Talking Points: defending the defense, the defensible, and the defenseless

by Joel on Sep 29, 2009 9:00 AM EDT in Rocky Top Talking Points Comment 16 comments

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Mike Strange is defending Tennessee's defense, saying that it wasn't as bad as real-time made it feel.
Not to be outdone, Mike Griffith is defending both Bruce Pearl and Jonathan Crompton. On Bruce, Griffith notes that he's the same gregarious guy on ESPN as he is in a small, media-less room full of autistic kids or on the streets of some obscure European country trying to get folks to see his team play. Anyone who talks so well so much and has such a good time doing it is likely to end up with his foot in his mouth every once in awhile. On Crompton, Griffith takes a closer look at Crompton's passes against Ohio and finds several dropped passes and good throw-aways among the still-too-many errors.
Whoa. That story about Emmanuel Negedu "passing out" after a workout yesterday? He had to be revived with a defibrillator. Still no news on his overnight tests.
Straight from Mike Hamilton's tweeter, we won't know the time for next week's Georgia game until Monday, but it will be either "noonish" or 3:30.
Nick Reveiz's knee injury? A torn ACL. How are they going to replace him in the middle? Lane Kiffin said that if it was late in the season, they'd just plug in the backup, but with eight games remaining, they're considering a lot of different options. Yesterday, they put Savion Frazier -- who's been backing up Rico McCoy at weakside -- at the Mike. Redshirt freshman Herman Lathers -- who's been listed as Reveiz's backup -- is another option. Lathers didn't take on that role against Ohio when Reveiz went out because Lathers had a concussion, so true freshman Nigel Mitchell-Thornton filled the hole.

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Oh man...

Thoughts and prayers for Negedu and his family. Did not know they had to defibrillate him. Does this mean his career is over?

On another note- going to the UT-AU game this weekend. I have been to every UT-AU game, except the last SEC Championship game, for the past 10 years. I want to see a win, baby!

Ball, oskie, cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle... for this is the WINNING EDGE.

by pound the rock on Sep 29, 2009 9:45 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

oh that is scary

i don’t know, but is it likely an indication of a heart condition?

what’s even worse about the situation is that his family is so far away.

by golfballs03 on Sep 29, 2009 10:38 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Is interesting. It goes sort of like this: UT’s defense gave up a bomb pass, and then a 3rd and 15 converson, and a then 3rd and 12 conversion, and then another bomb pass, and then a 3rd and 5 five conversion, and then another bomb pass, and then a couple more 3rd down conversions. And then a couple mroe deep bombs.

But, all in all, it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

_______________________________
Eric Berry is better at football than you.

by kidbourbon on Sep 29, 2009 9:52 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

3rd down was a big problem in that game

Fix thirds, and that one isn’t even close. I don’t anticipate that much 3rd down deficiency in most games, but it does happen to the best from time to time.

by Hooper on Sep 29, 2009 10:33 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

And more importantly

Pray for the E-Man. It doesn’t sound normal. I’m okay with it if his career is over, so long as he avoided a Hank Gathers-esque situation.

_______________________________
Eric Berry is better at football than you.

by kidbourbon on Sep 29, 2009 9:53 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Word.

by Hooper on Sep 29, 2009 10:30 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

What about Jarod Askew?

May not have spelled it correctly, but wasn’t he a stud LB from Virginia?

We are going to need a helluva effort on Saturday to derail the Ubarn offense. They have good balance and create match up problems with their Malzahn spread.

Ball, oskie, cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle... for this is the WINNING EDGE.

by pound the rock on Sep 29, 2009 9:58 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs