DG's Thoughts after the South Carolina Debacle

[DiderotsGhost]

No real "takeaways" or grand insights per se; just some thoughts this week.


Don't blame the offense. Not our best outing on offense, but we scored 31 points (before Hooker got injured) thru 3 quarters on the road against a tough defense. That's good enough to win if the D can stop anything.

Tillman looked good. Tillman coming back was big, because SCar focused on stopping Jalin Hyatt. Tillman gets 9 receptions for 81 yards and 2 critical TDs.

Squirrel White. 9 catches for 96 yards. With the focus on Hyatt, it was a great opportunity for Squirrel to shine.

Hyatt. SC crafted their gameplan around stopping him and he still had 6 catches for 65 yards in one of his worst outings. Sure, he struggled a bit, but a lot of players would kill to put up Hyatt's "bad day" stats on a good day.

The D finally bites us. The D has struggled for much of the season, but it's very specifically been in pass coverage. Against the run, we've been good. The D-line has been good. At LB and DB, though, we are extremely thin and it just takes 1 or 2 players out to create major issues. We suddenly saw how big Jeremy Banks was to that defense this weekend. No one could replace him and the D couldn't stop anything. Add in some DB injuries and it was even worse.

SC scored 9 out of 10 possessions. Just an insane stat. While our D has had its share of struggles, I never expected that against a South Carolina team that scored 6 points the week before against Florida.

#72 in Defensive Efficiency. I'd ignore yardage and scoring stats because we always look worse than we are due to our fast-paced offense. However, ESPN's efficiency ratings are great to get a sense of where we really are. We're not dead last on D like some stats suggest, but ESPN has us at #72 in defensive efficiency, which is still pretty bad. We're the only top 25 team with a defense that bad. It's a testament to our offense that we've been able to go 9-2 in spite of a defense more fitting of a 5-7 team. And what concerns me is that we're moving in the wrong direction: we were #44 last season on defensive efficiency.

We've been bad on the road. With the sole exception of a blowout win in Baton Rouge, where LSU shot itself in the foot several times, we've been bad on the road. It took overtime to beat a mediocre Pitt team, Georgia's crowd gave us fits, and now South Carolina destroys us at Columbia. Though, I will say the offense looked a lot better on the road in Columbia than in Athens; it was really the D that killed us.

Jeremy Banks. Lot of rumors circulated over the weekend, which Banks flatly denied. So who knows? Pretty obvious the D was totally different without him out there. Heupel says he expects Banks back next week, so hopefully some minor thing and the rumors were false.

Tim Banks or personnel? I know there are many angrily calling for Tim Banks' head after this one. Personally, I don't know. We've had some good defensive outings this year: Kentucky and LSU in particular. 2nd half in Georgia game also stands out. Meanwhile, the D looked awful against Florida, Bama, and South Carolina. You can give them somewhat of a pass for Bama, given Bryce Young has been difficult for anyone to stop and we had something like 4 DBs out by the end of that game, but absolutely no reason South Carolina should go 9 for 10 on drives in a game. Is the problem Banks or our personnel? One reason to believe the latter is that we've played a lot better on D when we're 100%; but it really only takes a couple of players being out and the D falls apart.

Concerns about LB recruiting. I wouldn't say I'm concerned about recruiting as a whole, but more specifically concerned about LBs. Doesn't seem like we've landed a single top LB since Tim Banks has been DC. Maybe I'm wrong; I don't follow recruiting closely these days. What's our pipeline look like? Any hope to see this pass coverage improve in the next few years?

Ahead of schedule still. I hate this loss, but we're still way ahead of schedule. If you gave me the choice at the beginning of the season if we had 2 losses, whether I'd rather those 2 be to Bama and Georgia or Georgia and 1 out of SCar/Vandy/Mizzou/Kentucky, I'd take the latter. And if we can beat Vandy, we still finish with our first 10 win season since 2007, which no one except the biggest Vol homers expected at the beginning of the season.

Vandy may be tough. Ugh, I hate to admit it, but this Vandy game suddenly looks a lot more difficult. I thought this was a free win earlier in the season, but Vandy is suddenly playing pretty well, coming off wins at Kentucky and vs Florida. Meanwhile, we've lost our QB1. We'll have to see how Milton performs as starter.

