Post-game Meltdown

I am in disbelief that my team is 0-1.  AGAIN.  To a Pac-10 opponent.  AGAIN.  All the crap I talk about the Pac-10 is no longer legitimate because my team can’t beat them.  Tennessee is supposedly an “elite” SEC opponent, and I am no longer sure that is true either.

First, let’s look at Daniel Lincoln.  I know three of those four kicks were tough, long kicks, but a kicker has one job.  He kicks.  At practice, he kicks and kicks and kicks.  Daniel Lincoln should be ready, and there is no excuse for missing a kick under thirty in my opinion.  I can see the first two over fifty, but there was no excuse for that one.  What do I know, though, I was never a soccer fairy, and every time I have ever attempted to kick a football it has ended badly.  My final word on Daniel Lincoln is this: he is going to be one of the goats for this game (with Arian Foster), but the bottom line is that he should have never been in that position in the first place.  I don’t lay all the blame on Daniel Lincoln because he shouldn’t have to play cleanup for our failures elsewhere.  As Bill Duff’s Love Child says, “A game should never be left in the kicker’s hands.”  Indeed.

Second, let us look at John Chavis a.k.a. Chief, who has been defensive coordinator at Tennessee for two decades.  He has put some of the greatest defenses in the history of Tennessee football on the field, but somewhere along the way he has lost his mojo.  The defenses the last few years, actually for quite a long while have been good but not great.  We have some superstars, but we aren’t putting a super-high quality product on the field anymore.  I mentioned in my Gameday post that I thought our defensive line and linebackers were our biggest problem.  Now, I am thinking that our entire defensive philosophy is our problem.  How many times are we going to do what we did tonight?  We get shoved down the field in late drives time and time again.  Florida.  LSU.  Air Force.  And now UCLA.  We go into the freaking prevent because deep down, John Chavis is a coward.  He is the guy who closes his eyes and hopes for the best, when in reality, we should meet those guys head on and destroy them as we do most of the rest of the game.  We back off these receivers ten or fifteen yards, giving HUGE cushions and leave the middle open.  Ten yards, then ten more, then ten more as the opposing team marches down the field.  They don’t even have to be creative with their playcalling!  Slant.  Slant.  Slant.  I could pick Tennessee apart in a two-minute drill.  It is ridiculous and embarrassing and inexcusable, and John Chavis is on my list until he grows a pair of balls to fill that fleshy patch where they once resided.  And Rico McCoy?  I have touted him repeatedly as the next big thing for two years, but he is a choke artist in the highest degree.  When the games are on the line, his brain shuts down or something because he doesn’t even look like he knows what he is doing out there.  Follow the design of the coverage dummy, because it was designed that way for a reason by someone smarter than you or me.

Third – the offensive line was horrendous tonight.  HOR-REN-DOUS.  I know UCLA’s defensive line was no pushover and they had blitzes to contend with, but they got embarrassed over and over.  Chris Scott and Ramon Foster looked awful tonight.  Repeated penalties for false starts and missed blocks – this is one of the best offensive lines in the country?  There is no way that is true judging by the way they played tonight.  I have screamed at them so much tonight, and I just don’t want to do it anymore.  They have a lot of work to do.

Fourth and most importantly, Fulmer and Clawson promised us gold and riches from the new offense.  I want someone to explain to me what the hell is different from Cutcliffe/Sanders and Dave Clawson.  I could see nothing different, and in fact, it was like Dave Clawson grabbed Cutcliffe’s playbook and just couldn’t execute it properly.  This better resolve itself, or Clawson is going to have an extremely short stay in East Tennessee if I know anything about UT fans.

Fifth, Arian Foster can sit on the bench for the rest of the year for all I care.  Montario Hardesty is clearly the most talented, fastest, most effective back on our football team.  If football were truly a game of chess, then everyone would want Arian Foster in their backfield.  But the truth is, running backs don’t have five minutes to decide what hole to run through and which blockers to follow.  Running backs need to be decisive and hit their holes, and if you are going to bounce it out, then bounce it out quickly.  All of those plays are designed with a hole in mind … SO FREAKING RUN THROUGH IT.  Foster is also slow, and it appears that he slows down a little more with each passing year.  And that fumble was inexcusable and it cost us the game.  He was barely hit on that play, he just needs to focus on protecting the ball and getting it into the end zone.  Foster is now right at 600 yards away from being the all-time rushing leader at Tennessee.  And he doesn’t deserve it.  Travis Henry was twice the running back that Foster is.  I know tonight was not an anomaly because I know his shortcomings, and they were all evident to the rest of the country tonight.  Not to mention that he sacked his own quarterback one time.  Montario Hardesty is the guy, and he should be the starter from here on out.

Sixth, I want to talk about Jonathan Crompton.  In the first half, there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on my part over the kid.  He showed moments where he looked like a great quarterback, but mostly, he showed poor execution.  He was making bad decisions, staring down the receivers he was going to throw to, and tossing balls that should have never been thrown.  That was the first half though.  He looked like a different guy late in the game, and I think it is what he needs to move through the rest of this season.  He was confident and poised, and once he got some protection from his offensive linemen, he looked good.  He also isn’t afraid to take off and run, almost to a fault.  You can tell that he has the heart of a champion living in there, evident by the fact that it was almost like he wanted to run and pick up those big first downs himself.  If he can combine that with good decisions, he will be phenomenal.  Kudos to you Jonathan Crompton.  I don’t expect you to be Peyton Manning or Heath Shuler, but I want you to be a good, solid quarterback.  I saw that guy out there at times, so just keep working at it.  You get a pass for this game from me.

In closing all this ranting, I want to revisit the Maxims that I posted earlier today.

1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win. – We didn’t make as many big mistakes as they did, but the little ones add up, and we made some big ones when it matters.

2. Play for and make the breaks and when one comes your way – SCORE. – We didn’t capitalize on our breaks enough.  Four interceptions in the first half, and we only walked into the locker room at halftime with 14 points.

3. If at first the game – or the breaks – go against you, don’t let up… put on more steam.  – When they didn’t go our way, we got knocked on our tails.  We stepped up late, but that’s exactly what it was – late.

4. Protect our kickers, our QB, our lead and our ball game. – They scored a touchdown on a jailbreak punt block.  Crompton was sacked way too many times, and we let our lead go and gave away the game.  I am resisting the urge to let loose a string of curse words that would make my grandmother cry.

5. Ball, oskie, cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle… for this is the WINNING EDGE. – Darn right it is, and other than oskie, we did most of these things poorly.

6. Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made. – We missed our breaks here, and they made theirs.  Three missed field goals and a blocked punt for a touchdown are UCLA breaks that should have been avoided.

7. Carry the fight to our opponent and keep it there for 60 minutes. – We had enough fight to fill up 30-40 minutes.  In football, everyone is going to get tired, but you have to play the whole game.  We continue to lose too many games late and too many because we can’t put together a strong effort from beginning to end.

This season is not over, but it is looking extremely hairy right now.  If we play like we did tonight, not only will we be 2-4 by the time the bus pulls out of Auburn, AL, we might have a worse season on our hands than 2005.  So, let’s put this one to bed and get back to “workin’ like heck” for the next two weeks to figure out where we go from here.  Because Florida will be running into Neyland Stadium before we know it.  I have season tickets, and I am not excited about the prospect of watching the Vols lose, much less in person.