping holes that defense gives up. Those wide receivers that weren't getting separation were running clear out routes leaving tight ends and RBs wide open. Quit acting like different is bad. To me, our team played a nearly flawless game. Nico now has his first game where he got punched in the mouth a little. There is now film coach can use to help him make a better read on certain plays. Once again, some forget that Nico is a redshift FRESHMAN with not a lot of game time experience yet. Peyton Manning threw 6 picks his freshman season. Give it a rest and enjoy the second blowout win for this team!

 

[butchna]

Stupid

Forgive. His dream of Gaston Moore starting is appearing more and more unlikely.

 

[sammy80]

What did I love?
Our secondary has definitely improved. And our defensive line are absolute monsters. Lot of attitude. Lot of stupid penalties on both sides of the ball but a lot of that was effort penalties. Shoving people out of bounds clear into the cheap seats? Completely stupid. But boy you got to love to see that nasty attitude. As long as it don't cost us games, bully them SOBs around.

What scares me?
1. I don't see a deep threat on our roster. Squirrel is quick. But he's small. He's not winning any jump balls. No one is open. No separation. No one else stands out. Our TE's are significantly better than the last several years. This year will be a good season but it won't look anything like 2022. I don't see us raining hellfire on anyone outside of a division two school.
2. Nico looks like a statue in the pocket. I think he's waiting too long for the play to break down before he does something. Run it or throw it away. That 335 defense really through cold water on a lot of our offense. Our receivers could not get open and Nico was standing there giving them the benefit of the doubt.
3. Our running backs do a lot of dancing around in the backfield before they charge the line. I don't see that working against a top tier team.

What planet do you live on?
I disagree with everything you said!
I’m not even sure I agree squirrel is our best deep threat. The switch play happened to get him open this game. But Bru, Thornton and Brazel are our best deep threats.

Not many defenses are going to put so many db’s on the field and allow us to run like we did-especially now.

I think Coach Heupel showed tremendous growth. I thought NCST showed they were going to not let us beat them deep, even if they grabbed our receivers a few times-and got away with it- so he went to the double te package, more blocking, better running and some clever te passes.
Did not need to push the WR deep if we could move and stay ahead of the chains.

Nico unlike some qbs seems to be really reading the coverage and going to the correct receiver most every time. He is tall so he does stand tall in the pocket, that is not a bad thing. He has plenty of speed to move when he has too.

You obviously have never played the game before-or maybe even watched a game-running backs have to find the hole and follow blockers to be successful.

You might want to just read some others comments and keep your thoughts to yourself until you learn some more about this game called football!

 

[VOLINVONORE]

What did I love?
Our secondary has definitely improved. And our defensive line are absolute monsters. Lot of attitude. Lot of stupid penalties on both sides of the ball but a lot of that was effort penalties. Shoving people out of bounds clear into the cheap seats? Completely stupid. But boy you got to love to see that nasty attitude. As long as it don't cost us games, bully them SOBs around.

What scares me?
1. I don't see a deep threat on our roster. Squirrel is quick. But he's small. He's not winning any jump balls. No one is open. No separation. No one else stands out. Our TE's are significantly better than the last several years. This year will be a good season but it won't look anything like 2022. I don't see us raining hellfire on anyone outside of a division two school.
2. Nico looks like a statue in the pocket. I think he's waiting too long for the play to break down before he does something. Run it or throw it away. That 335 defense really through cold water on a lot of our offense. Our receivers could not get open and Nico was standing there giving them the benefit of the doubt.
3. Our running backs do a lot of dancing around in the backfield before they charge the line. I don't see that working against a top tier team.

I do not share any of the issues you seem to scared about. The two Freshmen will get open when they gets into games. Nico's two interceptions were both tipped and the Oline had breakdowns which forced him to have to scramble for his life. If factI think he handles it pretty well. The two TE offense will continue to destroy the 335 defense. Our running backs average about 6 yards a pop and are finding holes as they develop. Can not ask for much more from them.

 

[1974Vol]

Been a long time since I posted but thought it was time to check in. That was an incredible win last night! It felt doubly good given that there was a bit 'trash-talk' by some NC State players and fans.

Just some quick notes:

Our defense outscored NC State's offense. Don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet, but out defense scored a touchdown on a pick-6 last night. Meanwhile, our defense effectively gave up 0 points. Yes, NC State technically scored 10, but 7 came off a pick-6 and the other 3 also came off a turnover that put NC State on our side of the field. Keeping them to 3 was a W there. So by my count, our defense scored 7 points and their offense scored 0 (or 3 if you want to count the FG off the offensive turnover). Either way, that's a crazy stat - you might expect to see that against a lower-division opponent, but not against a P5 school.

Best defense since the Fulmer years. I legitimately think this is our best D since the Fulmer years. The amount of depth and talent we have right now is insane. Take a look at the box score and see how many players had a tackle! It's unreal! And we had 13 TFLs! Some weaknesses and we have a young secondary, but that was one of the best defenses performances I can remember in my 3+ decades of watching Vol football.

Will Brooks Pick-6 a great moment. Always fun to see a walk-on earn time and make a huge play like that.