Hooker: where does he stack up? It always takes a few years removed to truly appreciate our great QBs, but where do you all think Hooker ends up in the Pantheon of Vol QBs? Obviously Peyton Manning still #1. I still have Heath Shuler at #2. Hooker may be #3 for me, above the Iceman (Casey Clausen), and Josh Dobbs.

That's all I got.

For anyone in Nashville next weekend looking for great barbecue, I highly recommend The Ridge, about 3 miles west of Vanderbilt Stadium.

GBO!

 

[Vanhalo]

9-3
Top 5 offense
Dead last in defense

 

[NighthawkVol]

No real "takeaways" or grand insights per se; just some thoughts this week.

Don't blame the offense. Not our best outing on offense, but we scored 31 points (before Hooker got injured) thru 3 quarters on the road against a tough defense. That's good enough to win if the D can stop anything.

Tillman looked good. Tillman coming back was big, because SCar focused on stopping Jalin Hyatt. Tillman gets 9 receptions for 81 yards and 2 critical TDs.

Squirrel White. 9 catches for 96 yards. With the focus on Hyatt, it was a great opportunity for Squirrel to shine.

Hyatt. I mean, SC crafted their gameplan around stopping him and he still had 6 catches for 65 yards in one of his worst outings. Sure, he struggled a bit, but a lot of players would kill to put up Hyatt's "bad day" stats on a good day.

The D finally bites us. The D has struggled for much of the season, but it's very specifically been in pass coverage. Against the run, we've been good. The D-line has been good. At LB and DB, though, we are extremely thin and it just takes 1 or 2 players out to create major issues. We suddenly saw how big Jeremy Banks was to that defense this weekend. No one could replace him and the D couldn't stop anything. Add in some DB injuries and it was even worse.

SC scored 9 out of 10 possessions. Just an insane stat. While our D has had its share of struggles, I never expected that against a South Carolina team that scored 6 points the week before against Florida.

We've been bad on the road. With the sole exception of a blowout win in Baton Rouge, where LSU shot itself in the foot several times, we've been bad on the road. It took overtime to beat a mediocre Pitt team, Georgia's crowd gave us fits, and now South Carolina destroys us at Columbia. Though, I will say the offense looked a lot better on the road in Columbia than in Athens; it was really the D that killed us.

Jeremy Banks. Lot of rumors circulated over the weekend, which Banks flatly denied. So who knows? Pretty obvious the D was totally different without him out there. Heupel says he expects Banks back next week, so hopefully some minor thing and the rumors were false.

Tim Banks or personnel? I know there are many angrily calling for Tim Banks' head after this one. Personally, I don't know. We've had some good defensive outings this year: Kentucky and LSU in particular. 2nd half in Georgia game also stands out. Meanwhile, the D looked awful against Florida, Bama, and South Carolina. You can give them somewhat of a pass for Bama, given Bryce Young has been difficult for anyone to stop, but absolutely no reason South Carolina should go 9 for 10 on drives in a game. Is the problem Banks or our personnel? One reason to believe the latter is that we've played a lot better on D when we're 100%; but it really only takes a couple of players being out and the D falls apart.

Concerns about LB recruiting. I wouldn't say I'm concerned about recruiting as a whole, but more specifically concerned about LBs. Doesn't seem like we've landed a single top LB since Tim Banks has been DC. Maybe I'm wrong; I don't follow recruiting closely these days. What's our pipeline look like? Any hope to see this pass coverage improve in the next few years?

Ahead of schedule still. I hate this loss, but we're still way ahead of schedule. If you gave me the choice at the beginning of the season if we had 2 losses, whether I'd rather those 2 be to Bama and Georgia or Georgia and 1 out of SCar/Vandy/Mizzou/Kentucky, I'd take the latter. And if we can beat Vandy, we still finish with our first 10 win season since 2007, which no one except the biggest Vol homers expected at the beginning of the season.

Vandy may be tough. Ugh, I hate to admit it, but this Vandy game suddenly looks a lot more difficult. I thought this was a free win earlier in the season, but Vandy is suddenly playing pretty well, coming off wins at Kentucky and vs Florida. Meanwhile, we've lost our QB1. We'll have to see how Milton performs as starter.

