One year ago today, Montario Hardesty's they-might-have-another-touchdown, Coker's Encore, XTFL, and "Derek Smith" had all advanced in the Best Plays of 2006 Bracket. Contrast that with two years ago when we were re-living the absolute horror that was the 2005 South Carolina game. We've come a long way since then.

Re-living the 2007 season. Because those who don't learn from the past are doomed to have a new coach next year.

Pre-game

Homecoming is a time to catch up with old friends in familiar places. You know, like Dominance, Mastery, and Power. After Dancing with Disaster against Steve Spurrier, we needed some of that.

Yes, this was the week that Demonte Bolden got suspended and LaMarcus Coker’s last chance went up in smoke, but Louisiana-Lafayette was coming to town, and we were looking forward to a breather.

The game

For future reference, this is what a breather looks like:

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Pre-game

After only half a season, the Vols had already stumbled out of the gate, lucked into a lead in the SEC East, and then squandered that lead in embarrassing fashion in Tuscaloosa. They’d lost by a combined score of 100-37 to their two biggest rivals, and Steve Spurrier -- their third biggest rival when he's wearing South Carolina colors – was coming to town.

The mood on Rocky Top was . . . let’s call it sour mash. Knoxville News Sentinel cartoonist Dan Proctor published a cartoon on game day depicting the Grim Reaper at coach Fulmer's door with Spurrier ringing the doorbell. Meanwhile, ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit opined on a national broadcast that Tennessee's players were more concerned about the NFL than playing for the Vols.

That was all bad enough, but making matters worse, this wasn’t your typical South Carolina team despite the fact that they had dancin’ Blake Mitchell under center. The Gamecocks had been 6th in the BCS rankings before losing to Vanderbilt the prior week, and their only other loss was to LSU. They’d already beaten Mississippi State, Kentucky, and Georgia. The teams seemed pretty evenly matched, too, with Tennessee having statistical advantages in the rushing game, both offense and defense. As you might imagine, Steve Spurrier had the advantage in the passing game when his offense was on the field, and as you might not imagine, he had the advantage in passing defense, as well, although Tennessee’s offensive line did lead the nation in fewest sacks allowed.

But with the Alabama hangover still raging, Vol fans could manage only a couple of desperate pleas: don’t abandon the running game (again), and please, please, please defend the pass. Most of all, though, we just wanted a win, however we might get it.

The game

With ESPN not airing the Tennessee-Steve Spurrier game until late in the evening, Vol fans had a chance to keep an eye on the race for the SEC East. The morning began with perfect autumn weather and a wistful hope for something Sunday Morning Quarterback dubbed Scenario Four: where the Vols not only beat the Gamecocks, but Georgia beat Florida as well.

That would be just lovely, thank you, but in the early game, an even better scenario began to develop. Call it Scenario 4A. By 3:30, Sylvester Croom’s Bulldogs pulled the upset and beat Kentucky, giving the 'Cats three SEC losses. By 6:30, Georgia had ended its game against Florida ahead in both personal fouls and points, putting Tennessee one game ahead of the Gators. Georgia and Tennessee both had two SEC losses, but the Vols had the tiebreaker.

By 8:00 that evening, Tennessee was behind the wheel, once again gunning straight for Atlanta and the SEC Championship Game. They invited 108,000 fans to pile in the bus, and they all went joyriding.

For a half. Until they almost drove off a cliff.

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Pre-game

War Eagle!

Coach Fulmer greeted his players with the Auburn cheer when the team reconvened after spending Annihilation Weekend in the shelter of the bye week bunker. The polls were in absolute disarray after five of the top ten teams in the nation had been beaten. Best of all for Vol fans, the Auburn Tigers had given Florida an SEC loss. The Gators still had the head-to-head advantage over Tennessee (2-2, 0-1), but they were headed to LSU this week, and a loss there coupled with a Vol win over Georgia would put the Vols back in the lead in the East. Even this slightest ray of sunshine had Vol fans making audacious, homeristic predictions of victory and putting their innocent children in harm's way.

