Best Plays of 2008: the first cut
by Joel Hollingsworth on May 28, 2009 8:00 AM EDT
in Tennessee Volunteer Football
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PrintOver the past two days, you've seen the 15 candidates for the Best Play of 2008. Now it's time to begin voting.
Remember, DO NOT VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE PLAY -- VOTE FOR THE ONE YOU WANT TO SEE ELIMINATED. The play with the most votes gets cut from the competition.
Voting will remain open through 6:00 or 6:30 tomorrow morning (depending on when I drag myself out of bed), and I'll post the remaining contenders at 8:00 or 9:00 and open up a new poll. We'll do that every day, including weekends, until only the Best Play of 2008 remains.
My vote and rationale for today is below. Hooper and Will will post theirs when they get around to it. But first, the choices:
- More Score for Moore
- Brent Vinson's Pick Six Poop Out
- By Guess Who . . . Eric Berry
- Britton Colquitt Nails a 71-yarder
- EBWACC (Eric Berry's Wake Always Contains Carnage)
- Eric Berry Flying Corkscrews Marquis Maze
- That's Beautiful
- Rout!
- Berry All the Way
- Eric Berry Clobbers Knowshon Moreno
- What a Play by Berry in the End Zone
- A Score for Moore
- Eric Berry's Third Interception of the Year
- There Goes Lennon Creer
- The Fourth of the Half
Joel: My first vote for elimination goes to There Goes Lennon Creer. Why? Except for the fact that we had almost no offense last year, this play really wasn't all that spectacular. Well-blocked, yes, but Creer basically just ran straight ahead into the end zone. And hey, it was UAB and we were already up 21-3, so woo in all lower case. Add to that the fact that "There Goes Lennon Creer" took on an altogether new meaning this spring, and well, you know. Good job on the TD, Lennon, but you're Starting Over now, and so I'm voting to send you on your way.
Will: My first vote for elimination is Britton Colquitt Nails a 71-yarder. This is like the one obscure film that gets an Academy Award nomination as a tip of the hat to its unique features...and then is swiftly removed from consideration. It's a 71 yard punt. It's still a punt...in a game that the Vols were down 24-6 in the 4th quarter in. I don't like the fact that we were punting here anyway...so there you go. VOTE FOR THE ONE YOU WANT TO SEE ELIMINATED.
Hooper: Toughie for me, partly because I've never liked calling spontaneous things like interceptions "plays". (While you hope for them, it's not like you draft one up on the chalkboard.) But in the context here, I'd say the first play to go would be There Goes Lennon Creer. It was a good play, for sure, and one of the very rare offensive highlights. Yet it was against a beaten and tired team and, in retrospect, wasn't an amazing individual highlight but more of simply good run blocking and one good juke. (Oddly, that's more what I call a great "play" in my own internal dialogues, but that's not the context here, so...)
Vote for the one you want to see eliminated.
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Maybe I should try all caps
VOTE FOR THE PLAY YOU WANT TO SEE ELIMINATED!
Rocky Top Talk
by Joel Hollingsworth on May 28, 2009 9:33 AM EDT up reply actions
STOP YELLING AT ME WITH YOUR KEYBOARD!
Official MCM Hater!
Summer 2009 Troll Call: Bedazzlers(2), Ratbirds, Squeelers(2), Fightinredwarners, Rosencopters
All right, here's how I'm going to handle that
Any suspicious votes will be discounted unless backed up by non-suspicious comments. If you’re going to troll, it’s going to be work.
Rocky Top Talk
by Joel Hollingsworth on May 28, 2009 10:03 AM EDT up reply actions
In supplement to Joel's comment:
If you happened to vote for the wrong thing (e.g. voting to keep a play), simply leave a comment to correct the vote. We’ve got access to the voting records, so while we can’t interfere with the posted tallies, we can always correct the butterfly ballots.
Re: Will's vote for the punt, obscure films, etc.
This gets my vote for play of the year for UT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV1LWhNpTJU
Lou Brock loves Lamp.
Can we count Peyton Manning on SNL?
Which was like two years ago, but still…hitting small children in the back with footballs might be of better quality than any of the offensive plays on our list here.
Will - Rocky Top Talk
by Will Shelton on May 28, 2009 11:31 AM EDT up reply actions
When I was in college
Tee Martin threw one away at about 100 MPH against Auburn and hit a UT cheerleader in the small of the back. She walked it off. Crompton was good at hitting the other team. (I’m getting it all out of my system before August, see?)
Will - Rocky Top Talk
by Will Shelton on May 28, 2009 11:43 AM EDT up reply actions
INT Hooper
Hooper: I am extremely confident that I have never and will never disagree with a comment you have said in the past or will say in the future more than I disagree with your “interception is not a play” comment. To me, the interception isn’t just a play…its the play. In fact, I have never hesitated to passionately argue with anyone willing to listen that the pick-six is the most exciting play in all of sports. I once contemplated starting a website devoted solely to the pick-six — even though I am sure it would get about 4 hits in a good year. Heck, maybe I’ll still do it anyway.
Heh. Understood.
