UT Dead Last in FBS - Impressive Stat

[VolsdeepVFL]

Right, those are two players. But I'm talking about the fact that the remaining players didn't improve individually as the season wore on. Film study each week, practice each week, personal hard work each week, all these things should help guys get at least a little bit better or there's no point in doing them.

The Oline operates as a unit, take away the best player and everyone gets worse. We also had freshman and undersized guys starting across from NFL bound Dlineman every week.

 

[volfannbama]

Plenty of folks here blame Guarantano, and dismiss the "OL sucks" argument. This stat should at least make them revisit this argument. I'm not saying Guarantano is even close to the best qb in the SEC or even close. But that young man was hammered all season. Most of us would be in traction by now with the hits he took.

He is definitely a tough kid. I think he is an average qb. Looks like he struggles reading defenses being his biggest weakness. But I remember several games this year here it looked like we were not event trying with our offensive gameplan.

 

[VAVolsFan2009]

Where's my post??? I hit post rely and it disappears. good grief!!!!

 

[Gandalf]

I’m not trying to pick a fight here because I’m not one way or the other on Pruitt but when you say that letting our guys go out there and not even try to put there hands up or stop them isn’t on coaching? I kind of thought at this level of play that would be the bare minimum requirement of coaching? Again not trying to fight but what exactly is the coach there for if not to at the very least teach basics?

You cant tell me that the coaches trained the players to do the things in those videos. I am sure coaching can always improve but if the player doesnt want to play or thinks he is always going to lose, then its hard to fix that. So REPLACE THEM, you say. But that is the problem. In most cases there really wasnt anyone else. A lot of the guys knew there was no one to push them out of their slot and so they could mentally sit it out while picking up their degree.

 

[BeecherVol]

Now the question is....

Is a result THAT bad only on the players?

I think to understand that you have to look at what your OL coach did prior to here when placing weight either way.

In which case the next question(s) would be,
1. Did he just forget how to coach?
(His resume is solid as an OL coach)
2. To a lesser degree. Did the OC and or scheme make the problem worse? (OC is gone so you may or may not answer that in the near future)

I think going into the season the staff felt that if Smith and Hall got healthy and Kennedy fit in rather quick they would be able to work around the rest.

Smith never looked like what he did as a Fr.
Hall was never able to get close enough to contribute.
And Kennedy was out after week 1.

The rest are either not very good or nowhere near ready.

Not that you made this point, but the idea that this was an serviceable OL that just needed fine tuning is and was a joke. Especially when those 3 guys are not able to contribute.

 

[BLUTickbusdriver]

Lack of line play has been a problem for a number of years. As far I am concerned everyone signed in Feb. should be a big nasty Mama-jamma.

I agree. Our chief focus should be O-line and D-line. If we can’t reel in any freshman recruits, then raid the Juco cupboard, bc we need them now...not 3 seasons from now!

 

[tennrich1]

Not one bit surprising to me. I've never seen an O-line with as poor run-blocking as I have this past year. And the O-line issues impacted everything else on offense. We could have had Peyton Manning, Jamal Lewis, and Travis Henry in their primes out there, and our offense still would've struggled with that OL.

Chandler doesn't get enough credit for putting up very good numbers behind a horrid O-line.

EVERYTHING!!! People on here were complaining because we didn’t throw more crossing routes/over the middle routes and were wanting the OC head because of it. When the OL can not sustain blocks YOU CAN NOT RUN THOSE ROUTES. When I see someone posting that it just tells me how little they understand where EVERY PLAY STARTS. Not surprised at all with this stat...

 

[JacketVol]

Guys, it’s a combo of all of this in a perfect Tennessee storm:

1. Lyle liked splash players. He liked headlines regardless of mix. His classes show this. He didn’t like recruiting in the trenches. You don’t build a DL or OL with all 5 stars. There just aren’t that many out there. Usually this is a 3 Star heavy with a 4 or 5 thrown in area where you build them up and coach them up. No headlines there. Lyle no likey.

2. Lyle killed out S&C program. Nuff said.

3. JG is a tough determined young man who on his best day seems to be a marginal SEC QB. Put him behind a hot mess lime we have and you get him beat to a pulp. You know, kinda like what we watched all year.

4. We had lousy coaching under Lyle. Frankly Friend hasn’t wowed me either. The times we get bull rushed onto our backside I attribute to the S&C issue. The kid is where he needs to be he just isn’t strong enough to stop his man. But more often we either miss the block or assume a ‘pose’ and watch our guy run past. That’s technique. That’s coaching.