Of course, a bit of twisted logic was at work on Rocky Top. Rivals failing really had little to do with the question of whether we were any good, and the No. 13 Georgia Bulldogs presented several challenges. First, the Red and Black were pitting running backs Thomas Brown and Knowshon Moreno, who had just combined for 270 yards against Ole Miss, against a Tennessee rush defense that was 88th in the nation and 9th in the SEC. Second, Georgia’s punt return specialist Mikey Henderson was in the same category as Cal’s DeSean Jackson and Florida’s Brandon James, and you remembered what happened with them. There was a fair chance that if Britton Colquitt didn’t kick the ball out of bounds or force a fair catch Henderson wouldn’t be touched until he was tackled in the end zone by his own players. Third, the Bulldogs were coming to Knoxville, and while you would think that that was a good thing, the home team had lost the last four games.

And really, Florida losing to Auburn went only so far in erasing Vol fans' memories of the righteous bummer in the season opener and the 59-20 dishumiliarrassment two weeks later. No, fan sentiment on Rocky Top was still vascillating somewhere between "Fire Fulmer" and "Get the Pitchforks and Torches," and the media wasn't helping matters. Knoxville News Sentinel columnist John Pennington had been busy the bye week, and in Saturday morning’s edition, just hours before kickoff, he published a column not only critical of the program but quoting nine unidentified former Tennessee players as having some very serious concerns about the direction of Tennessee’s football program. Make no mistake, a loss to Georgia this day and the nation would witness a full blown meltdown in Knoxville.

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Pre-game

It was only mid-September, and like so many times before, an early loss to the Florida Gators had Vol fans looking for help in the SEC East. This year, though, due to the degree of dishumiliarrassment and the fact that we’d also already suffered an embarrassing loss to Cal, Vol fans were even more divided than usual, the more pessimistic ones disgusted at the optimists’ refusal to acknowledge that the program had a serious, chronic condition and the more optimistic ones pointing out that no fan who was upset to hear about a Tennessee special teams player giving up against Florida should give up as a fan.

With all the post-dishumiliarrassment bickering, lamenting, and wailing, the following week’s game against Arkansas State snuck up on us and had the potential to drive the team and its fans over a cliff into another season like that one.

The game

Fortunately, Tennessee avoided the cliff, at least for this week:

The Vols’ first drive actually stalled at the 20, forcing a field goal attempt by Daniel Lincoln. He hit it, but Arkansas State roughed him on the play, and the coaches actually took the points off the board. Good thing, too, because on the next play Erik Ainge found Chris Brown for a 15-yard touchdown. This would not be the only time during the season that Tennessee would make good on a second chance.

Offense. As the drive chart shows, Tennessee had a decent day. Overall, Ainge and the offense looked good, scoring six touchdowns and two field goals. Ainge was on target and in command except for one bizarre interception that was returned for a touchdown. He hit 11 different receivers, almost doubled Arkansas State’s first downs (30 to 17), and led the offense to 523 total yards to the Indians’ 377. LaMarcus Coker got the bulk of the work at running back, and he had 15 carries for 101 yards and a touchdown, 49 receiving yards (and a touchdown), and 67 yards on kickoff returns. Arian Foster added 57 yards on 12 carries, and Lennon Creer had 29 on nine carries.

Defense. At times, the defense looked like they had improved. They broke up several passes, intercepted two of them, and even got some decent pressure on the quarterback. They still gave up 178 yards rushing and 196 yards passing, though, and they were in serious need of some consistency. Eric Berry seemed to be improving faster than anyone else on defense. He had already effectively usurped Rico McCoy's position as the team’s best tackler and Jonathan Hefney's as the leader in the secondary. Part of the latter might have been due to Hefney’s disappearing act as the team’s punt returner. Hefney, the guy who’d had several season highlights as a returner the prior season, gained negative 17 yards in that role against the Indians.

Coaching. The coaches seemed to be balancing the need to win the game with the need to figure out how to beat Georgia in two weeks by getting a bunch of new guys on the field for live tryouts. DeAngelo Wilingham joined Berry in the secondary and the two of them were all over the place. Brent Vinson and Nevin McKenzie also saw a good deal of action back there, and Lennon Creer and Ben Martin also got some fair minutes.

Heroes:

Player of the game, defense. Robert Ayers, who had six total tackles (five solo), two sacks, and another tackle for a loss.

Player of the game, special teams. Daniel Lincoln, who has set a Tennessee record by hitting the first eight field goal attempts of his career.

Player of the game, offense. Lucas Taylor was the player of the game, grabbing seven catches for 104 yards and serving up two of the game’s biggest plays: a one-handed 23-yard catch and a 17-yard touchdown during which he broke two tackles to get into the end zone:

Post-game

Overall, it was a decent game for the Vols, and it was received by fans according to their particular frame of mind. Where some saw signs of improvement as reason for optimism, others saw reason to be terrified of what Darren McFadden would do to the team. Old Smokey said take your pick: pony or pony poo.

Whatever camp any particular fan was in, he or she would be there for a couple of weeks. The team would head to the underground bomb shelter for the catastrophic bye week that was to come and would emerge the following week to host the Georgia Bulldogs.

Elsewhere this week: Brains!

A final look back at the 2007 season. Up today: The Florida Gators.

Pre-game

So the opening game of the season against Cal had been a total bummer, and the second had been more of the same with a degree of improvement in the second half. Neither of those games had really mattered in the grand scheme of things, though. No, what mattered was the SEC, and the SEC season was about to begin, as it almost always does for Tennessee, with a game against the Gators.

Tennessee was out to reclaim the cheese it had lost by one point to eventual national champion Florida the prior year in Neyland Stadium. The Vols looked like they might actually be ready, too. Running back Arian Foster was looking good, punter Britton Colquitt was finally at 100%, and our defense (Xavier Mitchell, at least) was feeling confident enough to tell Florida sophomore quarterback Tim Tebow to “bring it.”

That last part, while a nice sentiment, maaaay not have been the brightest pre-game comment ever made because our defense didn't exactly have a resume that anyone, much less Tim Tebow, feared. Demonte Bolden and Dan Williams had played barely well enough to keep their starting spots, and receiver Brent Vinson was being moved to the secondary to shore up weaknesses there. Tebow was going to bring it; the question was whether our defense could do anything about "it."

Really, neither team had a particularly good defense, and it was just a question of which offense would maximize its advantage. For Tennessee, Vol fans weren’t concerned that “Bad Erik” might make an appearance (he’d been buried in the LSU end zone along with the corpse of The Season of Which We Do Not Speak in a secret ceremonial cleansing in the summer of 2006), they were aware of the possibility that “Injured Erik” might show, what with the broken pinky and all. For the Gators, the first couple of games seemed to suggest that Tebow would have his way with the Vol defense unless he ran into Rico McCoy, in which case the collision would spawn new galaxies.

Special teams was a real wild card for both teams, but please, please, for the sake of all that is Good and Orange, don’t punt to Brandon James, the Florida speedster with moves to boot who had returned a punt for a touchdown in last year’s game but had it called back due to a penalty. You still remember that and DeSean Jackson's return for a TD at Cal, right? Okay, then.

The game

Sigh. Pictures first, and note the comically inept first two drives:

Disgrace. Yeah. That first one? We went nowhere and then punted directly to Brandon James, who ran it back 83 yards for a touchdown. Nice.

Uh-huh. The second drive? That’d be Ainge completely squandering this . . .

. . . by doing this in the red zone:

It really never got any better. Florida outpaced the Vols by scoring three TDs to two FGs for most of the rest of the first half. There was the briefest, faintest glimmer of hope when Tennessee scored a touchdown just before halftime to cut the lead to 28-13 and when the WooBerry Bush interrupted Gary Danielson’s embarrassing fawning over the Tighty Mebow first thing in the second half:

Humiliation. That play, however, was almost immediately followed by Injured Erik and Foster teaming up on this wonder:

Handing off backwards because of a broken pinky will do that, I guess. Tennessee’s final five offensive possessions?

