FanPost

What a season!

Bumped from the diaries. Well done, XRayVol. Where's the petition for the new Mayfield's?

If I wasn't on prescription heartburn medication already, I would've had to have set a record for most Rolaids eaten in a three month period. This season was nerve racking fo' sho'!

Where to begin. Okay, first of all, congratulations to the entire team for what I personally consider to be a successful season, but more on that later.

The SECCG. Well, of course I'm really disappointed. Why? Because we had EVERY opportunity to win that game, and I mean EVERY opportunity, and we couldn't make it happen. Was it all Erik's fault? Of course not, but good lord son. When you're a senior quarterback having the season you've had, you don't try to force balls to recievers, especially against a talented defense like LSU. You can't pick the biggest game of the year to make the worst decisions of the year. Unfortunately, he'll be tagged with this loss forever instead of the leadership he showed throughout the year up to those unbelievably horrible decisions. But, he did a great job otherwise.

Enough can not possibly be said about the defensive effort that I saw in that game. Everybody said LSU would carve us up. Instead, we held them to one of their lowest scoring games of the year. They'll say, " ...second string quarterback this and second string quarterback that, blah, blah, blah..." But we all saw Ryan Perilloux play probably the best game of his career even with a hobbled hand. Kid's got guts. But we were all over him all night and with the exception of the toss to Byrd, kept him from really abusing the secondary, but we should probably work on our option defense for the future. Probably should've done a better job on Hester but that kid's hard to contain and he didn't have a TD so I think we did okay. Jerod Mayo and Eric Berry get my defensive players of the game and my oh my, what a game E.B. had. That kid is going to be a MONSTER. I can't wait to watch him next season. Bbbrrr... I've got chills. Somebody call Mayfield 'cause that kid needs his own flavor of ice cream, call it Eric Very Berry or something like that.

Offensively, I don't know that you can blame any one person. Obviously Ainge and Lincoln did not have the best day with opportunities to win the game but then neither did anybody else really. Arian Foster had 55 yards on 21 carries average of 2.6 ypc. Ouch. 8 different recievers touched the ball, not one getting even close to 100 yards. Briscoe had a fairly respectable game but the rest of them, except for Chris Brown who only had two touches but one for a TD, just didn't produce. But then, Ainge wasn't exactly on fire either. He didn't do anything stupid, most of the game, but he wasn't very accurate.

The bottom line is... we should be happy that we played them tough and kept it close the whole game, but at the same time, we could've won. We absolutely could've won that game. A VERY slim margin is the difference between SEC champions and Outback Bowl.

I think that's what bothers me the most. The fact that we SHOULD'VE won. I'd be less unsatisfied if we'd have gotten blown out, then there wouldn't be this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me how they didn't have Glen Dorsey or Matt Flynn, how Perilloux, Doucet, and Steltz were hurt but we didn't take advantage of any of it. It tells me how their team was discombobulated until the first interception and how we still had them on their heels until the second one. It reminds me of how THEY didn't beat us but how we actually beat ourselves. We were SO close.[sigh]

Maybe I'm being greedy though. I should be ecstatic that we even made it to the game, right? That we played so tough and almost beat the eventual national champions. (I don't give Ohio State much of a shot. Why? Think about it.)I should be happy that we didn't blow a lead in the second half or that we didn't make some absolute bone-head play calls (except maybe going for it on fourth down, you pick a helluva time there Phil, but that one I can kinda live with). Maybe I should just stop focusing on the negative. Good idea. It still stings though.

All in all however, it was a good, albeit tumultuous, season. People are back on the Phillip Fulmer bandwagon. Welcome back folks! I may have been overly critical, but I never wanted him fired. Ever firing Fulmer would be an absolute travesty. I hope he goes all Joe Paterno on us, rolling up and down the side lines in a wheelchair if he has to. But the three losses withstanding, obviously, we have to be proud of this team and what they accomplished in the face of, what many other teams would consider insurmountable, turmoil. Injuries, suspensions, dismissals, unbelievable critisism, abandonment, etc... all begging them to lay down and die. But NO! We will NOT go gently into that good night. We will rage, rage against the dying of the light. They fought and clawed and made it to somewhere no one said they'd be. Atlanta. And they played tough. So we should be satisfied, considering. Right?

So we've got Wisconsin in the Outback. I haven't watched the Badgers this season so I don't know too much about them but, they're a Big Ten team so how tough could they be? Well, they finished fourth in the Big Ten losing only to Illinios, Penn State, and Ohio State, got played close by Iowa and Michigan State and just did beat Minnesota but beat Michigan by 16. They have a thousand yard rusher in sophomore P.J. Hill, who appears to be their workhorse and averaged 108 ypg. Their leading reciever is a junior tight end, Travis Beckum, who has only four games over 100 yards and is averaging 80 ypg. They're averaging over two hundred yards rushing and recieving per game but winning by only an average of 7 points. Will have to look into this a little further but looks like we'll be just fine.

I'll tell you one thing. I can't wait for next season. We should have a, in the words of Les Miles, "DAMN strong football team". We should be a good sight better next year with experienced youngsters and some promising players coming on (i.e. Ben Martin, Brandon Warrren, and Kenny O'Neal). We have a much better schedule, picking up UAB, UCLA, N Illinois, and Wyoming, and getting Florida, Alabama, and Kentucky at home. The only hiccups may be Georgia, Auburn, and Satan Spurrier at their places. Considering the facts at this point in time, the only ones I'm really worried about are Georgia and Florida, and maybe Auburn. But, we'll have to see. Regardless, the team should be much improved next season and although it's way to early to make a prediction, I think we'll do really well. I can't wait to see.

I'm sure I left some stuff out and forgot to mention a couple things, but I feel like we had a pretty good season, considering. And anybody who feels like our season was a failure on any level (see poll), well, those people seriously need to re-evaluate their values and maybe find a new team to "support" 'cause those of us who really do support this team, don't need ya and I for one am tired of hearing you whine about what's wrong with the team when you clearly don't see the big picture. Nobody's team is perfect, get over it.

GO VOLS!!!

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