Here we are in Florida week. Remember when we used to be crapping our pants all week imagining the relatively easy path to Atlanta if we could just somehow get by the Gators? Yeah, well, judging by the 16.5-point line, any pants crapping this year likely has more to do with avoiding breaking the record for biggest whupping in Neyland history two weeks running.
- The News Sentinel has Dooley on how the Vols' second-half lack of fight is "like an addiction." I do not like the idea of being chemically dependent on giving up 45 unanswered in 33 minutes. Bad news: "There's not a pill they can swallow, they're not going to tomorrow wake up and say, 'I can fight through adversity.'" Good news (that is actually more bad news): "We've got plenty of opportunities to work our way through adversity."
- First opportunity is of course the Gators, and no one seems particularly optimistic. The Great Pumpkin says the Vols are "not showing a lot of progress" and won't be able to hang with Florida. He helpfully notes that "when a coach has to talk about his team's effort, that's not a good sign." No, it is not, Phil...as you well know.
- Unlike years past, however, Urban's offense hasn't quite resembled a perpetual annihilation machine. This may have something to do with adapting to a QB that appears to be both non-divine and non-rhinoceros (and who has yet to demonstrate mastery of the jump pass). EDSBS's Spencer Hall / Orson Swindle is cautiously optimistic that the Gator offense has maybe found some semblance of something after two weeks of mostly under-impressing: "The offense still feels arrhythmic, schizoid, and lacking any real identity, but it showed signs of coherence with the run, and everything else can--in a perfect world--build off that."
After the jump, more football notes, Coach O hurts himself, and a bit about hoops (focusing on threats from pugilists while conveniently ignoring Pearl and his mess).
- John Adams warns against the slippery slope from "reveling in first-half competency" to becoming Vandy. Yes, John, look for any hopeful signs in the midst of your young and outmatched squad getting roughed up by a top-5 team and, the next thing you know, they'll be disbanding the athletic department and staffing the coaching ranks with inseminators of various large birds.
- C Cody Pope, who was concussed Saturday, was held out practice. Dooley: "We don't have a center." Watching tape of Florida / Miami (OH) should help stress the importance of that particular position.
- Here's Wes Rucker on the Vols' rather awful 3rd-down conversion rate Saturday (2-for-15). Isn't a world-class TE supposed to come in handy here?
- And here's Austin Ward on your SEC-leading rusher, Tauren Poole.
- Our old friend Ed Orgeron managed to break his foot somehow. Unconfirmed reports have Coach O ripping his shirt off and crane-kicking the plate glass front of a Red Bull machine. We wish him a speedy recovery and do not at all hope that some gangrenous disease sets in and immediately spreads to his engorged simian heart.
- And we'll wrap things up with some TMZ news. They're reporting that Pretty Boy Floyd chose to fight his ex-girlfriend rather than Manny Pacquiao because she was somehow involved with former Vols point guard C.J. Watson. Watson denies everything.