Hooker: where does he stack up? It always takes a few years removed to truly appreciate our great QBs, but where do you all think Hooker ends up in the Pantheon of Vol QBs? Obviously Peyton Manning still #1. I still have Heath Shuler at #2. Hooker may be #3 for me, above the Iceman (Casey Clausen), and Josh Dobbs.

That's all I got.

For anyone in Nashville next weekend looking for great barbecue, I highly recommend The Ridge, about 3 miles west of Vanderbilt Stadium.

GBO!

Hooker is at least #3 and I’d probably put him #2.

I put Tony Robinson ahead of the others.

 

[JoeMiltonsAgent]

11 out of the 22 commits are either DB or Edge/LB types for 2023 so they appear to be hitting it hard in recruiting.

How good these guys are or how they stack up against other guys I couldn't say. Don't follow recruiting much either

 

[RabunRaven]

Tee Martin wasn't too bad either.

As for stats, this about sums it up with only one game to go. This is just a whole lotta unacceptable. And in no way does a team dead last vs the pass make the playoffs. As much as this hurts, this was an accident waiting to happen. Just didn't think the Cocks would be the ones to run us off the road. But in many ways, the wheels were going to come off somewhere....

 

[17Vols]

Recruiting is on the uptick but we’re still lacking when it comes to landing the top OL guys, RB and LBs too. We seem to be doing significantly better with D-Linemen and DBs though. It’s encouraging but uga and bama are still stacking 5 stars at nearly every position group each year, so catching up is still an uphill battle. Good news is, some of our position groups really look to have improved, so development looks promising, except in the secondary.

 

[Volprofch05]

Tee Martin wasn't too bad either.

As for stats, this about sums it up with only one game to go. This is just a whole lotta unacceptable. And in no way does a team dead last vs the pass make the playoffs. As much as this hurts, this was an accident waiting to happen. Just didn't think the Cocks would be the ones to run us off the road. But in many ways, the wheels were going to come off somewhere....

View attachment 516531

Well, there are some other good teams low on this list as well: Oklahoma St, Oregon, UCLA, UNC. Nice to also see Vandy down there and hopefully that will be heavily exploited this week.

 

[The Original Fade]

9-3
Top 5 offense
Dead last in defense

We will be 10-2 which exceeds most of the expectations on here dating back to August.

 

[Orange_Vol1321]

I have thought about USC only scoring 6 on Florida. I think it's pretty clear they used the week before Florida and our week to get two full weeks to game plan against Tennessee.

 

[Volprofch05]

No real "takeaways" or grand insights per se; just some thoughts this week.

Don't blame the offense. Not our best outing on offense, but we scored 31 points (before Hooker got injured) thru 3 quarters on the road against a tough defense. That's good enough to win if the D can stop anything.

Tillman looked good. Tillman coming back was big, because SCar focused on stopping Jalin Hyatt. Tillman gets 9 receptions for 81 yards and 2 critical TDs.

Squirrel White. 9 catches for 96 yards. With the focus on Hyatt, it was a great opportunity for Squirrel to shine.

Hyatt. I mean, SC crafted their gameplan around stopping him and he still had 6 catches for 65 yards in one of his worst outings. Sure, he struggled a bit, but a lot of players would kill to put up Hyatt's "bad day" stats on a good day.

The D finally bites us. The D has struggled for much of the season, but it's very specifically been in pass coverage. Against the run, we've been good. The D-line has been good. At LB and DB, though, we are extremely thin and it just takes 1 or 2 players out to create major issues. We suddenly saw how big Jeremy Banks was to that defense this weekend. No one could replace him and the D couldn't stop anything. Add in some DB injuries and it was even worse.

SC scored 9 out of 10 possessions. Just an insane stat. While our D has had its share of struggles, I never expected that against a South Carolina team that scored 6 points the week before against Florida.

We've been bad on the road. With the sole exception of a blowout win in Baton Rouge, where LSU shot itself in the foot several times, we've been bad on the road. It took overtime to beat a mediocre Pitt team, Georgia's crowd gave us fits, and now South Carolina destroys us at Columbia. Though, I will say the offense looked a lot better on the road in Columbia than in Athens; it was really the D that killed us.

Jeremy Banks. Lot of rumors circulated over the weekend, which Banks flatly denied. So who knows? Pretty obvious the D was totally different without him out there. Heupel says he expects Banks back next week, so hopefully some minor thing and the rumors were false.

