It’s infuriating –
Statistically, if you suffer a negative yardage play on offense there is an 84% probability that drive is DEAD and you will have to punt. Penalties, TFLs, and sacks are the second most potent drive killers, only behind turnovers.
The games I often care about the most are the games we lose. I was impressed with the A&M win last year. It took all three phases of the game to come out ahead. Anyway, I’ve been mostly studying the 4 games we lost plus the bowl game as that suggests where we came up short and how we may be moving forward.
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The Florida game we beat ourselves. It was Spraggins killing two drives, Lane killing two drives, Crawford killing a drive, and Castles killing a drive.
Historically, Napier is a ball control fanatic. I think for two years running now his games have featured the fewest drives among SEC teams. Generally, you’re only going to get 10 possessions in a game with Napier. It doesn’t really much matter who the opponent is – that’s Napier’s style of football.
When the offensive line basically kills half of your total possession opportunities in a game you have to ask yourself, what’s going on? Are they scared? Are they not well coached? Are they not paying attention? Do they even freaking care?
The same thing happened in the bowl game. On the drives where we punted we had negative yardage plays. On the drives where we scored we didn’t have any negative yardage plays. It’s really pretty simple. What is almost impossible is overcoming negative yardage plays.
I think maybe sometimes we beat our chests when we blow out teams that we have a significant advantage over because we’re bigger, faster, and stronger, but unless you’re Kentucky you measure yourself based on your performance against the big six of the SEC. At least that’s the way it’s been in the 60 or so years since I became a fan.
Anyway, what I’m bitching about are the false starts. It hurts us most against the big boys. I understand there’s a number of causes behind false starts, mostly (and obviously) having to do with the snap count. On the road the guys have to deal with crowd noise. There’s the QB shifting protections or mixing up the cadence so the defense can’t easily time up the snap. There’s thinking about your assignment, reading the defense, and figuring how you’re going to get leverage on your guy for the upcoming play.
This and more is all happening in maybe 10 seconds or less. They say sometimes it’s easy to get distracted, like thinking about what you did wrong on that last play or wondering if Crawford is going to puke again, any number of things could pop into your head. There could be movement on the defensive side of the ball that distracts you because some of that movement could change your assignment on the play.
I think playing offensive line they say generally requires a minimum of three years development. Many times we may think that’s so the guys can get bigger, faster, stronger, but it might also mean that they need to do their drills, work on technique, form, and leverage, and practice their plays so they can do it, essentially, instinctual. Going against inferior competition may allow you to dominate, almost like back in high school, but when you go up against peer competition, well, that’s when you find out what you’re made of.
It is widely accepted that the measure of returning experience on the offensive line is on average across all FBS teams the single most weighted metric for projecting improvement or regression of an offense from year to year. Experience is the best teacher and relative to some of the better opponents on our schedule we’re fortunate this year to have quite a bit returning on our offensive line.
I also think it’s likely we will have more power and athleticism on the line this year and that is what we need desperately if we are going to impose our will on even elite defenses when we get into the redzone.
My speculative lineup is LT Heard, LG Umarov, OC Mays, RG Spraggins, RT Campbell, but we’ll probably get Davis, Lampley, or Karic at LG, or maybe not.
Eric Cain said in his report on practice #2 that Umarov was running at LG with the twos. 247 had Umarov as a 94 rating and their evaluation had him as a prototypical left tackle so I see him similar to Kirby moving Ratledge from OT to OG. It may be risky with two 19 year olds manning the left side of our line but these two aren’t your typical 19 year old offensive line recruits. 247 reassigned Sham to its IOL rankings and he was #4 in the country in 2023. Lance was the #3 OT in the country in 2023.
I understand there’s a lot that goes into a coach’s decision on which players to put out on the field. It may not be simply a question of who may be able to help you the most; there’s likely some consideration on who may hurt you the least, so it’s probably a bit more complicated from their perspective vs from a fan’s perspective. jmo.
One thing I noticed in one of the early practice videos was Lance Heard coaching Gage Ginther in one of their drills. That was for me a big highlight because my sense is that it shows a measure of buy-in to the team, meaning Lance is a Tennessee Volunteer. jmo.
I think since the new staff took over they have demonstrated a high level of development for the offensive line group even though in some cases there wasn’t a lot to work with. I think it takes at least a couple years to get established relationship-wise on the recruiting trail and based on the recent and ongoing recruiting this staff is doing, and their demonstrated ability at development, we’re being set up to only get better in the near future with this position group and that will only make our offense that much more formidable. jmo.
