Killing the playing-not-to-win meme

To do so, we have to presume that Florida fans are reasonable enough to correlate their pre-game expectations with their actual game performance as well as what they said about Tennessee’s ability to win with what actually happened.

In other words, they would have to be rational. Hahaha.

Furthermore, no matter how many simple and phoenetic ways it is explained to them, their B.T.O must be playing too load in the IROC for them to understand that Tennessee had no shot to win by putting the game on Crompton’s shoulders. Not in the first quarter, and certainly not with 6 minutes left in the game. As soon as we went downfield, it was picked off again.

And lastly, and this is just an innocent question really, but isn’t TSK supposed to be the SEC blog of SB Nation. It’s got a heavy Florida bias if you ask me. Nothing against it, and I know it’s because Year 2 runs it, but a little more objectivity out of SB Nation’s SEC blog would be nice.

Well put

And to get closer to winning when you’re not, you must pick up your pace.

Tennessee’s shorten the game plan was absolutely the perfect thing to do to have a chance to win. A smaller number of plays increases the variance for the game, and increased variance is helpful for underdogs. Here’s Chris Brown from Smart Football talking about variance.

Eventually though, when you’re down a few scores with a quarter and a half to go, you have to pick up the pace to score enough points to win. Tennessee never did that, and that’s where the criticism comes from. It’s not about throwing the ball deep, because that was obviously not a path to winning for UT. It’s about doing a hurry up offense and hoping that Florida would commit enough mistakes to get Tennessee back in the game.

Tim Tebow provided one of those mistakes with his fumble (an excellent strip by the defender, by the way), but the ensuing touchdown came with 8 minutes to go in the game. It’s tough for anyone, much less an underdog who can’t throw deep, to overcome a 10 point deficit in that little amount of time. If there was more time on the clock, then who knows what happens? Maybe Florida tightens up, makes more mistakes, and Tennessee might send it to overtime or even win it.

But without a no huddle, hurry up offense, that wasn’t going to happen. With that fact fairly apparent, it begs the question of why Tennessee didn’t employ one.

hooper:

I’d be curious to see if the Vols were running the play clock down to its final few seconds during the latter half of the fourth quarter. If so, then it does get harder to deny the allegations.

I don’t know of any way other than watching the film exactly how deep into the play clock Tennessee went on their final drive, but we know from the play-by-play that the Vols took over with 6 minutes left and ran eight plays before calling timeout almost exactly 4 minutes later. That’s 2 plays per minute. If we break it down further and say that each play took an average of 10 seconds (maybe generous, but it makes the math easier and I have no idea how long the average play lasts) and a total of 1:20, that means 2:40 ran off the clock between those first seven plays. 160 seconds / 7 = very close to 23 seconds of game clock between each play. That already strikes me as a ton of time for a team down two scores and less than six minutes to play, but it’s actually worse than that—six of those seven plays resulted in temporary clock stoppages either by going out-of-bounds or gaining a first down. On average, the Vol offense—again, down 10 with under six minutes to go—likely took somewhere in the neighborhood of 27-30 seconds of real time to snap the ball.

Which is why, as much as I respect the work you guys do here, Joel and hooper—in fact, because of that respect—I am absolutely, totally baffled as to the acceptance of Kiffin’s end-game strategy/clock management. Like Year2, I will certainly agree that Kiffin’s gameplan for the first 54 minutes of the game was the best one he could have formulated given the limitations at quarterback. But on that last drive, Kiffin has no choice—there’s no way in heaven and earth that an offense operating at the pace above could score, get a stop, and score again in 6 minutes. (At the pace above, in fact, the Vols would have run out of time crossing the Florida 25 or so.)

I’m well aware that the chances of Crompton leading the Vols to victory in a no-huddle hurry-up offense were very close to zero, but the chances of Tennessee earning the win in the same offense they’d run all game weren’t close to zero—they were, mathematically, zero. I can’t say for certain whether Kiffin was deluding himself into thinking his snail-paced offense could still get the job done or whether he consciously chose to keep the clock running just to get the hell out of there … but I don’t see how you can argue that the complete lack of urgency shown by the Vols on that final drive at least gave the appearance like Kiffin had given up and was more concerned with the score than winning the game. I’m sorry, but there’s a perfectly good reason the “Kiffin played to keep it close” meme has the legs it has.

As for the idea that Kiffin just didn’t have a hurry-up offense to turn to …well, first, whatever the call or personnel on the field, you can always get into and out of the huddle as quickly as possible, and I for one didn’t see the Vols doing that (or see it in the math above). And would you guys be making excuses for Kiffin not having a hurry-up offense ready if the Vols had taken over with 2 minutes left, down by 7, and huddled up until time ran out as they reached midfield? Because in terms of necessary urgency, there’s not much difference between that situation and the one that actually happened.

Again, I don’t blame you guys at all for being happy with Kiffin’s overall game-planning or the Vols’ overall effort. But I just don’t see how there’s any defending Kiffin’s choices at the end of the game.

Screwed up that blockquote somehow. Sorry.

You can watch the full games on the SEC Digital Network website (woo!), but …

BUT

Their controls suck. You have to wait for the stream to load before you can forward to any given point. There are also no fast-forward / reverse controls. You have pause/play and the slider. And their old-school lack of adaptive streaming will make you remember all the reasons you hate dial-up.

Short story: if you want to look at that fourth quarter, be prepared to wait an hour while the thing buffers. The only upside is that they seem to have cut out commercials, quarter breaks, and haltime, which reduced the total clip to 109 minutes.

So we can officially move on. We’re almost there guys!

Unfortunately CBS didn’t show the play clock during the entire drive, but I kept an eye on the game clock. I just don’t see how people could think Kiffin wasn’t playing to win. The only times it even remotely appeared the Vols weren’t playing with urgency were on the 3rd and 6 after the pass to Cottam (Cottam went out of bounds with 4:17 on the clock and the clock was running. The Vols huddled and got to the line with 3:51 remaining and Crompton snapped it with 3:44 remaining) and the 3rd and 6 after Hancock’s fumble out of bounds (at 2:29 with the clock running after the ball was set, and Crompton snapped it at 2:08 and threw the worst pass I have ever seen in my life.)

All the rest of the plays on the drive, the Vols seemed to be trying to move quickly. It’s just difficult when passing past the line of scrimmage isn’t a viable option.

And of course, on the Gators’ last drive Kiffin called a timeout to stop the clock on third and long but unfortunately Tebow got the first down.

At no point did it appear the Vols were trying to run out the clock.