'18 Recruiting Forum: Official Charlotte Pre-Game/Game Thread

#682
#682
Aesius said:
The point is that Kentucky was patient with him and gave him time to build something. Pruitt may legitimately still be struggling by year 3. We really won't have a choice but to be patient with him given the state of the program now.
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Bingo. This is all I’m saying.

Maybe I should say a Johnny Majors type rebuild. Took him forever to get it rolling.

With Bama and Georgia at an all time high, and Mullen looking solid at Florida, we have no choice but to be patient.
 
#683
#683
Watching other teams QB’s make plays when protection breaks down and then watching JG completely shutdown anytime the protection isn’t great is absolutely demoralizing.

I can’t think of a single time JG made someone miss or stepped up in the pocket.

Not sure how we can get to where we want to be with a QB like that.
 
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#685
#685
31VFL said:
Richmond must be in the doghouse now. Calbert got a bunch of snaps at LT with Niehaus at RT.
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Pretty apparent with Pruitt’s comment going into the locker room at the half. 51 was responsible for 2 illegal formation calls, and had a few during the UGA game if I recall.
 
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#693
#693
Bassmaster_Vol said:
Nope. They’re losing everybody this year. They’ll be back to their hoping for a bowl game mode next year. Meanwhile we’ll have 2 new five stars on the OL to go along with a lot of other top talent that Ky could only dream of landing
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I think you making a common recruiting fallacy. 4/5 star recruits are highly athletic 18 year olds that have zero experience, and are adjusting to school and life away from home. They are not All-Pro NFL free agents. It will be awhile before they look like elite players in college. And honestly they don’t have much to look up to on our current roster for guidance. And some will be busts.

Next year will be another hard slog to a bowl game... just like 2014
 
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#694
#694
vol2002 said:
I think you making a common recruiting fallacy. 4/5 star recruits are highly athletic 18 year olds that have zero experience, and are adjusting to school and life away from home. They are not All-Pro NFL free agents. It will be awhile before they look like elite players in college. And honestly they don’t have much to look up to on our current roster.

Next year will be another hard slog to a bowl game... just like 2014
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Agreed. Pruitt is one year behind the typical new coach effect. Unfortunately for us as Tennessee fans, we let the previous guy scorch the earth on the way out instead of firing him the year we should actually pull the trigger. So the new guy is always behind the 8 ball and has to hope to be good in year 3 instead of year 2.
 
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#695
#695
All right a win is a win. I think there’s a greater chance we lose 8 games than make a bowl game at the moment (UK and Mizzou looked better than I thought today), but we could make a bowl game and our last three are winnable if we play like we did against USCe and Auburn. Gotta dig deep and play hard.
 
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#696
#696
Guarantano carrying the offense —
Jeremy Pruitt said earlier this week that casual fans (or media members for that matter) don’t know just how much the staff is asking of Guarantano. The head coach was speaking mainly of all the pre-snap responsibilities like getting the play in, changing protections, checking into a different run, etc.
Nine games into the season though it’s become glaringly obvious that Guarantano and his right is just about solely responsible for any kind of production the Vols can generate on offense. That is when he manages to stay upright.

It’s not news that Tennessee can’t run the football. That’s been a storyline for this team since the opening Saturday of the season, even before the offensive line lost two starters. Injuries have been a factor, but the most disappointing aspect of this team (at least for me) has been the the absence of any kind of improvement in the offensive line as the season has gone on.

Most would assume that players will benefit and improve simply from getting experience. That hasn’t happened with Tennessee’s offensive front this fall, and as a result the offense has become almost entirely reliant on Guarantano and his receivers making enough chunk plays through the air.

Today’s action did nothing but highlight that fact. Tennessee hit halftime with zero yards rushing on 11 attempts against a C-USA team. Yes, Charlotte is excellent against the run, giving up just 89 yards per game on the ground. However, Charlotte also hadn’t played a Power Five opponent prior to today.

With no help from the ground game, and not a lot of pass protection either, Guarantano cobbled together an 8-for-10 effort for 93 yards and a touchdown in the first half. Two of first half throws in particular were gems; a 33-yarder that he dropped in the basket to Dominick Wood-Anderson on the sideline to set the Vols up in the red zone followed by a perfectly placed touchdown throw to Josh Palmer in the back of the end zone.
As it turns out, that touchdown was huge since the Vols wouldn't manage another the rest of the day.

Tennessee owes it’s biggest win of the season, at Auburn, to Guarantano’s career day. If not for his play this afternoon the Vols could easily have taken a horrible loss.
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At the risk of piling on….the offensive line though —
I don’t have a lot to add to a subject that has been covered exhaustively this season, but you just can’t talk about this team today without at least casually noting that the offensive line play was as bad as it has been at any point this year. Which is saying something.