5. Our OL is used to sucking now. A missed block is just no big deal. Extra effort to get back in the play is rarely there. That’s culture.

So it’s not one thing. It’s a combo of poor recruiting, poor coaching, a marginal QB, no S&C, and a culture of losing.

Can CJP fix this? His recruiting looks much better. I’m not close to being sold on Friend. S&C takes time. Culture is a tricky thing to shift.

Time will tell.

Well, Friend has the Georgia line looking fine when Gurley was running wild.

 

[The Ron Mexico]

And the O line won’t be much better, if at all, next year.

 

[tennrich1]

And the O line won’t be much better, if at all, next year.

JMO but I think they CAN be much better. May take a while and a little improvement will look huge. Maybe I’m being too optimistic ...JMO

 

[TAD]

I dont care what our talent was on OL .. it aint that bad ...... but having guys not know who even to block and that happened multiple times this year .. its coaching ,... not talent and we got a OL coach that got hired cause his best buddy became the head coach ... CJP downfall will be that he hired too many buddies ... listen if the OL was that good why was he at Colorado St coaching OL .... but our OL were lost last year .. didnt know who or how to block them ... very poorly coached ......

 

[pjhayes]

Well, the schedule is manageable next season...

I see 4 sure wins: Georgia State, Chattanooga, UAB and @ Kentucky (they lose a lot and we just seem to have their number)

4 sure losses: @ Florida, Georgia, @ Alabama and @ Missouri

4 toss ups: BYU, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Vanderbilt (they also lose a lot) - it helps that all of Tennessee's toss up games (at least in my opinion) are at home.

In short, I don't think 8-4 is out of the question. I do expect to be in a bowl game, at the very least.

Not trying to be a Negavol but I'm putting South Carolina as a sure loss until UT can prove that they can beat a Will Muschamp led team....it is absolutely unreal that he is 7-0 against us....

 

[northknoxvol]

Heck I could go over there and tell them that on a passing play just stand up and block somebody. Hell hold hands and play red rover!

 

[Alex10]

You cant tell me that the coaches trained the players to do the things in those videos. I am sure coaching can always improve but if the player doesnt want to play or thinks he is always going to lose, then its hard to fix that. So REPLACE THEM, you say. But that is the problem. In most cases there really wasnt anyone else. A lot of the guys knew there was no one to push them out of their slot and so they could mentally sit it out while picking up their degree.

No I don’t think they trained them to do those things... I think it’s their job to train them not to do those things. Personally I don’t know what they have behind them but it’s hard for me to believe that there was no one on the team that could at least put forth effort and do the basics taught in high school... I look at it this way... if you have one guy who has been broken up with by 20 different women, all within a week of dating him, sure you could put the blame on the women, logically I think you see that scenario not knowing anything else and you assume it’s probably more the guys fault than the 20 different woman.

 

[The Crimson Cried]

LOL and yet I can smell the Dorito & Mountain Dew breath of people clacking away on their keyboards to tell me the REAL problem is JG.

*Licks orange residue from fingers, takes another sip*

 

[volhick]

LOL and yet I can smell the Dorito & Mountain Dew breath of people clacking away on their keyboards to tell me the REAL problem is JG.

Damn.Now you've made me hungry.

 

[Volumnus 2011]

130th out of 130 teams by OL Stuff Rate - "the percentage of carries by running backs that are stopped at or before the line of scrimmage"

2018 NCAA OFFENSIVE LINE STATS | Football Outsiders

What is really amazing isn't just that we are last in this category, but the margin by which we are. All other 129 fbs teams are in a range of 10.2% (Wisconsin) to 26.6%. That is a 16.4% range total. But, there we are way out in left field another 6% from our nearest neighbor at a whopping 32.6%. Yes, a full third of our runs were stopped right at the LOS or behind. That is insane.

What's even worse? Of the last 4 years they've been tracking the stat, no one has reached our level. Next closest was 28.7%, not even close! Suck it 2017 Texas State!

We can only go up from here!

If JG had called better protections, the line would have looked so bad. It's also his job to call run plays that can put the line in better positions. But he sucks at reading defenses and seeing where blitzes are coming from. You all just try to blame a bad line on everything.

Hey guys, how do you do the blue font thing?

 

[VolArmy74]

Our OL will either be better next year (by a lot) or the writing is on the wall for the staff. There's no way that the group of players we had were the very worst group in the entire nation skill/body wise. Also, it doesn't take 2 or 3 years for S/C to work. You should actually see huge gains and see them fairly quickly.