• 7 yards and a punt;
• 28 yards and an over-on-downs;
• 5 yards and a punt;
• 9 yards and an interception;
• 8 yards and a merciful expiration of time.

Embarrassment. Well, then. At least the defense stepped up in the second half like they did against Southern Miss, right? Um . . . no. While we were busy mostly three-and-outing, Florida was having a bon fire in the end zone:

• 99 yards and a TD;
• 53 yards and a TD;
• 66 yards and a FG (woo!);
• 29 yards and a TD.

With ten minutes left to play and a 49-20 lead, Florida was still calling time outs and throwing bombs with its starters. Even worse, Florida special teams player Derek Baldry later told the media that an unnamed Tennessee player not only quit trying, but told his opponent he was giving up.

Except for Coker’s 74-yard kickoff return and Eric Berry’s interception return for a touchdown (and the waterboy’s performance, I guess), it was complete and utter dishumiliarrassment. Tennessee had gained 26 yards rushing against Florida. In two years. Two of the Top 5 plays on the following Sunday’s Phillip Fulmer Show were a field goal and a pass for a first down. Now that's bad.

Yes, it was all-Florida, all-the-time, and I’m not just talking about the game, either. The CBS broadcast fawned over Florida for four full hours. Tennessee native and fan Kenny Chesney was shown wearing a Gator helmet and singing on stage with Tim Tebow. Verne Lundquist mentioned Florida blog Every Day Should Be Saturday on air (okay, this was a good thing), and Doug Flutie, during the USC-Nebraska game later that day couldn’t even remember which team Florida had pounded to pulp. And for a little salt on the seeping wound, when I finally turned off the game, my own TiVo was auto-recording the Florida Gator Postgame show. Et tu, TiVo?

Oh, and when words were no longer sufficient, we had Tony Joiner, PDA:

Post-game

As you might expect, post-game on Rocky Top was sheer hysteria. Oh, no! We’ve become South Carolina! Forget Arkansas State next week, we need to get ready for Georgia! Now!

And, of course, Vol fans had several words for the coaching staff, most of the phrases beginning with a four-letter word and ending with “Fulmer.” The refrain – The Game Has Passed Coach Fulmer By – was familiar, but there was something new about it: Formerly staunch defenders of Fulmer were peering over the fence and noting the color of the grass on the other side. Gary Danielson had referred to the Volunteer offense as “nip and tuck” during the game, and the same phrase also seemed an apt description of what many Vol fans were clamoring for on Monday morning: surgery to remove signs of aging from the face of the Tennessee football program.

But we still had at least nine more games. If we were going to avoid another SOWWDNS, we were going to have to race through the five stages of grief:

1. Denial. That didn't just happen. . . . We didn't just get completely and utterly embarrassed by a sophomore QB, a sophomore wide receiver, a third-year BCS conference coach (for the third time in a row), and a defense replacing nine of 11 starters. And we didn't just lose to our biggest rival 11 out of the last 15 tries. . . .

2. Anger. . . . ESPN did this to Tennessee on purpose, and you just know they're laughing in the halls in Bristol! And we would have won that game in 2000 if the STUPID REFS wouldn't have given that TOUCHDOWN to JABAR GAFFNEY! And WHAT'S UP WITH THAT ZOOK GUY STEALING OUR PLAYS IN 1991? DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON SPURRIER. . . .

3. Bargaining. . . . Okay, God. . . . If we could just have, say, one more national championship this decade, then we could die happy. . . . At least a simple SEC championship, okay? Do this for us, and . . . [w]e'll tithe 10% of our concessions revenue. We'll say our prayers and give to the poor and eat whole grain bread. Just one more. Soon. Please.