I didn’t mean that to diminish interceptions. What I meant was a purely semantic thing. I don’t like referring to spontaneous events as “plays” when comparing them to scripted plays. Because football is centered so strongly around the concept of a “play” from the snap of the ball to the whistle, things like fumble recoveries and interceptions really are sub-plays.
But that’s a distinction that is probably made by nobody else on the planet but me. The fact is that there is no other terminology for “sub-plays” in this sense and they are called plays. What I was trying to get at is that I twitch just a little on the inside when I see individual events within a play compared to an entire play. The Creer run is a “play” in the grander sense because of its sheer reliance on the line blocking, secondary blocking, and the running – the total team effort. An interception, while dependent on assignment and position, is more of an individual effort.
But, to be sure, let me emphasize that I fully agree that the pick-six is among the most exciting plays in sports. “Most” will depend largely on individual passions of sports, but the pick-six is undeniably in the final few.
by David Hooper on May 28, 2009 3:00 PM EDT up reply actions
Hmm -- counterpoint
Aren’t interceptions team efforts as well? Pressure by the DL, coverage by other folks? And what about some of those wicked blocks that only happen on oskies? I bet the defense practices all of that in hopes that they can “script” one into the game.
Rocky Top Talk
by Joel Hollingsworth on May 28, 2009 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions
Certainly the return of an interception is a play. The int itself is a skillset. It’s kinda like when somebody makes a block and they call it making a play. They’re using the term “play” in two contexts: one for the snap-to-whistle unified event, and one for the singular effort. That’s what trips me.
And don’t worry. I know I’m weird about that. That’s why I had never brought it up before.
by David Hooper on May 28, 2009 3:36 PM EDT up reply actions
Get rid of the 71 yard punt...
No knock on Britton or anything, but that entire game was probably the most disappointed I have ever been in a Vols team in the 20 years of being a fan. I’ll leave Dan Williams and EB out of that disappointment as Williams heroically played on one good leg a week after the Bama cheap shot and Berry always plays hard. I could not believe how we simply just rolled over and died for a very very average SC team.
One could argue that Spurrier is a little overated. Once SEC folks caught on to his schemes and started recruiting quality defensive backs, offensive production at Florida sputtered as evidenced by the fact that Florida had only 1 SEC title in his final 5 years at the program. The look on his face after the Vols beat Florida 34-32 on December 1, 2001, is one of my alltime favorite Orange & White memories. I hope to see that game in the Top 3 of the Top 50 alltime Fulmer era wins that is on this blog.
I'm not quite that rash, but I did vote to drop that play.
Really, there’s nothing exciting about a cornerback getting tired. Now, if Vinson played DL and wore out, that’s another matter entirely.
by Chris Pendley on May 28, 2009 6:30 PM EDT up reply actions
Rash?
Let’s naively assume that what we have been told so far is true about his involvement in the murder of Austin Corn. Let’s assume he was merely a “witness” who just happened to be in an apartment with at least one drug dealer when someone was shot to death.
Is this good decision-making by someone who has already been dismissed from the team once before?
(And that is assuming what we have heard so far is true. I have a feeling we are going to find out a lot of things we did not want to find out about Vinson and Ramar Smith. And I seriously doubt that Coach Kiffin is unaware of these things. I’m surprised Vinson hasn’t been dismissed already.)
Lou Brock loves Lamp.
CLK said he fully expects that Vinson will be on the team this Fall
And this statement was made after having a discussion with Vinson after all of this went down. We’ll see.
Just to be clear
I’m not really arguing with you or saying that Vinson will definitely be on the team. I just prefer to defer judgment and punishment to the coaches in situations like these… especially when the coach has given you no reason to doubt he will come down hard if necessary.
I would love for Vinson to be on the team if he is willing to keep his nose clean. It helps out UT and it helps him have a chance to make a lot of money. But no player is bigger than the team, and if he is hurting it, I too want him gone.
I spaced out, forgot about the investigation.
I thought you were saying he’s terrible.
by Chris Pendley on May 29, 2009 5:08 PM EDT up reply actions
I agree, and Im disappointed Britton's kick is being eliminated.
I’m not saying its the best play of the year, but Britton’s kick was a lot of skill (and some luck), while as Vinson’s was pure luck. He essentially ran into that interception. It was great and fun to watch, but there is some beauty and skill in Colquitt.
now with less meyton panning.
by Pride of the Southland on May 29, 2009 2:28 AM EDT up reply actions
Britton's kick reminded me of the Dustin days from back when I was in school.
That was when …well, it’d be kind of like the Berry highlights have dominated the 2008 version.
by Chris Pendley on May 29, 2009 5:09 PM EDT up reply actions
Fortunately, by the time this is done,
nobody’s really going to care about the order that the bottom half was voted out. I think of Britton’s kick as pure skill too – especially how quickly he got it off – but hey. Not everybody finds punts sexy.
Though if we had made a bigger deal of the value of an unreturnable punt (cough, James, cough), this play might have lasted a bit longer.
by David Hooper on May 29, 2009 10:32 PM EDT up reply actions
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