Rocky Top Talking Points: Tuesday

by Joel Hollingsworth on Sep 5, 2006 7:28 AM EDT in Tennessee Volunteer Football

If you haven't read the AP story "Vols Find Strength in an Empty Stadium" yet, you should.
Give former Vol QB and current graduate assistant Rick Clausen some credit for the third quarter offensive explosion against Cal. He and coach Cutcliffe picked up on Cal's defensive backfield signals, which led to several excellent calls.
Give the offensive line credit for protecting Erik Ainge, who was never knocked down and was rarely pressured. Offensive guard David Ligon kept Cal's All-American tackle Brandon Mebane quiet all night. "He knocked me back a couple of yards a lot of times," Ligon said. "But we kept after him, Arron (Sears) and I. Every time we were in the huddle, we talked about punishing him and making him want to quit, and I think he did that." Mebane said after the game that the Vol o-line was the best he'd faced at Cal.
Tennessee linebacker Jerod Mayo was recognized as both the SEC defensive player of the week and the Walter Camp national defensive player of the week. Mayo, who'd sprained an ankle earlier last week in practice, had all of UT's three sacks against Cal, and said he was only at about 80%. Wonder what he can do at 100%.
Receiver Bret Smith suffered a concussion Saturday night and did not practice Monday. The teams expects that he'll be available for the Air Force game. Smith graded out well against Cal, better even than Robert Meachem, who turned two short receptions into long touchdowns. Meachem's grade suffered a bit because he actually ran two yards further than he was supposed to on the two TDs. Mistakes we can live with.
College Football News has the Vols at No. 7 following the Cal game. They dropped Cal to 22.
Check out this quote from the Tennessean:
Soon after his return to Tennessee was formally announced last winter, one of the first things David Cutcliffe did was sit down with Erik Ainge.
Cutcliffe told Ainge what a great guy he thought he was, told him how impressed he was with how he handled the Vols' struggles last season publicly, complimented his work ethic and what he was doing to get ready for his junior season.
Then came the clincher.
"I like everything except for the way you play quarterback," Cutcliffe told Ainge. "I'm going to change how you play quarterback."
So far, so good.

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Some Cal Perspectives on Rockyflop....(long post)

I figured I'd better be a man and come face the music (as if Saturday was not rough enough). Congratulations. UT played great and kicked Cal's butt seven ways to Sunday.

Watching, I thought we stunk on multiple lavels (not taking anything away from the Vols). The blown plays were bad enough (and plentiful enough), but the fact that my biggest pre-game concerns, the quarterback and the o-line, proved my concerns were quite valid made me realize this could be a very long season (figuratively, I'm not talking post-season bowl here). Even if we had our starting corner and TE, we still would have lost, maybe just not as badly. Gee, maybe if our 'stellar' recievers could catch? Ugghhh! However, there are about 100 teams I'd feel worse about losing to than the Vols at home. You guys looked good.

On the positive side, I still think Marshawn Lynch is on of the best tailbacks out there. It was both uplifting and heart breaking to watch him get pummled over and over again and still put out an extraordinary effort every run (I was surprised to see he had 6.4 yds/carry avg, was the top rusher in the game and Cal's top reciever...wait, maybe that's not a good thing). If our O-line can actually throw a block or two this year, he'll still have a great season.

Thanks for all your hospitality, Knoxville. Everyone was very gracious (As I expected. You see, my mom is from TN). I've always wanted to see a game there and it lived-up to the hype. Loudest place I've ever seen a college football game.

Go Bears!

p.s. -

Just in case you're interested in a really long post-game disection, here's yet another perspective - one of an ex-Cal player (no, not a starter or someone you would have heard of....). Personally, I think he's trying to make himself feel good. Then again, I never played the game at the level he did:

I write this more as therapy for myself than for your edification, but for what it's worth, here are my thoughts after watching the game.

The conclusion up front: I feel MUCH better about this team after watching the replay - despite some obvious areas of concern. It was impossible to sit in that stadium and see any silver lining coming out of that game. But the replay helped.

Defense: we were not dominated physically like I thought. Yes, we were not getting any pass rush or any real surge on the line but we were our typical defensive self in terms of holding the real estate around the line of scrimmage and having our LB's and d backs make tackles. An amazing statistic is that they only had NINETY-FOUR rushing yards with the score at 28-0. That's not a defense that's getting pushed around like it seemed in the stadium. It truly was a handful of plays on pass defense that was the issue (other than Follet's non-tackle aided by Bishop standing around after he threw off a blocker). As for Sid Thompson, what can I say? He screwed up badly and we don't have the depth we thought we had at d-back. But let's be realistic: our defensive issue in the last 5 years has ALWAYS been pass defense (think WSU last year). Mixon and Hughes both tend to give up plays on the outside and we usually don't have much of a pass rush. We are a "hold the line" type of defense and other than those few screw ups, we held the line much better than it seemed in person. Another amazing statistic: With the score at 35-0, Ainge had TEN completions. Hardly a Tennessee offensive clinic save for one solid drive, one broken tackle and and THREE long pass plays. I'm not excusing the defense for giving up four "unearned" td's - I'm just saying the vast majority of the time they played pretty well. That's not the sense I had on Saturday.

But it really didn't matter. Even if the defense hadn't given up a few bad plays, Tennessee still would have conservatively scored 14-21 points (their first TD was a solid drive and I'll give them at least another one just because of field position and our inability to move the ball). We still couldn't win that game because of our offense.

By position:

Offensive line: they were worse on the replay than I expected. Every third or fourth play was a total screw up by the line - either a missed block or assignment where a defender is totally untouched. We have serious issues with our line in terms of consistency. The overall pass protection was actually better than I expected, save for the occasional missed blocks mentioned above. But there were many running plays where it looked like they were running Marshawn down and we were assuming it was their team speed (which was certainly fast - no argument there), but the replay shows that those guys were COMPLETELY unblocked. I don't know enough about our line and our offensive scheme to know why that was happening, but to me the line play was the single most disappointing unit of the game.

Receivers: oops. spoke too soon. Yes, I'm a former qb and yes, i'm a little tainted by hearing stories of Hawkins' attitude last year all of the talk about how disappointed these guys were last year with our qb's not being able to get them the ball. Well you know what? It wasn't always perfect and it wasn't often enough but you guys had plenty of opportunities to strut your stuff on the big stage and you puked on your shoes - just as badly as the qb's. So get back to the fundamentals and just catch the ball.

Tight end: I realize Stephens was out but even if he was healthy we need a pass-catcher down the middle of the field so bad it's not even funny. Defenses leave the middle of the field open all day long because they're not threatened. And if you can't go down the middle then you can't go deep down the outside because they just sit on you out there - often with double-like coverage where safeties don't have to worry about the seams. Our qb's are locked in on one side and almost always on the outside because their inexperience makes it tough to see downfield in the middle and because we can't get open there. Morrah or Gray or somebody needs to get it done. Stephens is a great blocker but not a threat. Congrats to Beegen for a nice play down the seem in the second half. Let's do it about 50 more times.

RB's: I can't criticize much here. Marshawn ran hard as always and there was nowhere to go (see o-line). Another amazing statistic: we only had SIX plays in tennessee territory in the first half. We were so desparate for first downs that our play calling suffered. It's tough to establish the run when you have 2nd and 3rd down and long on every second and third play.
The spread offense: i'm sure this issue will be beat to death this week. From what I saw, we ran very little actual spread offense. We had some spread formations, but we had a pretty similar gameplan to past years. We had a tight end a lot, had two backs in the backfield a lot - especially in the first half.

QB's: it feels like we've made no progress but i'm hoping we'll be proven wrong in the next few weeks. Nate was thrown to the wolves and didn't play well but given my comments above he certainly didn't get any help. I'm not very objective on this subject but my sense is that we have a real problem besides the obvious. Even if Joe deserves to play and gives us the best chance for success this year, we're still back to square one next year with yet another first year qb (maybe even Nate again). I personally would start Nate this week so we can see how he reacts in a more friendly environment (and hopefully with more offensive support) and be quick to pull if he falters. I love how Joe has been to hell and back and keeps fighting. Good for him.

Special teams: what is there to criticize? We obviously found a great punter and the other teams looked solid. I'd take Marshawn off kick off return. Is he really that much better than the others to take that risk? I personally don't see it.

Coaching: I think you have to be around the team and coaches all day long to know how much blame to put on each. I'm not there. Evidence shows that this is a great staff and will prove by year's end that fact once again.

I'm encouraged after watching the replay. I had to reset my expectations after the game about what kind of year it would be, and I'm resetting them back up (though clearly not all the way). I still think this could be our best team under Tedford, even better than two years ago. The next several weeks will be interesting...

Thanks for hanging in there this long (though I'm sure many deleted after reading the subject line), but it's a lot cheaper than therapy. I'm glad I made the trip. What a great experience.

by AustinBear on Sep 5, 2006 11:30 AM EDT reply actions