Tim Banks or personnel? I know there are many angrily calling for Tim Banks' head after this one. Personally, I don't know. We've had some good defensive outings this year: Kentucky and LSU in particular. 2nd half in Georgia game also stands out. Meanwhile, the D looked awful against Florida, Bama, and South Carolina. You can give them somewhat of a pass for Bama, given Bryce Young has been difficult for anyone to stop, but absolutely no reason South Carolina should go 9 for 10 on drives in a game. Is the problem Banks or our personnel? One reason to believe the latter is that we've played a lot better on D when we're 100%; but it really only takes a couple of players being out and the D falls apart.

Concerns about LB recruiting. I wouldn't say I'm concerned about recruiting as a whole, but more specifically concerned about LBs. Doesn't seem like we've landed a single top LB since Tim Banks has been DC. Maybe I'm wrong; I don't follow recruiting closely these days. What's our pipeline look like? Any hope to see this pass coverage improve in the next few years?

Ahead of schedule still. I hate this loss, but we're still way ahead of schedule. If you gave me the choice at the beginning of the season if we had 2 losses, whether I'd rather those 2 be to Bama and Georgia or Georgia and 1 out of SCar/Vandy/Mizzou/Kentucky, I'd take the latter. And if we can beat Vandy, we still finish with our first 10 win season since 2007, which no one except the biggest Vol homers expected at the beginning of the season.

Vandy may be tough. Ugh, I hate to admit it, but this Vandy game suddenly looks a lot more difficult. I thought this was a free win earlier in the season, but Vandy is suddenly playing pretty well, coming off wins at Kentucky and vs Florida. Meanwhile, we've lost our QB1. We'll have to see how Milton performs as starter.

Hooker: where does he stack up? It always takes a few years removed to truly appreciate our great QBs, but where do you all think Hooker ends up in the Pantheon of Vol QBs? Obviously Peyton Manning still #1. I still have Heath Shuler at #2. Hooker may be #3 for me, above the Iceman (Casey Clausen), and Josh Dobbs.

That's all I got.

For anyone in Nashville next weekend looking for great barbecue, I highly recommend The Ridge, about 3 miles west of Vanderbilt Stadium.

GBO!

Appreciate the rational thoughts. This was a tough one, particularly with Hooker going down, but such is life in college football.

 

[njvols]

Agree with entire writeup! Ultimately, though we've been "bend don't break" all season w/ pass coverage/QB pressure but good enough to outscore opponents. We caught a team with a physical/well executed game plan at home on a Saturday night. This has probably been a while coming and lucky didn't really happen before. In reality, though our DL has been better this year, the primary difference between 9-2 and last year is our offense executed at a much higher level. For all the talk in off season of getting off the field on D, in reality, stats say we didn't improve there. Doesn't take away from our outstanding season where we were actually ranked #1 for one week (think about that)...but it's clear there's got to be some major improvement in the back 7 on our D next year b/c in all likelyhood, our offense will not be able to bail us out at such a high level w/ Milton or a Frosh in there, come next year (nothing against any of them...but they aren't HH).

The D finally bites us. The D has struggled for much of the season, but it's very specifically been in pass coverage. Against the run, we've been good. The D-line has been good. At LB and DB, though, we are extremely thin and it just takes 1 or 2 players out to create major issues. We suddenly saw how big Jeremy Banks was to that defense this weekend. No one could replace him and the D couldn't stop anything. Add in some DB injuries and it was even worse.

SC scored 9 out of 10 possessions. Just an insane stat. While our D has had its share of struggles, I never expected that against a South Carolina team that scored 6 points the week before against Florida.

 

[KTrain]

The next 2 games will tell a lot. If Milton can be near HH production wise. I think we can mask some deficient positions next year. But if we are having a QB merry go round by 3rd game we will be challenging for a 6 win season. College is so QB driven especially with all the safety protection for QB's a dynamic player at QB can change the game.
Just look at a 5 star QB that had demons in his head and was not allowed to talk to reporters has 8 TD's and more interceptions. He comes up vs a subpar D has a little luck then he becomes the 5 star version of Bryce Young everyone thought he was 2 years ago. We made Matt Mauck career back up SEC Championship Player of the game back in the day and made onr of 2022 worst SEC QB's SEC player of the week with 6 TD's in 1 game to go with the 8 he had in 10 games this year.

