Tough to Say

[vegasvolfan]

After watching Heupel completely flip the roster in our secondary from really bad to pretty great, I have full confidence he will flip this offensive line to being elite next year. Use HS recruiting and the portal.

I like the confidence. It took us 4 years to get there with our DBs though, but what’s exciting is that we are young from the mid to back field and that’s all recruiting. Transfers like Hadden and Heard were plugs that didn’t pan out initially. Heard is still a work in progress. We do have the one OL 5* still hanging onto us, but he will most likely need a couple.

My thoughts are we need some blue chip D and L linemen. They will need a couple years. Next year may not be a year for high expectations, but if Nico is still alive by his senior year, that may be the year.

BUT, maybe we get some xfers, or maybe you are right and somehow we roll out what we have waiting in the wings and do something incredible next year. But if that were likely, wouldn’t we have done it this year?

 

[J C Higgins]

It’s right there in print. LSU is better than every team we played sans Georgia and Bama, even though we got Bama’s worst. On the other hand, he beat the snot out of the team we just got beat by, and he didn’t lose to Arkansas—> worse than Kentucky who also took us into the 4th Q also at our house only down by 3. And he did it with no better than a #17 recruiting class over the past 4 years.

And the number 1 portal transfer class this year.

 

[vegasvolfan]

And the number 1 portal transfer class this year.

Yes, he accomplished that too. This has to be where we go, but so far we are bringing in projects as opposed to immediate game changers. Brazzell, Hadden, Heard have all been busts their initial years. We don’t seem to be able to plug xfers in and play them. I felt Mincey was a solid get, but he was chasing money and now he’s hurt his stock altogether and many argue he wasn’t a good get. So, we aren’t Lane in the xfer portal. Thank God we aren’t Norvell

 

[vegasvolfan]

No, it wasn't elite LAST NIGHT. Maybe we can agree on that. Other teams have great players too.

Mannnn I appreciate your passion and backup for our Vols. I’m just saying that you don’t know if a team is elite until they play the best teams. We could have played NC ST every game and said we are elite because of the stats. Obviously, we played better teams than that, but they were still the bottom of the barrel SEC teams at home for the most part. We lost to one of those on the road. To another responder’s point, that was due to our O, but holding Arkansas to a low score is hardly a bragging right to call your D elite. Neither is a dub at Oklahoma.

Oklahoma who we held to 15 scored fewer points against TX (3), SC (9), and Ole Miss (14) and scored one more point against Houston.

Arkansas who we held to 14 only scored 17 against A&M, 10 against LSU, and 10 against TX.

FL who we held to 17 only scored 17 against MIA and TX, and 20 against A&M, KY and GA and 16 against LSU.

KY who we held to 18 scored fewer points against Georgia (12), SC (6), VANDY (13), AUBURN (20), and Ole Miss and FL allowed 2 more points at 20.

Georgia who we let score 31 points on us was held to 13 by KY, 31 by Auburn, 30 by TX, 28 by Ole Miss and only 3 more points by Clemson and Florida.

Mississippi St was held to fewer points by TX, but still they and Bama are the only exceptions.

So, when you look at the above, 10 SEC teams held our opponents to fewer points this year than what we allowed. 3 allowed the same and 10 teams allowed between 1-3 more points allowed than we did.

Many of those teams (11) are ranked below us, because their offenses are even worse than ours. When you look at all that, it hardly makes us elite on D.

Again ELEVEN lower ranked teams held the same opponent to the same to 3 more points than we did. So, there ya go.

Our strength of schedule as of 8 days ago was 87th I believe.

We are not elite anywhere. We are good some places. We are bad at others. We have a long ways to go.

That said, there’s not many places better to play college football. Our staff are full of knowledgeable and good people who put a tremendous amount of people into the pros as a collective. Our NIL game is serious.

Time to put my Vols on the map. We need another. Hey, then maybe I will stfu.

 

[VOLLeeann]

OK, I'll be that guy. Tennessee has a good team. Georgia has good team. Could Tennessee beat Georgia? We'll never know because our good SEC team was playing against another good SEC team and a bad SEC officiating crew. Look at the replays. Does our team need to get better? Yes, no question. That does not change the fact that we watched officials wrongly influence the outcome of that game.

