Uh oh.
On Thursday night Tennessee participated in the second
most frustrating, “what the eff are you guys doing?” bad game I’ve ever
witnessed them play.
The winner? The 2011 Kentucky slog fest, when the
Wildcats started a wide receiver at quarterback, threw only six passes all
game, and somehow defeated what should’ve been an extremely motivated Vol team
(Tennessee needed to win that contest to go to bowl game) 10-7, snapping Tennessee’s
26 game winning streak in the series. That’s not the worst loss I’ve ever experienced,
but it’s certainly the most flabbergasted I’ve been after a UT game.
Whenever I can adequately compare something to that
game, or I’m reminded of that ill-fated day time and time again as I watch
Tennessee, it’s obviously a bad thing.
So where did it all go wrong? I thought Tennessee
was supposed to just blow through everyone this season? After all, when you
release a zillion hype videos in the off-season AND have smoke
blown up your ass all summer by the media (despite not having actually won a
single game that really mattered since 2007), that instantly means you should
just automatically win everything without struggling at all, right?
Wrong! This is still appears to be an extremely
flawed team, one that doesn’t respond well to adversity, while at the same time
being a squad that shoots themselves in the foot at the most inopportune times.
This probably goes without saying, but Tennessee was extremely lucky to win this game. They
recovered two of their own fumbles in crucial situations, and the defense,
despite losing Jalen Reeves-Maybin, performed about as well as realistically possible. Their second half shut out of the Mountaineers was the lone bright spot in an otherwise unimpressive night.
I think Tennessee expected they’d be able to show
up, wipe the floor with Appy State, dust their hands off, and move on to
Bristol next weekend with relative ease. This team was certainly very chesty
for a group that hasn’t accomplished much, and it actually makes sense when you consider they’ve been
pumped up by everyone around them for the last eight months, simply because they won six
straight games to end last season against the “gauntlet” of Kentucky (a joke of a
football program every year), South Carolina (a team that basically quit on the
season once Coach Spurrier retired mid-year), North Texas (they’re called “The
Mean Green”…. That’s all I really have to say about that), Missouri (a team in
a mutiny against pretty much everything because of the perceived “racism” on campus),
Vanderbilt (the same as Kentucky), and Northwestern (a program that once went more
than 60 years between bowl wins).
However, I don't think the absence of being ready to play will ultimately be as big of a problem as some of the other issues facing this iteration of Vols.
This scare could certainly be a wake-up call, and light a much needed spark under the team, a fire they gradually started playing with the later and later
it went into the night, as the prospect of losing to Appalachian State and
ruining the entire season became more and more likely.
The real concerns facing this team are the actual parts
and makeup of “Team 120”. The offensive
line, which has been a problem for what seems like an eternity, was atrocious
once again. That supposed “experienced” unit was whipped all night by the
Mountaineer front four, despite having an average of 4 inches and fifty freaking pounds over them. Josh Dobbs
never had any time to throw, and Jalen Hurd rarely had a hole bigger than one
fit for a donut. It’s hard to criticize the passing game when we really have no
idea what it really looks like, considering Dobbs had defenders in his face
like two seconds after every snap. But even when he did have time, it wasn’t
like the passing attack was flourishing. Williams was active early, but I think
he must’ve wondered off back into the locker room with Reeves-Maybin because I
don’t remember seeing him after the first quarter. Josh Malone made the biggest
play of the game, the long TD in the fourth that tied the game, but even he was
virtually non-existent on every other possession. Dobbs missed a ton of throws,
and his interception late in the first half could’ve been pulled straight off a
Brett Favre highlight reel. Sprinting to your right, and deciding it’s a good
idea to loft up one of those late-career Peyton Manning wounded ducks across
your body all the way down the field is perhaps the worst decision you can make
as a quarterback.
So how do they solve this? I’m not sure there’s a
way to fix their offensive line issues, unless Butch decides to strangle every
single one of them himself, and then turn around and hire the Monstars to steal
some NFL O-Line talent. And as much as I like Dobbs, we’re now four years into
this experiment; don’t we owe it to ourselves to come to grips with the fact
that this guy is never going to be a passing game wizard? He just doesn’t have
it in him. The best thing about Dobbs is his ability to use his legs as a
weapon against the defense. Having him stand in the pocket and read the defense
and make throws into tight windows aren’t anywhere close to his most valuable
football attributes. I know they didn’t want him to taking more body blows than
a heavyweight boxer in a prize fight in this game, but the offense is so much
more dangerous when the opposition has to constantly be concerned about the
threat of him taking off at any time. He finished this contest with 9 carries
for -4 yards, but virtually all of those attempts were the results of sacks,
where he either had no time to throw, or stood in the pocket for hours waiting
for receivers to get open, something that rarely happened all night. I think
his only true carries came in the overtime period. One went for a crucial first
down, and the other resulted in the game winning TD when he fumbled the ball
forward into the endzone thanks to a crushing hit to the sternum.
We may be headed for some troubling times on Rocky
Top. I don’t foresee a lack of being ready to play being a problem again this
season, but regardless if they’re serious about all their opponents for the rest
of the season, it won’t matter if they can’t consistently check off some of the
most basic tenets of playing winning football.
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