Recruiting Football Talk VII

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#9,126
#9,126
VolNash17 said:
Two of those in Neyland, one of which wasn’t a game in the 4th quarter until the ball was taken out of the air up 21 with 5 minutes left. The Pittsburgh game had 40% Vol fans at a smaller nfl stadium against a mediocre team. Not all games are at Neyland unfortunately. Common trend in folding like wet tissue paper when things go flat
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It’s not easy learning how to win on the road at night in this conference. And even when you learn it, it’s still difficult.

Bama, full of 5* and with the #1 overall pick of the NFL draft lost 2 road night games in the SEC last year.
 
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#9,129
#9,129
Smokey123 said:
Sure, but putting the blame on him is silly. Our oline was down right awful, against a team that hadn’t even got a sack in their first two games. The defense was awful and barely gave our offense a chance to get into rhythm in the first half
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Ok..not gonna argue...I want Joe to do well but he ain't a warrior that stands in there and makes plays.
 
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#9,132
#9,132
Stoerner Fumbles said:
We’re a better team with Mays. That won’t make us a great team. We’re heavy dogs for Georgia and Bama. A&M and KY have the players to exploit us. I’d call those two 50/50. Missouri is playing above their talent and will be a struggle. If we have a letdown next weekend, UTSA can give us trouble. SC is terrible, but Beamer outcoached Heupel last year, and they probably smell blood. We should kill them, but who knows. This team still has a ceiling that is probably three losses, but it’ll be unlikely that we get there. The team hasn’t given up or turned on the coaches, but some of our least prepared players are the biggest mouths in the locker room. I think it’s a great time for some younger players to step up. If we don’t succeed in the portal this year and get three real offensive linemen, we’ll struggle for a long time. I think Martinez spent his last tokens last night. He’ll probably be let go. People attacking Banks are misguided. He’s not the problem. Pilli being injured is a big loss. We’ve been hiding weaknesses since he went down. Banks is a good coach.
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^^^^I believe all of this. Thanks for sharing.

***If you don't know @Stoerner Fumbles, I have found that he's a good one on VN to listen to
 
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#9,134
#9,134
Smokey123 said:
He had 2 long completions on throws he got hit on
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He had quite a few more where they were right in his face too. People want to ignore the good things he did last night just to push their narrative. Did he make some bad plays. Yeah a few but the way he played in the 2nd half gave us a chance to come back.
 
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#9,137
#9,137
Blake25p said:
It’s 2023 and we still giving tickets for a little weed… smh, now we know why he didn’t play.
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Red or Blue - these are these dumbest, most easily fixable laws in America. What helps people with stress and anxiety, in a small minute amount - should not be cited. This crap could mess someone's life up.
 
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#9,139
#9,139
My position on Heupel is that he should get at least through 2025, year 2 of Nico starting, to be evaluated as head coach. So don't anyone try to straw man this post as a "Fire Heupel" post.

Last night was extremely disappointing because it was Florida. It's one thing to lose a lot of games to them when Spurrier or Meyer is coaching them, but it is so frustrating watching us lose them with the parade of spares they have run through that program outside of those two coaches. Zook, Muschamp, McIlwain, Mullen, and Napier have all beaten us during their ignominious regimes in Gainesville. This year's Florida team is another mid team, and 7-5 would be a good result for them, maybe 8-4 after beating us. So of course we lose to them. We simply can't be a top tier program like we think we should be when we lose to a peer competitor like Florida 85% of the time over the last 20 years.

All that having been said, last night showed that all the concerns about this team's weaknesses were well-founded. We expected the Heupel offense to be automatic, plug and play, and get us 40 points a game, and it turns out that the actual players running it do matter. I'm not going to get too excited about a second half where we only scored 9 points. The o-line is a hot mess. I hope that Mays coming back will improve some of the protections and getting the ball snapped quicker, and maybe Mincey will get out of the doghouse and improve the RT spot. That's about all I have to offer in the way of hope. We absolutely need to upgrade that position in recruiting and the portal if we want to compete for a title.