4. Depression. Never mind. It really doesn't matter anymore anyway. Go ahead and take us now. Or not. Whatever. We really don't care whether we ever win another championship on any level in any sport. We only want to sleep. Wake us up when the pain is gone. Or not. Whatever. . . .

5. Acceptance. Okay, Vol fans. You know what? We've lost to Florida. Bad. And we've lost to Cal. We're beginning the season 1-2. But the Cal loss doesn't matter half a lick because it's not the SEC,  and the Florida game is just one SEC loss, and it was our toughest in-conference game. . . . Get your head up because there's a lot of season left, and we can turn this thing around. We've done it before.

Well. Now that that was over, we could focus on the remaining games. Arkansas State up next.

A final look at the Tennessee Volunteers' 2007 season. Up today: the preseason.

Photo by bb_matt

In the summer of 2007, the Tennessee Volunteer football program was basking in the success of 2006, a season during which they’d done the equivalent of righting the Titanic. Coach Fulmer’s post-2005 shuffling of the offensive staff had resulted in a decent 9-4 record, the losses coming to LSU and Arkansas without starting quarterback Erik Ainge, to Penn State in the Outback Bowl, and by one point to eventual national champion Florida. Not quite up to the standards of yore, but a solid recovery from The Season of Which We Do Not Speak.

Tennessee had followed up its turn-around season by assembling a stellar recruiting class that was ranked third in the nation by Rivals and fourth in the nation by Scout. Yes, things were looking up.

Kicking up dust. Of course, there were some serious concerns going into the 2007 season. As promising as the beginning of the turnaround was in 2006, the running game really hadn’t yet recovered. That Tennessee’s ability to run the ball had been in a funk for several years wasn’t exactly a secret, and whether you trace the problem back to 2005 or to the hiring of former Florida o-line coach Jimmy Ray Stephens, there was really no arguing that Tennessee’s three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust identity had gone up in smoke.

Offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe conceded as much, saying that he had mismanaged that aspect of the game in 2006. No wonder, really. He’d had his hands full with the Reanimation of Erik Ainge. In any event, getting the running game up to speed was high on Cutcliffe’s priority list for the upcoming season.

Cutcliffe had a solid unit with which to work. Arian Foster, who’d followed up a very solid half-season as a freshman in 2005 with a mere 322 yards in 2006 had motivated himself all summer with a picture of his disheartening fumble against Penn State in the Outback Bowl. The starting job was apparently his to lose.

Some were hoping that Foster would indeed lose the starting gig to LaMarcus Coker, the team’s most dynamic playmaker who had accounted for a full quarter of the 16 Best Plays of 2006. And why not? Word was that he was maturing and that his off-and-on cohabitation with Smokey IX in Fulmer’s doghouse appeared to be “off” for good.

But oy, almost as soon as that feel good article about Coker was published, word came that Fulmer had suspended Coker indefinitely, citing some mysterious medical condition. ESPN later reported that the suspension was triggered by another in a series of violations of Tennessee’s substance abuse policy. But that mysterious “medical condition” must have qualified as some kind of loophole or something because Coker was allowed to return to the team about a week before the season’s first game. Vol fans hoped he’d learned his lesson, because only LaMarcus Coker could stop LaMarcus Coker.

Can any of you catch? The real concern for the offense wasn’t the running game, though. No, that distinction belonged to the passing game. Gone were Robert Meachem, Jayson Swain, and Bret Smith, and stepping into the void would be . . . well, nobody really knew.

At least the unit was in good hands. Trooper Taylor had, upon arriving on campus, rejuvenated an underachieving group of running backs, and in his first year, he’d done the same thing with Meachem, Swain, and Smith. This year, his task would be different, though, as he wouldn’t need to coach up players discouraged by setbacks so much as he would need to develop receivers with no college experience from the ground up.