Sampson quietly may be one of the best offensive players in the SEC. Nico and some other players may get the headlines, but Sampson is quietly moving up the very deep list of all-time great Vols RBs. 20 carries for 132 yards last night against a pretty good defense. That was 6.6 ypc. You can gloss over the 124 yards on 12 carries he did against UTC, but this was a legit defense and Sampson looked great.

Nico's game was mixed. Tbf, NC State's defense was very focused on preventing the deep pass and containing Nico. But we saw 2 "Freshman mistakes" from Nico with the INTs. Both passes were deflected, but still poor awareness. That said, this was Nico's 3rd start and he's still very young. His scrambling and improvisation was incredible. He did connect on a few great passes to Squirrel and Kitselman. He'll improve as the season goes along.

Need a 2nd deep threat to emerge. I think Herbstreit may have said it, but I agree -- we really need someone else to emerge as a deep threat other than Squirrel. Thornton, Brazzell, McCoy ... but at some point, we're going to need another deep threat against some of these elite SEC defenses.

Playcalling was excellent. Very happy with the playcalling last night. It became apparent early on that NC State was going to go all-in on preventing the 'big passing play' as overloaded deep and the edges of the field. The 3-3-5 defense is very much designed to stop an offense like ours. Our coaching staff did a great job responding and attacking the middle of the field, using the running game, and using those shovel passes. We may have went 'to the well' one too many times on the shovel, but still ... that's a good example of 'keep doing it until they prove they can stop it'. As soon as NC State started adjusting, that's when we took the air. Overall, very good playcalling last night and I think it says a lot about Nico that he was able to command such a diverse offensive attack.

Darkhorse national title contender. This is the most optimistic I've been about a UT season pre / early season in a long time, but I feel like the national media is significantly underestimating the defense and the offense will get better as the year goes on. While I'm not a huge fan of the 12-team playoff, it does benefit a team like ours this year. I fully expect us to drop a game or two with our brutal schedule (Gerogia, Bama, Oklahoma), but we could be a legit top 5 team by the end of the season.

That's all I got for now. I'm just going to enjoy this season. It's great to see some of the fruits of Heupel's year of building the program back up.

GBO!

Anyone else notice Reece Davis' call on the Brooks pick six, where he counted it down like John Ward did? "Five, four, three, two, one, give him six!" Had to be a nod to Ward, too coincidental otherwise.

 

[DooleyOrangePants]

A few points:

1. Lack of deep threat beyond Squirrel. I don't think we are lacking deep threats, not in the least. NC State sold their soul to shut down the wide outs and we saw the results. Some teams may try to do the same thing, but having a running game and other targets (Tight End play was phenomenal and there is still room for improvement.) is going to make teams pay for that approach. At some point, we are going to see teams sell their souls to stop the run and that's when you are going to see the WR's feast on 1 on 1's and mismatches. When was the last time we could say we are a threat at every aspect of the offensive game? Been a while...

(I think you see Brazzell emerge as another legit deep threat. He already is a Swiss-army knife at WR as he can run about anything you throw at him. As the playbook opens up as the season goes on, my eyes are on him to emerge.)

2. Nico's composure after mistakes is really something to behold. He throws an INT, he goes over to the sideline and studies what happened, comes back out and looks like a Heisman winner. That kind of approach to the game is something that we have been missing (with maybe the exception of Hooker and he was a Senior when he got here). Nico is a Freshman and he's got a really rare and valuable mindset that's going to win some important games. While I'm sure he cares about his numbers, what is clear through 3 starts is that he truly cares about the team concept and winning as a team. He's equally comfortable with a smooth handoff to a back as he is throwing a bomb down the sideline.

3. Banks has gotten a lot of usually deserved flak at times for his defensive schemes. But now that he's got his guys in place, even the young secondary looks promising.

4. Playbook is still very sheltered. We haven't seen half of what this offense can do. Credit to the coaching staff for seeing what the defense is doing and tailoring the offensive approach to suit. Nothing fancy against NC State, just taking what they are giving us and capitalizing on it. Again, we haven't seen that in a long time. I shudder to remember the dark years, when we kept trying to force a square peg in a round hole series after series because that's all we could do.

5. Sampson - what a stand up guy. Smart, athletic, and is a team first guy. Incredibly fortunate to have that guy leading that group and will pay dividends far beyond when his time as a collegiate athlete has ended.

 

[pimo1]

Might be a hot take, but this game is Nico's floor.

We all surely hope so.

 

[pimo1]

I think people are overreacting on the defense. We still have not seen them against and SEC offense. I think NC state has some serious weapons on offense. Their QB was a basketcase by the end of the second quarter. Our DLINE is easily 3 deep the best in the country. We didn't see much from the linebackers and secondary TBH. That one hit by Pili worried me really badly... that's the QB of our defense and Boo got hung out to dry. On the drive where Brooks intercepted Mccall NC state was rolling and Smothers/Concepcion were doing their thing.

That singular play changed the whole complexion of this game. It allowed the offense to go to the locker room at halftime and reset. You look at this game up till that point and the outlook is not so rosy. We cant have that again whatever it was. That's what we were doing last year and it's not the QB just like it wasn't last year. It's the Oline. Something is just not right there.