Befuddling win

Before the game I never saw the local press work so hard to sell an opponent. Everyone was expecting a blowout and so the press tried to find reasons why the Volunteers could keep it close. I freely admit I thought we would win by more than 10, but so did Tennessee fans because a lot fewer of them came down than have in years past.

QB: This might be the worst game I have ever seen The Savior (15) have. He ran fairly well, but badly underthrew the ball on his pick, fumbled when fighting for extra yardage when it was not necessary (he did not have two hands on the ball in a crowed either) which reheartened the Vols late, took a sack when he held onto the ball too long, and generally just looked uncomfortable in the pocket. The big hit on their safety may get the press, but he was not finding receivers and still for all his running ability he is not a good scrambler in that he is not good at judging when the pass play has broken down and he should just run for what he can get.
GRADE: C+

RB: Moody (21) and Rainey (3) played more than I expected. In fact Rainey got more work than Demps (2) - which is fine with me, he is a little stronger running inside if not as strong (turns out Demps was coming out of the flu, as were a few other players- but not an excuse). They got 128 yards on just 16 carries. They were under utilized, Tebow ran 24 times (more on that later). The fullback T.J. Pridemore (45) was on the field, but for only 2-3 plays.
GRADE: A They averaged 8 yards a carry with a limited passing attack and predictable playcalling.

WR: Deonte Thompson (6) was out, and we missed him. We played Brandon James (25) at WR (although he moved into the backfield in motion occasionally) with Cooper (11) and Nelson (83). For all that talk about the young receivers we basically played just those three with Hernandez (81) and occasionally a back (including Moody) split wide. The only other WR I even saw was Frankie Hammond Jr. (85) and that was just for a few plays late. Cooper and Nelson each had a third down catch to keep a drive alive, Cooper also dropped a pass right at the goalline.
GRADE: D 8 catches for 74 yards is less than ten yards a catch.

TE: Herandez was our leading receiver, but with just four catches and only 26 yards. Part of that was he caught a couple of shovel passes from the triple option that went nowhere. He was not especially noticeable - he was okay blocking, of which he did a fair amount.
GRADE: C- He suffers for his standards. He had a okay game for a generic TE, but we know he is capable of much more. I increased that from a D+ when I learned he had the flu

OL: I was right, Carl Johnson (57) is our right tackle (James Wilson (66) is the guard). The line played pretty well - holes were opened. When did not pass much and there was some pressure when we did, but that was usually when the coverage was good and Tebow had to look to secondary receivers. Mo Hurt (74) and Matt Patchan (71) got a little time.
GRADE: B Tebow did have to move some.

DL: Holy cow is our DL different with Jaye Howard (6) and Omar Hunter (99) playing DT rather than Lawrence Marsh (90) and Terron Sanders (92). When Marsh and Sanders were missing Tennessee ran all over us. Justin Trattou (94) no longer starts at DE, but got plenty of time (some at DT) and William Green (96) worked in the rotation too. DT Brandon Antwine (47) got some good time, there was even Duke Lemmens (44) sighting. We have a bunch more guys coming in and out than last year, but that has not produced great results. Besides the yards up the middle when Howard and Hunter were in, our DEs were also not doing a good job of containment. Not just against the run, but when Tennessee moved the pocket their QB found time. It also was affective in preventing us from putting much pressure on him (as did the few passes they attempted). And lets not have Jermaine Cunningham (49) covering TEs deep anymore hmm?
GRADE: C+ Without Marsh and Sanders, A- with

LB: The top five all played. They made no memorable plays (well Spikes (51) missed a tackle, but someone else got the RB). Tennessee did find some running room against us and got some good yards from short passes. However overall Tennessee was not busting out big plays all over the place.
GRADE: B+

DB: They were barely tested this game. Their QB, Jonathan Crompton, is pretty bad (3 picks the week before). The only time they tried to go deep was the Ahmad Black (35) pick. However on both that play, and the Haden (5) pick the receivers got some separation (from Jenkins (1) on the Black pick) and a great throw might have been completed. Will Hill (10) is definitely our nickel back and lines up over the slot receiver. I never saw Markihe Anderson (14).
GRADE: A At the end of the day their receivers only had 7 catches