One week after it looked like the Vols might have found something up front at South Carolina, when they rushed for 144 yards and a season high (in SEC play) 4.2 yards per carry, the Vols were just flat out pitiful on the ground today.

In 11 first half rushing attempts the Vols not only finished with zero yards, they also had six plays (not counting a sack) that went for negative or zero yardage.

Through three quarters the Vols had -7 yards rushing. (Not a typo). The Vols finished with 20 yards rushing and didn’t get into positive numbers until the final drive of the game.

It’s not just the ground game that’s abysmal. Guarantano was knocked down hard on two of the Vols’ first three offensive snaps of the day. On the Vols’ longest play from scrimmage, a 45 yard throw from Guarantano to Josh Palmer, the quarterback took a huge shot.

The redshirt sophomore has been hit more this fall than a piñata at a kid’s birthday party, unable to finish two games as a result of hits he’s taken.

Certainly Butch Jones deserves plenty of blame for shoddy recruiting and lack player development under his watch but it’s also a real disappointment that through nine games and 10 weeks of practice you can’t point to the offensive front and find anything that looks like improvement.

It was a small sample size, the last three series, but I'd like to see more of the combination the Vols finished the game with where, from left to right, it was K'Rojhn Calbert, Jamhir Johnson, Ryan Johnson, Chance Hall and Nathan Niehaus.
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Play them all! —
Tennessee was better than a three touchdown favorite today and it looked like it would be a chance for Pruitt to build some depth by getting a lot of guys work.

As it turned out the thought that Tennessee would blow Charlotte out was laughable but that didn’t stop Pruitt from playing a ton of young guys, on defense anyway.

With Charlotte being so run heavy the Vols went with a lot of four man fronts today on defense and Pruitt wasn’t shy about rolling out some combinations up front that had zero veterans.

One sequence saw freshman John Mincy in a group with Emmett Gooden, Paul Bain and Ja’Quain Blakely. Freshman Kurot Garland also got some run up front. Marquill Osborne ended up going nearly the whole way at cornerback after Alontae Taylor was ejected for targeting.

Theo Jackson and Shawn Shamburger both got extensive playing time in the secondary. Jordan Allen got his most significant action of the season at linebacker where it looked like he was used almost exclusively as a blitzer.

Even J.J. Peterson saw the field late in the fourth quarter getting his first non-special teams work in a Tennessee uniform.

Charlotte’s offense certainly wasn’t a juggernaut, but the best news for Pruitt on a pretty ugly afternoon of football was that there wasn’t any discernible drop off when he liberally went to with some younger guys.
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Odds and ends —

Let’s hit a few items.

First off, nice punt return Marquez Callaway. At the time it didn’t necessarily feel like it would be that big of a deal outside of a nice highlight. However, as the afternoon wore on and Tennessee couldn’t get out of its own way on offense, that 82-yard punt return for a score loomed large.

Dominick Wood-Anderson had his most productive day of the season, catching three passes for 53 yards. One of those, a 33 yard snag right on the sideline with a defender hanging all over him was a high quality effort. The junior college transfer has fallen short of the lofty expectations many placed on him prior to this season. He’s battled a hamstring issue for the past few weeks but gave fans a glimpse today of what kind of impact he could eventually have.

The Vols got a handle on the penalty issues that have been killing them in the last two weeks. Tennessee was flagged 18 times against Bama and South Carolina but trimmed that number down to just three today. One of those was Taylor’s targeting call which led to his second ejection of the season. The other two were on Drew Richmond, the team’s most experienced offensive linemen, who was flagged for a pair of illegal formation penalties.

The Jeremy Banks situation is one of the more unusual personnel situations I can remember seeing. A guy changes positions one week and changes back the next and gets the lion share of carries at tailback. After watching Banks struggle to get nine yards on nine carries today it’s not surprising that he’d prefer trying his hand at linebacker as opposed to running behind this line.

Josh Palmer is quietly turning into a big play kind of guy. He came into today averaging 24.5 yards per catch and led the Vols with four catches for 71 yards.

Lastly how about Bryce Thompson? The freshman grabbed his third interception of the year this afternoon and incredibly is the only defensive back on the roster with a pick.
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--VQ
 
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#697
#697
HoleInTheRoof said:
Okay I missed the second half because I had to come to work. Recorded the game but..... doubt I'll watch the rest of it.

Can anyone tell me if there were any positives in the second half or decent plays?
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Two runs at the end where we opened a good hole. And thompson interception. You’ll be better off just erasing it.
 
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#698
#698
vol2002 said:
I think you making a common recruiting fallacy. 4/5 star recruits are highly athletic 18 year olds that have zero experience, and are adjusting to school and life away from home. They are not All-Pro NFL free agents. It will be awhile before they look like elite players in college. And honestly they don’t have much to look up to on our current roster for guidance. And some will be busts.

Next year will be another hard slog to a bowl game... just like 2014
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Truth
 
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