 

[Vanhalo]

We will be 10-2 which exceeds most of the expectations on here dating back to August.

all factors considered...I don't see us going into Nashville and beating Vandy.

The betting odds are better for Vandy than they were for SC.

It's another night game on the road.

 

[DeltaSCVol]

Agree with entire writeup! Ultimately, though we've been "bend don't break" all season w/ pass coverage/QB pressure but good enough to outscore opponents. We caught a team with a physical/well executed game plan at home on a Saturday night. This has probably been a while coming and lucky didn't really happen before. In reality, though our DL has been better this year, the primary difference between 9-2 and last year is our offense executed at a much higher level. For all the talk in off season of getting off the field on D, in reality, stats say we didn't improve there. Doesn't take away from our outstanding season where we were actually ranked #1 for one week (think about that)...but it's clear there's got to be some major improvement in the back 7 on our D next year b/c in all likelyhood, our offense will not be able to bail us out at such a high level w/ Milton or a Frosh in there, come next year (nothing against any of them...but they aren't HH).

The D finally bites us. The D has struggled for much of the season, but it's very specifically been in pass coverage. Against the run, we've been good. The D-line has been good. At LB and DB, though, we are extremely thin and it just takes 1 or 2 players out to create major issues. We suddenly saw how big Jeremy Banks was to that defense this weekend. No one could replace him and the D couldn't stop anything. Add in some DB injuries and it was even worse.

SC scored 9 out of 10 possessions. Just an insane stat. While our D has had its share of struggles, I never expected that against a South Carolina team that scored 6 points the week before against Florida.

The thought here is our defense was that BAD missing Banks... think about that we are in trouble next year...

 

[DeltaSCVol]

No real "takeaways" or grand insights per se; just some thoughts this week.

Don't blame the offense. Not our best outing on offense, but we scored 31 points (before Hooker got injured) thru 3 quarters on the road against a tough defense. That's good enough to win if the D can stop anything.

Tillman looked good. Tillman coming back was big, because SCar focused on stopping Jalin Hyatt. Tillman gets 9 receptions for 81 yards and 2 critical TDs.

Squirrel White. 9 catches for 96 yards. With the focus on Hyatt, it was a great opportunity for Squirrel to shine.

Hyatt. I mean, SC crafted their gameplan around stopping him and he still had 6 catches for 65 yards in one of his worst outings. Sure, he struggled a bit, but a lot of players would kill to put up Hyatt's "bad day" stats on a good day.

The D finally bites us. The D has struggled for much of the season, but it's very specifically been in pass coverage. Against the run, we've been good. The D-line has been good. At LB and DB, though, we are extremely thin and it just takes 1 or 2 players out to create major issues. We suddenly saw how big Jeremy Banks was to that defense this weekend. No one could replace him and the D couldn't stop anything. Add in some DB injuries and it was even worse.

SC scored 9 out of 10 possessions. Just an insane stat. While our D has had its share of struggles, I never expected that against a South Carolina team that scored 6 points the week before against Florida.

We've been bad on the road. With the sole exception of a blowout win in Baton Rouge, where LSU shot itself in the foot several times, we've been bad on the road. It took overtime to beat a mediocre Pitt team, Georgia's crowd gave us fits, and now South Carolina destroys us at Columbia. Though, I will say the offense looked a lot better on the road in Columbia than in Athens; it was really the D that killed us.

Jeremy Banks. Lot of rumors circulated over the weekend, which Banks flatly denied. So who knows? Pretty obvious the D was totally different without him out there. Heupel says he expects Banks back next week, so hopefully some minor thing and the rumors were false.

Tim Banks or personnel? I know there are many angrily calling for Tim Banks' head after this one. Personally, I don't know. We've had some good defensive outings this year: Kentucky and LSU in particular. 2nd half in Georgia game also stands out. Meanwhile, the D looked awful against Florida, Bama, and South Carolina. You can give them somewhat of a pass for Bama, given Bryce Young has been difficult for anyone to stop, but absolutely no reason South Carolina should go 9 for 10 on drives in a game. Is the problem Banks or our personnel? One reason to believe the latter is that we've played a lot better on D when we're 100%; but it really only takes a couple of players being out and the D falls apart.