Milton is what he is at this point. He's a 6th year senior in his 3rd year under Heupel's system and he still doesn't run it very well. He's not Hooker and he's never going to be, and his supporting cast lost a 1st round OT, WR, and another WR who would have been a 1st rounder if he hadn't been hurt all last year. Milton still probably gives us the best chance to win right now, and I'd stick with him through the Kentucky game. However, there is a non-zero chance that we will be on a 4 game losing streak by UConn, and if we are, I'd say bring in Nico and start working through his growing pains and playing for future.

The defense needs to be better. This secondary is still hot garbage. Beasley is really solid player, but losing Pili hurt. At least we are getting some young guys run at the other LB spots. I can see the future at Edge and it looks bright, but we need to upgrade on the interior. The game wasn't a blowout in the second half only because Napier is the kind of coach who is happiest when he can sit on a lead and bleed the clock with his offensive and defensive approaches, and the new clock rules help him accomplish this. He's not going to lose very many 19 point halftime leads and isn't like a Spurrier or Meyer who wants to send a message by burying the other team when he's in that spot.

I'm looking down our schedule and having trouble getting us to 8 wins. UTSA, UCONN and Vandy are wins and get us to 5. USCjr, Mizzou, and UK are all tossups at best right now. We have UK's number just like Florida has ours, and we get USCjr at home so maybe that helps but Rattler can light up our secondary as we know too well. Maybe ATM beats Bama the week before and come in to Neyland too cocky and we can knock them off. That would be a very Aggie sequence of events. I said to @Ulysees E. McGill yesterday that the league was wide open with UGA and Bama down, but he of course was right that parity is not our friend right now, as we are more likely to slide down to the lower third of the conference than we are to ascend to the top.

Progress isn't always a straight line, and last year we got ahead of schedule. I enjoyed it and hope we can get back there under Heupel, it just isn't going to be this year.

BTW, I read a lot of post-game posts last night, and @Revived2002 if you could share the number of your Copium dealer I'd like to buy some of what you've been taking.
 
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#9,141
#9,141
Smokey123 said:
He had 2 long completions on throws he got hit on
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We only scored 16 points against Florida and 30 against Peay. We can point to a few nice plays he’s made, but at the end of the day, offensive scoring outputs like that are nowhere near good enough.

Is that all on Joe? Of course not. The OL has been bad. There have been a handful of dropped passes. Play calling was questionable at times. One sided officiating held us back.

At the end of the day, though, good quarterbacks can mask a team’s shortcomings. Milton doesn’t do that. Instead, his play highlights those shortcomings. He just is what he is. He makes a few wow throws, but he ultimately makes too many wild throws and too many mental mistakes to efficiently lead an offense.
 
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#9,147
#9,147
Yeah im concerned and we are now in must win mode if we want to continue this momentum. If we lose to USCjr things will be very very dire here. Everything Heup has built will suddenly be in jeopardy.

That being said, I'm just chalking this up to another anomaly in the swamp. It just doesn't matter who is coaching or on our team we can't win in the swamp. Mertz will go back to sucking, they will be average and who knows what happens with us.

We've won there in 53, 55, 71, 01, 03. That's literally it.

Majors couldn't win there. Fulmer only twice. Zero coach since. You know how many great/good teams lost in Gainesville?

85 sugar vols

All those good/great teams in the 90's

07 SEC east Champs were blown out in ridiculous fashion and were perfectly fine the rest of the year

As of now, this loss means nothing to me and I'm not yet convinced all the issues we saw last night can't just be chalked up to we are cursed in Gainesville.
 
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#9,150
#9,150
rocktopper16 said:
Ramel played fine last night as did Thornton and McCoy. Joe has to run. That’s the bottom line. When they drop everyone into coverage he needs to roll out and take off.
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Yeah, but if Thornton got out of his own way he would he dominant. If he can figure out how to be physical then he could be special.
 
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