ST: Brandon James had a big return at the start of the game to set up a fieldgoal. He also made a brilliant play on a punt, waiving for a faircatch and then running up to make the coverage think he was going to field it and close when it fact it bounced at the 2 and rolled into the endzone Caleb Sturgis (19) is now apparently our kicker and kicked a kickoff out of bounds. We also gave up some yards to a reverse return. We punted just once (which shows you despite the sloppy feel we were not the terrible).
GRADE: B

Coaching: Even a good coach can have a bad game, and boy did we. We made several questionable moves (why did we accept a penalty after stopping them on third down the first UT drive?) and ran the same gimmicky plays over and over again in an uninspired offensive gameplan. Most of our gameplan seemed to involve running inside, too often with Tebow (24 carries). Meyer's latest obsession seems to be lining up the shotgun and then having Tebow and a back run forward towards the line right next to each other and sometimes handing off and others not. It is not a bad plan and the misdirection can confuse a defense - if they are not expecting it. Of course we do it far too frequently for it to be any type of surprise. That has always been Meyer's weakness. He loves his trick plays and rather than run normal offensive plays and sucker defenses in with tricks he makes them a staple so they don't catch opponents by surprise. The same is true of the shovel pass. We stopped running it all the time the way we did his first year and it started working, but now we run it more frequently and today it got us nothing. Meanwhile we did not do some basics that might have worked better. Such as getting outside with our quick backs. It worked for UCLA and us the few times we did. We also could have tried to incorporate our receivers in a bit more, and maybe develop one of the youngsters. We never tried to use Cooper's height in any way either.

Meyer was not the only one who had a lackluster game. I usually like our defensive coordinator, Charlie Strong, but the rotations we used today were horrible. I don't know if Marsh and Sanders were dinged, but why weren't out starters starting? It became very obviously very quickly that we needed Marsh and Sanders on the field to completely stop them, but the backups played more and never once did we seem to try mixing and matching a starter with a backup. I am hoping we were rotation guys so much because of the heat and understand any good defense needs to rotate, but our starters were off the field a surprising large amount of the time. More annoying they were off the field a big moments. When Tennessee was on our doorstep Dustin Doe (32) was in the middle rather than Brandon Spikes. That is in no way optimal.
GRADE: D We were outcoached (mainly because of Monte). We were just the much more talented at home and slogged to a ten point win. Their plan seemed to be just play conservative to avoid a serious beating and maybe be close for a miracle finish.

Bottom line: We won the game and that is the important part, ask USC if you don't believe me. And it was never much in doubt. You have a game such as this in a championship season and I would rather have it now were we can correct before the meat of our schedule - better than say in Baton Rouge. We will lose a few first place votes, but stay in first because unless you lose you almost never fall. We won, but with the hype it felt unsatisfying. Watch SEC games later the talk was how Tennessee showed they are not so bad. That is not the message we wanted people to take out of this game. Not for recruiting and not for the rest of the season. We seem more beatable now to the kids we play for the rest of the season. And if Lane Kiffin is not so bright his father is and showed everyone a way to slow out offense down. Funny how quickly an NFL mind could solve the spread that has been burning through college.

Troy

So even the players are saying the first two games of the year were practice, but I will do a bit of writeup for this one. Tennessee may not prove to be the challenging game I need to really access the team anyway. They just lost at home to UCLA and their quarterback looked terrible. The local press is already circling.

I also want to mention my brand spanking new fantasy blog: http://twitter.com/FantasyBucks

Twitter is perfect for this as it prevents you from going on forever. I may even actually keep doing this for the whole season.

QB: The Savior (15) needs to keep working on his pocket presence - it wasn't just all that rain that caused his fumble. H e is running less, which I like (more on that later). Other than that there is not much to say. He beat up on an overmatched team.

Also, I forgot to stick this in this in last week, but John Brantley (12) while not as strong, shift, or natural is a faster straight ahead runner than Tebow. I don't know what that gets us, as I don't expect him to be running that much next year, but he is faster.

GRADE: A. I guess.