Concerns about LB recruiting. I wouldn't say I'm concerned about recruiting as a whole, but more specifically concerned about LBs. Doesn't seem like we've landed a single top LB since Tim Banks has been DC. Maybe I'm wrong; I don't follow recruiting closely these days. What's our pipeline look like? Any hope to see this pass coverage improve in the next few years?

Ahead of schedule still. I hate this loss, but we're still way ahead of schedule. If you gave me the choice at the beginning of the season if we had 2 losses, whether I'd rather those 2 be to Bama and Georgia or Georgia and 1 out of SCar/Vandy/Mizzou/Kentucky, I'd take the latter. And if we can beat Vandy, we still finish with our first 10 win season since 2007, which no one except the biggest Vol homers expected at the beginning of the season.

Vandy may be tough. Ugh, I hate to admit it, but this Vandy game suddenly looks a lot more difficult. I thought this was a free win earlier in the season, but Vandy is suddenly playing pretty well, coming off wins at Kentucky and vs Florida. Meanwhile, we've lost our QB1. We'll have to see how Milton performs as starter.

Hooker: where does he stack up? It always takes a few years removed to truly appreciate our great QBs, but where do you all think Hooker ends up in the Pantheon of Vol QBs? Obviously Peyton Manning still #1. I still have Heath Shuler at #2. Hooker may be #3 for me, above the Iceman (Casey Clausen), and Josh Dobbs.

That's all I got.

For anyone in Nashville next weekend looking for great barbecue, I highly recommend The Ridge, about 3 miles west of Vanderbilt Stadium.

GBO!

Yes most would take Hyatt "bad day"... and that was him dropping two passes and one called back for a holding call. But it might just be me but he looked "lost" or in a different frame of mind when the camera was on him. I do hope the rumors were wrong based on what happen to Banks and Hooker. But something was in the head of the team for this game...

 

[TheOrange&White]

It seemed like every time we made a good play or a stop on 3rd down, we got flagged for a penalty. I feel like those were huge. Forcing a punt there takes away one or two of their scores and changes the complexion of the game.

We like to say how a play changes things assuming everything else happens the same, but the entire game sequence changes with those stops, like a cause and effect. The starting position changes based on a punt/punt return/kickoff which impacts playcalling. Maybe Hooker isn't in that position later on and doesn't get hurt. Maybe if the refs called some of the holding on SC, they don't get a first down and eventually score.

I'm not saying they still wouldn't have boatraced us. We seemingly couldn't tackle, get pressure on the QB, or defend the long ball. And there was no excuse to give up that 3rd and 20. And of course they wait for us to play probably their best game in recent memory and for Rattler to finally live up to his recruiting hype. But it would've been interesting to make a few stops and take back some momentum.

I would've loved to make the playoffs, but part of me thinks that if we're capable of losing that badly to that team, would it have been worse to lose to Ohio St. or Georgia in that way on a bigger stage?

 

[njvols]

It seemed like every time we made a good play or a stop on 3rd down, we got flagged for a penalty. I feel like those were huge. Forcing a punt there takes away one or two of their scores and changes the complexion of the game.

We like to say how a play changes things assuming everything else happens the same, but the entire game sequence changes with those stops, like a cause and effect. The starting position changes based on a punt/punt return/kickoff which impacts playcalling. Maybe Hooker isn't in that position later on and doesn't get hurt. Maybe if the refs called some of the holding on SC, they don't get a first down and eventually score.

I'm not saying they still wouldn't have boatraced us. We seemingly couldn't tackle, get pressure on the QB, or defend the long ball. And there was no excuse to give up that 3rd and 20. And of course they wait for us to play probably their best game in recent memory and for Rattler to finally live up to his recruiting hype. But it would've been interesting to make a few stops and take back some momentum.

I would've loved to make the playoffs, but part of me thinks that if we're capable of losing that badly to that team, would it have been worse to lose to Ohio St. or Georgia in that way on a bigger stage?

I think on a neutral field we'd give any of the playoff teams a good run for their money. Fact is, for whatever reason, we didn't fare well in hostile environments (I don't count LSU b/c we took the crowd out early...we'd have done the same thing vs SC if we came out and attacked/executed)...or quite possibly you're correct, that the other side of the coin is that we don't play our best game when it's all on the line AND we don't have the friendly confines of Neyland Stadium helping our mojo.

