Tennessee Scrimmage Report - August 14
by Will Shelton on Aug 14, 2010 10:46 PM EDT
in Tennessee Volunteer Football
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PrintThe Vols held their second scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday night, and initial reports suggest the offense got the best of the defense again. From the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Dooley voiced concerns with the defense's inability to create turnovers - only one fumble by Toney Williams late in the action tonight after zero turnovers in the first scrimmage - which is even more curious based on Boise State's habit of creating a ton of turnovers in the Justin Wilcox regime.
But since it's a scrimmage, the flip side of that coin is that the Vol offense isn't turning it over. And tonight, we don't just have to take Dooley's word that the quarterbacks played well - the numbers back it up.
Matt Simms went 11-of-22 for 235 yards and 3 touchdowns, a significant improvement on both the first scrimmage and the Orange & White Game. Tyler Bray followed up with 16-of-28 for 246 yards, though he failed to throw a touchdown. But both QBs had completions of 60+ yards, and neither threw a pick for the second scrimmage in a row.
It was good news for the offense all around: Tauren Poole and David Oku combined for 109 yards rushing on only 15 carries, and the freshmen wide receivers made an impact: Justin Hunter and Da'Rick Rogers were the two leading receivers tonight, and while Rogers' 5 catches for 63 yards are impressive, Hunter was the real star: 5 catches, 128 yards and a touchdown.
You can weigh the positives and negatives with the offense moving the ball so well compared to the defense being unable to stop them - Nick Reveiz, in the KNS piece above, talked about how the defense started poorly and finished strong in the first scrimmage, then started well and finished poorly tonight. The only clear negatives were three dropped interceptions by Savion Frazier, and the kicking game: Daniel Lincoln went 2-4 with misses from 41 and 37 (his longest make was 30), and Michael Palardy was 1-4 with one blocked.
It's just a scrimmage...but it's what we've got right now. The offensive numbers are encouraging, the kicking issues are troubling, and the defense continues to scramble to just find bodies. Malik Jackson started at end tonight with Chris Walker, while Prentiss Waggner continues to lock down the strong safety spot. We'll continue to update with links and info from Dooley and others as they're made available throughout the weekend.
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To be fair to the defense,
this is the offense’s second year under Chaney, and I really don’t think it’s much different from last year. At the very least, it’s not as different as switching from M. Kiffin to Wilcox.
Remember last year how we were trying to be patient as the offense was on its third coordinator in as many years? Good times.
Would like to hear something more specific
on why the offense had more success later – is it because they were going against mostly backups, or because the ones were gassed due to lack of depth? Either way, seems like there’s going to a be a very significant dropoff from first team to second team on defense, especially in the secondary.
by Will Shelton on Aug 15, 2010 12:09 AM EDT up reply actions
Probably a bit of both.
But yes, my worry this season is how we handle the inevitable injuries. Let’s put it this way: we beat Kentucky so long as we have a full team to throw at them.
by David Hooper on Aug 15, 2010 12:10 AM EDT up reply actions
Those kicking numbers
are very concerning to me. Palaaaaardyyyyyyy!!!!!!!! … Yep, that’s a good Yell-While-Shaking-Your-Fist-At-Nothing name.
Eric Berry Eats Landsharks For Breakfast.
Talk about a kid with a rough transition to college
Hopefully, it’s just because they are putting him in some rough spots. Because the YouTube tape looked a lot better than that. And we know YouTube never lies, right?
The COEXIST bumper sticker is ridiculous. How are people supposed to get along when one side is flying planes into tall buildings or wearing sweater vests full of C4 and nails? The faiths are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
MENDOZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Palardy’s block should be attributed to the second-team FG unit in front of him; we’ve probably never even heard of half of those guys given how thin we are in the first place. But the misses are concerning, no doubt…he’ll have to earn real confidence in real games, of course, but if he’d gone 12-for-12 in preseason and won the job outright, that would’ve been fine with me.
by Will Shelton on Aug 15, 2010 3:06 PM EDT up reply actions
I'd suspect it's mental.
Blocks are only part of the impacts of bad line play. Palardy hasn’t seen college fast in person, and with blocked kicks happening already, it could be in his head. We’re not seeing how the line plays right now, but if Palardy is thinking he has to be faster than he’s ever been and hit it harder than he has been …well, I can see that adding up over time.
I’d like to see him get some snaps with the first-team FG unit and see what that does.
Simulated Gameday Experience - just like the real thing, only we have smoke machines.
by Chris Pendley on Aug 15, 2010 8:22 PM EDT up reply actions
Those kicking numbers are extremely scary
The other numbers kinda are too, because the defense is getting owned by what we expected to be our weak spot. I hope it’s just lack of depth (to be expected) rather than lack of ability by the ones, which will make this a long, long season.
by Incipient_Senescence on Aug 15, 2010 12:02 PM EDT reply actions
From Wes Rucker's Twitter:
Malik Jackson: "I’ve made a lot of fun at Savion Frazier, and that will continue until he learns how to catch the ball."
Lou Brock loves Lamp.
The defense is very concerning yes,
But we will need to score some points to score an upset or two this season against the big boys.
I honestly think that top to bottom we have one of the best groups of receivers (including TE) in the country. At least we can hang our hat on that. Jones and Moore and much better than average and are seniors and these young freshman can be the difference. Stocker is legit in the middle too.
At least one of the Newbies is impressing as well.
I honestly think that top to bottom we have one of the best groups of receivers (including TE) in the country
From a guy who doesn’t just hand out compliments to fresh meat.
“Justin Hunter really made some incredible plays,” UT coach Derek Dooley said. “He’s got a lot of ability, and I was real pleased to see him step up.”
The COEXIST bumper sticker is ridiculous. How are people supposed to get along when one side is flying planes into tall buildings or wearing sweater vests full of C4 and nails? The faiths are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
One thing nobody seems to have picked up on
is that our QB’s could have had three interceptions if Frazier had simply been able to catch the balls he was trying to intercept.
Everything I’ve read doesn’t say who threw those passes that were almost intercepted. It sounds more like the QB’s got lucky than anything else, right? So did they really do that well?
Pandemonium Reigns
by Pandemonium Reigns on Aug 16, 2010 1:06 PM EDT reply actions
It's a good question.
I prefer to think of them as ‘probable interceptions’. Since the quarterback has no control over what the defender actually does with an interceptable ball, it’s more fair to grade the qb on balls that had a high likelihood of being intercepted. That normalizes things somewhat, but even then, the defense sounds like they felt that the offense had the better day.
by David Hooper on Aug 16, 2010 2:53 PM EDT up reply actions
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