DG's Thoughts after the South Carolina Debacle

[IndianaVol]

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?

Forget exactly which one of their scores it was...we might have only been down by 4 at the time...but we had them stopped at about the 25 yard line staring at a 3rd and 20+.
What did we do - commit two incredibly egregious errors in a row to give them MULTIPLE 1st and goal attempts !!!

 

[Lurker]

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

I put Tony Robinson ahead of the others.

People overlook Tony. If you ever saw him play, you wouldn't. I think he was the most purely talented QB I have seen in a Tennessee uniform. To me, Manning was the GOAT given his complete book of work. Robinson was the most gifted.

 

[BIG SEXY]

People overlook Tony. If you ever saw him play, you wouldn't. I think he was the most purely talented QB I have seen in a Tennessee uniform. To me, Manning was the GOAT given his complete book of work. Robinson was the most gifted.

This

 

[RabunRaven]

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.

As someone mentioned earlier - its not a coincidence that there are lots of pass happy teams on this list Because lots of passing that does score forces the other team to pass more than they want to catch up. So being #131 is a bit misleading - but not by much.

 

[Midas]

Who else can’t wait til Flowers and McCollough graduate? I don’t think I’ve seen either of them bat a ball down all year besides a couple int’s by Flowers. I always see them getting beat. Our corners aren’t great but having safeties that can actually cover the back end would help fix our pass defense. Also consistent pressure would help.

 

[Volfan1000]

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!

Vanderbilt is playing for a possible bowl bid Saturday night so Tennessee will get their best shot.

 

[Woodlawn VOL]

Hooker is a top 5 Vol Quarterback in Vol history and that is a honor. There have been several good ones at Tennessee that some folks on here never seen okay. Hard to rank players from different era’s. But he is firmly in top 5 which is a big deal. Peyton Manning, Tony Robinson, Heath Shuler, Casey Clausen, Hendon Hooker, Josh Dobbs and let’s not forget Condredge Holloway he was electric. Tee Martin was a very good Qb that won a national Championship but he would be hard pressed to be in my 7. I put him at 8. Still not a bad spot. He had a great surrounding cast and a awesome D. GBO

 

[JC61]

Agree with a lot of comment here and elsewhere. This was a hard unexpected loss. My comments

Banks is more important to the D than most realized.

This team has punched above its weight most of the season. I attribute that to coaching and adhesiveness of teammates

Rattler had the game most thought he was capable of. A bit of help on no hold calls but that doesn’t explain it away.

Karma is a b!tch. Aka mizzou.

As many….I was shocked by the lack of effort on both sides. Sucks to lose Hooker….I think he was the glue that held the team together.

D was somewhat suspect all year. Relook close games.

Get past this and beat the brakes off vandy.

GO VOLS!!

 

[orangebloodgmc]

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.

LOL. Your commode-doors are dreaming.

 

[Vanhalo]

LOL. Your commode-doors are dreaming.

Do you not see my avatar?

 

[Hopeful Vol]

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!

We lost to goofy Shane Beamer!!!

 

[VAVol85]

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.

Last year we had Alontae, who could take away the other teams best receiver most of the time. At this point we don’t have a single solid corner.

 

[VAVol85]

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!

#72 in defensive efficiency after #44 last year. As you note we are bad and headed in the wrong direction. If Heupel says Banks and Martinez can solve the problem, I will take his word for it..,but it sure looks like we need to make a change.

 

[Vol4life2]

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!

Question: Why isn’t Tee in your top 5?

I certainly don’t like much of his coaching here but the tape don’t lie. It wasn’t Peyton that threw the TDs against Fl State.

Just curious why he gets no credit.

 

[hUTch2002]

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.

So SC looked past Florida to game plan for UT? No way. Florida was a road game, SC turned it over 3 times as they struggled just to snap the ball and, of course our secondary is atrocious so UF has better players in the secondary. Without Banks UF probably has better LBs too. With no Banks we were very hesitant to blitz it seemed to me. Regardless, there’s no way SC was looking past Florida.

 

[hUTch2002]

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.

That SC crowd was fired up. I wonder if it would’ve helped if we would’ve taken the ball first and put them down 7-0. In all likelihood, probably not as something seemed off with the team but it’s such a mental game that you never know.

 

[Stephen Gray]

That SC crowd was fired up. I wonder if it would’ve helped if we would’ve taken the ball first and put them down 7-0. In all likelihood, probably not as something seemed off with the team but it’s such a mental game that you never know.

I really think it changes the whole game. We let them do what we do to teams in the first quarter. Once they saw they had more than just a chance, the players pounced. Our chance to get that crowd into the proper mindset very quickly was gone. Those were good things the opposing team did, so I give them credit, but we still should have stopped them and took over that game, and we didn’t .

 

[barney]

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 think Martinez should walk but Banks gets another year imo

 

[RabunRaven]

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.

I personally think we beat Vandy damn near to death. "Do it for the Gipper" will be replaced by "Do it for the Hooker" and this team comes out angry.

If we lose? Well, I plan to roam the streets of Nashville to pick one up. Come on, what am I saying. I plan to do that if we win too...

 

[Vanhalo]

I personally think we beat Vandy damn near to death. "Do it for the Gipper" will be replaced by "Do it for the Hooker" and this team comes out angry.

If we lose? Well, I plan to roam the streets of Nashville to pick one up. Come on, what am I saying. I plan to do that if we win too...

After watching the presser today I am not feeling it.

 

[Schasz]

I was not happy down 35-24 after a lousy 1st half, but we're getting the ball to start the 2nd half and I'm thinking get a TD on the 1st drive and hope that the coaches made the necessary adjustments at half time. Silly me we don't score and the onslaught continued. Sure hope the coaches have recruited better players for the D for next year.

 

[volfeeva]

The ease at which SC scored ( 8/9 possessions ) lead me to believe this was deliberate on the secondary part.

 

[Cartervol]

People overlook Tony. If you ever saw him play, you wouldn't. I think he was the most purely talented QB I have seen in a Tennessee uniform. To me, Manning was the GOAT given his complete book of work. Robinson was the most gifted.

No doubt. Just a freak of a athlete.. Will never forget the scab year when he beat most of Dallas's starters in a game where he was playing with guys from the local shipping yard.

 

[Vanhalo]

[

I hadn't thought about it this way.
Could have easily been 42-39 is just a few minutes after this.