 

[savannahfan]

It seemed like every time we made a good play or a stop on 3rd down, we got flagged for a penalty. I feel like those were huge. Forcing a punt there takes away one or two of their scores and changes the complexion of the game.

We like to say how a play changes things assuming everything else happens the same, but the entire game sequence changes with those stops, like a cause and effect. The starting position changes based on a punt/punt return/kickoff which impacts playcalling. Maybe Hooker isn't in that position later on and doesn't get hurt. Maybe if the refs called some of the holding on SC, they don't get a first down and eventually score.

I'm not saying they still wouldn't have boatraced us. We seemingly couldn't tackle, get pressure on the QB, or defend the long ball. And there was no excuse to give up that 3rd and 20. And of course they wait for us to play probably their best game in recent memory and for Rattler to finally live up to his recruiting hype. But it would've been interesting to make a few stops and take back some momentum.

I would've loved to make the playoffs, but part of me thinks that if we're capable of losing that badly to that team, would it have been worse to lose to Ohio St. or Georgia in that way on a bigger stage?

I hate to point this out as "it could be called on every play" BUT it was really blatantly obvious on many plays and shown over and over on replays with little or no comment by the "color" side of the TV crew.

 

[VOLfrombama]

This weekend is proof that we need a LOT more Jimmy and Joe's on D, specifically some that have that dawg in them and aren't afraid to stand up for what is right and lead on and off the field.

IF the rumors are true, every single one of them needs to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask themselves how they want to be seen and remembered.

Whatever happened, I hope its squashed and everyone can get back on the same page again. Getting to 10 wins in the regular season would be a huge step in the right direction. Getting that 11th win would solidify the momentum going into next season. That should be the goal.

 

[Cartervol]

Banks has to sacrifice Willie anyway. He's just never been very good anywhere and keeps getting jobs somehow. Dead last in pass defense out of 131 teams. Yeah that's bad.

 

[djwes]

No real "takeaways" or grand insights per se; just some thoughts this week.


Don't blame the offense. Not our best outing on offense, but we scored 31 points (before Hooker got injured) thru 3 quarters on the road against a tough defense. That's good enough to win if the D can stop anything.

Tillman looked good. Tillman coming back was big, because SCar focused on stopping Jalin Hyatt. Tillman gets 9 receptions for 81 yards and 2 critical TDs.

Squirrel White. 9 catches for 96 yards. With the focus on Hyatt, it was a great opportunity for Squirrel to shine.

Hyatt. SC crafted their gameplan around stopping him and he still had 6 catches for 65 yards in one of his worst outings. Sure, he struggled a bit, but a lot of players would kill to put up Hyatt's "bad day" stats on a good day.

The D finally bites us. The D has struggled for much of the season, but it's very specifically been in pass coverage. Against the run, we've been good. The D-line has been good. At LB and DB, though, we are extremely thin and it just takes 1 or 2 players out to create major issues. We suddenly saw how big Jeremy Banks was to that defense this weekend. No one could replace him and the D couldn't stop anything. Add in some DB injuries and it was even worse.

SC scored 9 out of 10 possessions. Just an insane stat. While our D has had its share of struggles, I never expected that against a South Carolina team that scored 6 points the week before against Florida.

#72 in Defensive Efficiency. I'd ignore yardage and scoring stats because we always look worse than we are due to our fast-paced offense. However, ESPN's efficiency ratings are great to get a sense of where we really are. We're not dead last on D like some stats suggest, but ESPN has us at #72 in defensive efficiency, which is still pretty bad. We're the only top 25 team with a defense that bad. It's a testament to our offense that we've been able to go 9-2 in spite of a defense more fitting of a 5-7 team. And what concerns me is that we're moving in the wrong direction: we were #44 last season on defensive efficiency.

We've been bad on the road. With the sole exception of a blowout win in Baton Rouge, where LSU shot itself in the foot several times, we've been bad on the road. It took overtime to beat a mediocre Pitt team, Georgia's crowd gave us fits, and now South Carolina destroys us at Columbia. Though, I will say the offense looked a lot better on the road in Columbia than in Athens; it was really the D that killed us.