Maximum strength can increase up to 10% in just a couple of training sessions. Strength gains during the first couple of months are usually at least 20–30%. If strength is tested with same movements used in the training program, gains are usually even bigger: 30–70%, even up to 100% in the first 2–3 months. If you are not gaining strength very fast in the beginning, you are making some serious training, nutrition and recovery mistakes. Only a couple of percent of people seems to have extremely lousy genes in terms of strength and muscle mass gains, so most likely the reason for minimal gains is not in your genes.

So if we've not improved significantly strength wise by next season, when will we ever do it? We should have improved massively during the last off season. I don't know the current workout schedule, but I know in the 90s most of the guys started at 4:00 am and went for 2 hours, then again at 5pm and went for a few hours in the evening. They did this every day.

 

[munsterlander]

Weird how Dobbs was able to get 9 win seasons with bowl game wins with a terrible o-line.....wonder what changed?

Not sure if serious. Dobbs was a broken play savant - can't imagine we'll ever see a better running qb at UT. The bad thing about Dobbs is he bailed out CBJ's sorry @zz bs "offense" and prolonged that charlatan's tenure.

 

[dcm3w]

Now the question is....

Is a result THAT bad only on the players?

I don't think I could blame Pruitt and Co. when he inherited the players. However, I think the past coaching staff created the mess with underdeveloping and poor recruits (with the exception of Smith)

 

[gog1]

And we’re supposed to be impressed with Friend??

I remember the Oline getting decemt push in the spring game and thinking things had improved. Wrong. Sure, Oline recruiting fell off but not as bad as the results we’re seeing. Even Trey looked bad the times he was out there.

SOMEBODY HAD TO SAY IT!!!!!!

 

[HuntlandVolinColo]

130th out of 130 teams by OL Stuff Rate - "the percentage of carries by running backs that are stopped at or before the line of scrimmage"

2018 NCAA OFFENSIVE LINE STATS | Football Outsiders

What is really amazing isn't just that we are last in this category, but the margin by which we are. All other 129 fbs teams are in a range of 10.2% (Wisconsin) to 26.6%. That is a 16.4% range total. But, there we are way out in left field another 6% from our nearest neighbor at a whopping 32.6%. Yes, a full third of our runs were stopped right at the LOS or behind. That is insane.

What's even worse? Of the last 4 years they've been tracking the stat, no one has reached our level. Next closest was 28.7%, not even close! Suck it 2017 Texas State!

We can only go up from here!

Oh Pittman!, Oh Pittman!, where art thou?

 

[lifeisdeep]

Our OL will either be better next year (by a lot) or the writing is on the wall for the staff. There's no way that the group of players we had were the very worst group in the entire nation skill/body wise. Also, it doesn't take 2 or 3 years for S/C to work. You should actually see huge gains and see them fairly quickly.



So if we've not improved significantly strength wise by next season, when will we ever do it? We should have improved massively during the last off season. I don't know the current workout schedule, but I know in the 90s most of the guys started at 4:00 am and went for 2 hours, then again at 5pm and went for a few hours in the evening. They did this every day.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that we didn't have many players working out four hours a day under Botch. Maybe four minutes...

 

[jackieaprilesr]

130th out of 130 teams by OL Stuff Rate - "the percentage of carries by running backs that are stopped at or before the line of scrimmage"

2018 NCAA OFFENSIVE LINE STATS | Football Outsiders

What is really amazing isn't just that we are last in this category, but the margin by which we are. All other 129 fbs teams are in a range of 10.2% (Wisconsin) to 26.6%. That is a 16.4% range total. But, there we are way out in left field another 6% from our nearest neighbor at a whopping 32.6%. Yes, a full third of our runs were stopped right at the LOS or behind. That is insane.

What's even worse? Of the last 4 years they've been tracking the stat, no one has reached our level. Next closest was 28.7%, not even close! Suck it 2017 Texas State!

We can only go up from here!

gret info.......now some of these JG haters can pipe down until next year. easy to create bad habits when you have nightmares about getting body slammed on every possession.

 

[BigBadVol]

Not one bit surprising to me. I've never seen an O-line with as poor run-blocking as I have this past year. And the O-line issues impacted everything else on offense. We could have had Peyton Manning, Jamal Lewis, and Travis Henry in their primes out there, and our offense still would've struggled with that OL.

Chandler doesn't get enough credit for putting up very good numbers behind a horrid O-line.

This all day!