The pool of candidates? Senior Casey Woods, juniors Lucas Taylor and Josh Briscoe, sophomore Austin Rogers and Quintin Hancock, junior college transfer Kenny O’Neal (RTT#17), prep school grad and changed man Brent Vinson (RTT#3), and true freshmen Todd Campbell (RTT#13), Gerald Jones (RTT#7), Ahmad Paige (RTT#4), and Denarius Moore (RTT#14). There was some serious potential in that group of 11, especially with the guys in that shiny new recruiting class. According to backup QB B.J. Coleman, some of the new guys were “wooo!” fast, and it was a race just to get back in the five step drop and throw the ball before the receiver was finished with his route.

The odds were with the upperclassmen, though, as history shows that with the exception of Kelly Washington, first year receivers don’t get much playing time for the Vols, and Trooper Taylor pointed out that the thing about fast young guys is that they can get to the wrong place in a hurry.

Tight end, anyone? Whatever the receiving corps ended up looking like, one thing was certain: it would be fresh from the farm new. That fact had the offensive coaches looking in whole new ways at tight ends Brad Cottam, Chris Brown, David Holbert, Jeff Cottam, and Luke Stocker. Brad Cottam could hardly contain his enthusiasm, and coaches’ comments about him were inducing in Vol fans visions of Jason Witten beating linebackers down the field and dragging three defensive backs into the checkerboards. Fulmer and Cutcliffe were reportedly tweaking the system to make the tight ends a focal point of the offense.

And then tragedy. Holbert suffered a knee injury, and his season ended before it began. Then, just before the season began, Brad Cottam suffered a significant wrist injury that was projected to keep him sidelined for two to three months. Back to square one.

Defense. New. Green. Good? The defense had concerns of its own. The d-line (and the rest of the defense) had been embarrassed by Tony Hunt and Penn State in the Outback Bowl, and the coaches were looking at having to replace both of their starting defensive tackles (as well as Justin Harrell, who had missed most of the 2006 season) and were in serious need of depth.

The biggest problem on defense, though, was going to be the secondary. Senior Jonathan Hefney would return at safety, but the other three spots were up for grabs and would likely be filled by still more green.

The good news was that Eric Berry (RTT#1) was on campus. The wake of hype trailing Berry everywhere he went was something Tennessee fans hadn’t witnessed since Peyton Manning committed to play for the Vols. Even better, though, was the fact that when Berry started practicing, the hype actually appeared to be warranted. In fact, the coaches seemed to have discarded their usual reign on restraint altogether:

Recruiting high school players into college is a funny business. With middle of the road recruits, you generally have more hope than hype. And with the hype guys, the coaches generally embark on a de-recruiting campaign as soon as the VHTs step onto campus because their substantial egos are in the way of progress. We've all heard coaches utter ego malleations such as "[VHT] is showing talent and potential, but he's got a lot to learn before he's ready to play in the SEC."

Not so with Eric Berry, at least so far. Go google-hunting for a negative quote about Berry. Shoot, try to find even a "hold your horses" kind of quote. Nonexistent. No, it appears that the coaches feel that Berry is not only primed to seize control of a starting position at right corner in the first game against Cal, it seems that they think he's mentally ready as well. His maturity renders star-stripping unnecessary.

Woo, Berry. It grows on the Woobush. It’s very rare.
 
Nostradamus abstains. So could Tennessee continue to build on the improvement it had enjoyed in 2006 with all of those concerns? Nobody really knew.

Florida, having won the National Championship in 2006 with Chris Leak at QB now featured Urban Meyer running Meyer’s offense with Meyer’s players, including baby rhino Tim Tebow. Georgia was going to be solid again, and they’d be looking for revenge for the 51-33 pounding we’d given them at their place the year before. Steve Spurrier was beginning to like his team so much that he was getting cocky again. And that was just the top four teams in the East. Both Kentucky, which was improving due in large part to former Vol Randy Sanders’ work with QB Andre Woodson, and Vanderbilt were legit trap games. Shoot, even college football guru Phil Steele couldn’t make up his mind about the SEC East. He had Georgia and South Carolina tied for first and Florida and Tennessee tied for third in his preseason poll. The league would again be strong -- the coaches poll had five SEC teams in the top 15 – but nobody could agree on which team was the strongest.

No, nobody knew what to think going into 2007. Nobody knew about Tennessee’s receivers, or its secondary, or its defensive tackles. Nobody knew what was going to happen in the SEC East, or the West, or what would happen nationally, for that matter.

Nobody knew anything about the season that was about to unfold. Nobody, that is, except our own Corn from a Jar, who somehow divined the coming national catastrophe and correctly predicted that Tennessee would be one of the few to survive the calamity.

Last match up before tomorrow's Final in the Best Plays of 2007 Brackety-ish Thingy.

This afternoon, we have one seed Big Dan Got Mad Ups against two seed That Play Again.

Big Dan Got Mad Ups

That Play Again

Choose wisely. Polls close at midnight. Ish.

The fourth and final Round Two match up in the Best Plays of 2007 Brackety-ish Thingy features one seed Antonio Reynolds Makes Sure UL-Laf against two seed That Play Again. To get into the second round, Reynolds smoked Coker Smokes Florida 35-19 and That Play Again completely caught Foster's Wheel Route off guard, 44-10.

The contestants:

Antonio Reynolds Makes Sure UL-Laf (1)

At stake: Nothing. It was Louisiana-LaFayette.

In-game context: It was already 17-0, Vols, in only the second quarter when two of the most remarkable things happened:

Impact: None, but it makes me happy. Few things are better than seeing a defensive lineman lumbering 70 yards toward the end zone after lucking into an interception. To see him juke a guy, well that there's something special.

That Play Again (2)

At stake: The SEC East. We'd lost to Florida. Again. Losing to Georgia, too, would be unthinkable, but it's exactly what most were thinking. Third in the East. Again. Maybe fourth.

In-game context: But huh. We made them punt,  and then we scored a touchdown to go up by 7. And we made them punt again. And again. And then, on the first play of the second quarter, offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe dialed up that play we'd used against Florida (I think) the year before:

Impact: Here's an idea: let's run that play more often than once per season. Erik Ainge whiffed on the block, Lucas Taylor's pass was not quite on the mark, and LaMarcus Coker almost ran out of bounds after he managed to catch the ball, and yet he was so wide open it worked. Again. Tennessee was well on its way to the SEC Championship Game. Yeah, we needed somebody to beat Florida, but we helped ourselves against Georgia, too, ruining what could have been, in hindsight, a shot at the national championship.

You decide which play advances into the third round. Vote below. Poll closes tomorrow night at midnight because the winner plays again tomorrow.

Next up in the Best Plays of 2007 Brackety-ish Thingy is No. 3 seed Foster's Wheel Route versus No. 2 seed That Play Again.

The contestants:

Foster's Wheel Route

At stake: A trip to Atlanta and the SEC Championship Game.

In-game context: Shoot, we were all still looking for our seats when this happened on the very first play from scrimmage for either team:

Impact: That play triggered a really impressive first half by Tennessee, all of which we needed because Kentucky matched it point-for-point in the second. Four dramatic overtimes later, we emerged the survivor.

That Play Again

At stake: The SEC East. We'd lost to Florida. Again. Losing to Georgia, too, would be unthinkable, but it's exactly what most were thinking. Third in the East. Again. Maybe fourth.

In-game context: But huh. We made them punt,  and then we scored a touchdown to go up by 7. And we made them punt again. And again. And then, on the first play of the second quarter, offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe dialed up that play we'd used against Florida (I think) the year before:

Impact: Here's an idea: let's run that play more often than once per season. Erik Ainge whiffed on the block, Lucas Taylor's pass was not quite on the mark, and LaMarcus Coker almost ran out of bounds after he managed to catch the ball, and yet he was so wide open it worked. Again. Tennessee was well on its way to the SEC Championship Game. Yeah, we needed somebody to beat Florida, but we helped ourselves against Georgia, too, ruining what could have been, in hindsight, a shot at the national championship.

So which of these two will advance? That's up to you. Vote below.