Jeremy Banks. Lot of rumors circulated over the weekend, which Banks flatly denied. So who knows? Pretty obvious the D was totally different without him out there. Heupel says he expects Banks back next week, so hopefully some minor thing and the rumors were false.

Tim Banks or personnel? I know there are many angrily calling for Tim Banks' head after this one. Personally, I don't know. We've had some good defensive outings this year: Kentucky and LSU in particular. 2nd half in Georgia game also stands out. Meanwhile, the D looked awful against Florida, Bama, and South Carolina. You can give them somewhat of a pass for Bama, given Bryce Young has been difficult for anyone to stop and we had something like 4 DBs out by the end of that game, but absolutely no reason South Carolina should go 9 for 10 on drives in a game. Is the problem Banks or our personnel? One reason to believe the latter is that we've played a lot better on D when we're 100%; but it really only takes a couple of players being out and the D falls apart.

Concerns about LB recruiting. I wouldn't say I'm concerned about recruiting as a whole, but more specifically concerned about LBs. Doesn't seem like we've landed a single top LB since Tim Banks has been DC. Maybe I'm wrong; I don't follow recruiting closely these days. What's our pipeline look like? Any hope to see this pass coverage improve in the next few years?

Ahead of schedule still. I hate this loss, but we're still way ahead of schedule. If you gave me the choice at the beginning of the season if we had 2 losses, whether I'd rather those 2 be to Bama and Georgia or Georgia and 1 out of SCar/Vandy/Mizzou/Kentucky, I'd take the latter. And if we can beat Vandy, we still finish with our first 10 win season since 2007, which no one except the biggest Vol homers expected at the beginning of the season.

Vandy may be tough. Ugh, I hate to admit it, but this Vandy game suddenly looks a lot more difficult. I thought this was a free win earlier in the season, but Vandy is suddenly playing pretty well, coming off wins at Kentucky and vs Florida. Meanwhile, we've lost our QB1. We'll have to see how Milton performs as starter.

Hooker: where does he stack up? It always takes a few years removed to truly appreciate our great QBs, but where do you all think Hooker ends up in the Pantheon of Vol QBs? Obviously Peyton Manning still #1. I still have Heath Shuler at #2. Hooker may be #3 for me, above the Iceman (Casey Clausen), and Josh Dobbs.

That's all I got.

For anyone in Nashville next weekend looking for great barbecue, I highly recommend The Ridge, about 3 miles west of Vanderbilt Stadium.

GBO!

I don’t think you can put too much on defensive personnel here, against Alabama or UGA, yes they are loaded, but Carolina is not a stacked offense, they are rebuilding.
Scheme, game prep and coaching = F

 

[DiderotsGhost]

Tee Martin wasn't too bad either.

As for stats, this about sums it up with only one game to go. This is just a whole lotta unacceptable. And in no way does a team dead last vs the pass make the playoffs. As much as this hurts, this was an accident waiting to happen. Just didn't think the Cocks would be the ones to run us off the road. But in many ways, the wheels were going to come off somewhere....

View attachment 516531

In some fairness, yardage stats will always make our defense look worse than it is, due to our quick offense (more defensive possessions) and overall style (bend-don't-break / create turnovers) of D. But it's still pretty bad.

ESPN's efficiency ratings are a much better guide, but we are #72 in defensive efficiency. Again, not #131 (dead last), but still pretty squarely in the bottom half of college football.

 

[DiderotsGhost]

Banks has to sacrifice Willie anyway. He's just never been very good anywhere and keeps getting jobs somehow. Dead last in pass defense out of 131 teams. Yeah that's bad.

I've not had a strong view for most of the season, but I'm increasingly shifting towards this view as well.

I will say we do not have much depth at DB or LB and we'd probably look better with a deeper roster, but I also don't know why we are so much worse than last season. We weren't great in pass coverage last season, but it wasn't nearly this bad.

 

[Volz4lif3]

9-3
Top 5 offense
Dead last in defense

Imagine if the talent was on defense along with this offense, different outcomes.. got some positives for sure but until Tennessee gets better def players it’s going to be like this..
also never seen so many teams after the Florida game go for it on fourth down and make 1st downs and extend drives like I’ve seen this year..

 

[BIG SEXY]

Tennessee will destroy Vandy. The players and coaches have a lot to prove coming off the devastating loss last week. Vanderbilt had a better chance had we beat South Carolina.