RB: Demps (2) is clearly the starter. He is better than last year, and is faster than Rainey (3). He is also stronger than last year. So is Rainey. He broke plenty of tackles, but against a tired defense - I am not sure he is that much stronger than Demps. He stills looks to be more of a natural runner to me - more shifty - but Demps is getting better. Rainey is also still the better receiver. But Demps is the starter, reportedly because Rainey has both blocking and memorizing the playbook issues, which trump everything else and are two very good reasons to go with Demps. We also have this guy Emmanuel Moody (21), which is all I really want to say about him. We could use a power back, but he doesn't have the look.

Whomever we used, we ran quite a bit. Part of that was the rain, but it does seems Meyer trusts the runningbacks more so that may spare Tebow some wear and tear.

I am surprised to report we do have a fullback. T.J. Pridemore (45). I don't have more to say because he did not play enough for any assessment of his talents.

GRADE: A. This is stupid, we crushed them there are going to be a ton of A's.

WR: Okay, I was correct. We are basically three deep at receiver. When Deonte Thompson (6) pulled his hamstring they did not put in any of the youngsters to get experience working with Tebow. Instead they put in Brandon James (25) in. He may be slowly migrating positions. Riley Cooper (11) is the lead guy until Thompson works out his dropsies. He ran the wrong route on his TD - two WRs should never end up that close (Meyer later said he was the one in the wrong spot). Of the youngsters the one with the most hype has looked the best - Omarius Hines (82). But none of them have played with starters, so who knows.

GRADE: A- Not really dominant, and Nelson's only play was a fumble.

TE: Aaron Hernandez (81) is established but did not do anything special Saturday. We need to use him very judiciously because we literally have no other TEs.
GRADE: C (C is average).

OL: I think I like the OT Carl Johnson (57) - OG James Wilson (66) left side of the line rather than OT Matt Patchan (71) - OG Carl Johnson (and I think Meyer is leaning that way too) On one play, I watched Patchan get beat and then just wander away and watch the DE get the sack rather than chase after him. Mo Hurt (74) played some at guard, but did not stand out. The line was pumped again.
GRADE: B+ They pushed around an inferior line, but the Trojans got some pressure.

DL: We played a three man line (with 5 DBs) for most of the game. Neither of our DTs started. Lawerence Marsh (90), our best lineman, is hurt but should be back for the Volunteers. Terron Sanders (92) did not play that I saw (he was blocking when we punted last week). Otherwise our starters played a fair amount (which still includes Justin Trattou (94)) and a bunch of depth guys: William Green (96), Brandon Antwine (47) , Jaye Howard (6), and Omar Hunter (99) so I will say that is our rotation.
GRADE: A- Got some pressure and handled the run pretty well.

LB: AJ Jones (16) appears to have cemented the starting OLB spot. Last year Brandon Hicks (40) and Dustin Doe (32) took some snaps from him (and Ryan Stamper (41) - the other clear OLB this year). I like Jones, he is small so gets lost in the wash on running plays at times, but small equals fast and he is good in coverage. I'd be okay with them starting Hicks too (not Doe). We are deep at linebacker. Hicks is a junior, so will start next year. The hype of the future, Jon Bostic (52), played some, lining up at DE on passing downs. He made a few plays, but not a ton. Spikes (51) was better as a freshman.

GRADE: B+ They did no do that much.

DB: Will Hill (10) started because we started 5 DBs - I think because Troy ran a type of spread. Hill usually lined up over the slot guy. I want to see him do that against a better team before I am ready to let him replace Markihe Anderson (14) as the nickel. Anderson looks heavy and slow, but despite appearances he is good in coverage and doesn't get beat regularly. I'd rather see Hill replace the hard-hitting (but poor in coverage) Major Wright (21) at starting SF. Joe Haden (5) still looks as though he is not as staying as close to receivers as he did last year. To me Janoris Jenkins (1, was 29) is our best CB. I'm not saying Haden is bad. And Lord help us if there are injuries. Even Troy figured out how easy it is to beat the Wondy Wonder (4).
GRADE: A+ Troy had 66 yards passing. And that was not just the rain. They only had 18 yards passing well into the 3rd quarter.

ST: James had a TD called back for penalty. It was the only one he did anything with. Troy rugby kicked every play to avoid a return or block. We are still using a bunch of starters on special teams - Jenkins, Haden, Rainey, