Commence the 15-minutes of stream of conscious post-game ramblings. Hold me accountable for nothing.
Deep breath. Hmm. I find that I am out of words. Oy? Overused. Argh? Ditto. Hmph. There. A new one.
We have problems on special teams. I'm thinking most of that is coaching, and most of that is an obstinant resistance to learning from our mistakes. Brandon James ran a punt back for a TD against us two years ago in Neyland Stadium. It was called back. It would have been nice to learn from that near miss without real consequence. But we did it again last year in the Swamp, just a week or two after doing it again against Cal on the West Coast. Not only did we punt it to James again this year, but we kicked it off to him and let him open the game on our side of the field as well.
Most frustrating of all to Vol fans is the speed at which we seem to fix problems. Brontosaurus slow.
Surprisingly, our offense and defense weren't systemically bad today. No, what's systemic is our capacity to make just absolutely astounding, egregious errors at the worst possible time. After a nice defensive stop, we got the ball back, and almost immediately Arian Foster got 15 in the wrong direction by committing a 15-yard personal foul penalty. That put us in third and long, which led to the pass out to the flat and the defensive hit on Hardesty as he was turning upfield, which of course led to the fumble and the first score by jump pass.
And when we did get a nice drive going, running the ball, using the clock, keeping Tebow off the field, we botched a handoff in the red zone, fumbled the ball, and headed back to the sideline with zero points.
Rinse and repeat.
The Florida Gators have completely and utterly alpha-rolled the Tennessee Volunteers. We've been pinned on our backs, held by the throat, and forced to look into their eyes to concede their dominance. It is not a comfortable position.