This refs hate us crap is really immature and getting really really old.

 

[Coachmike17]

So now we don't have a good DL?

The dumbness is contagious today. We literally have people penning multi paragraph posts exhibiting their reactionary dumbassery

Good against the run, but can't pressure a QB worth a crap. It was pretty plain the last few weeks watching Beck struggle that we had to pressure him, Banks dialed up zero pressure ( actually 1 play he brought the house).We sat back all night and let him pick the DB's apart. Kirby Smart and his staff schooled our coaches all night in how to take advantage of a defense and/or offense weaknesses. He is the king of ingame adjustments.

 

[BernardKingGOAT]

Good against the run, but can't pressure a QB worth a crap. It was pretty plain the last few weeks watching Beck struggle that we had to pressure him, Banks dialed up zero pressure ( actually 1 play he brought the house).We sat back all night and let him pick the DB's apart. Kirby Smart and his staff schooled our coaches all night in how to take advantage of a defense and/or offense weaknesses. He is the king of ingame adjustments.

Spot on. I thought I remembered only 1 real blitz. Not sure what Banks was thinking by not blitzing more.

 

[feathersax]

So now we don't have a good DL?

The dumbness is contagious today. We literally have people penning multi paragraph posts exhibiting their reactionary dumbassery

Some Tennessee "fans" need to get their D.A. vaccine.

 

[Visiting Dawg]

I understand our defense got us there, but against inferior competition compared to most other teams. The merit to my post is clear in the game against Georgia. Same as the merit in people wanting to blame Nico for our woes vs the OL and WRs.

Georgia played Bama, TX, Ole Miss, TN and SC. We played two teams as good as any of them. One played a horrible game against us, but yes our defense had a role in that. The other as you put it, shut our defense down.

Georgia on the other hand took Bama down to the wire away by shutting them out the second half for the most part, destroyed TX on the road and shut their offense down, their offense sputtered against Kiffin’s D,

People can argue all they want but all the proof in what I am saying just occurred in that game. If our defense is that good, we don’t allow 347 yards passing and we don’t post 2 TFLs and 0 sacks.

People can make excuses and cheer about beating a bunch of nobodies and squeezing out a win against a sputtering Bama that hadn’t found its way with their new coach, or we can become an actual elite defense vs. calling ourselves one.

As far as our offense goes, did you find any place at all in my post that gave kudos to our offense? I just said keep our D guys, but our offense is where the serious problems lie.

We can go back and forth all day long, but Facts are in that game.

Stuff happens on the road. Bama ambushed UGA at home in the first quarter. OM was able to take advantage of UGA's silent snap to get a jump on the OL and create massive confusion. UGA was able to mix up the snap count to make Tenn's DL hold their water and give the OL an extra beat to get on their blocks. Throw in the fact that UGA finally sat the starting LT that had been struggling with an injury and the replacement played well and you end up with Beck getting into his rhythm and looking like a top flight QB.

 

[vegasvolfan]

Stuff happens on the road. Bama ambushed UGA at home in the first quarter. OM was able to take advantage of UGA's silent snap to get a jump on the OL and create massive confusion. UGA was able to mix up the snap count to make Tenn's DL hold their water and give the OL an extra beat to get on their blocks. Throw in the fact that UGA finally sat the starting LT that had been struggling with an injury and the replacement played well and you end up with Beck getting into his rhythm and looking like a top flight QB.

Their depth is sick. We need more dudes.

 

[LegionnaireOfTheMiserable]

OK, I'll be that guy. Tennessee has a good team. Georgia has good team. Could Tennessee beat Georgia? We'll never know because our good SEC team was playing against another good SEC team and a bad SEC officiating crew. Look at the replays. Does our team need to get better? Yes, no question. That does not change the fact that we watched officials wrongly influence the outcome of that game.

I mean we do know. Nothing you have seen in 4 years indicates we can beat Georgia. Kirby knows how to beat this team.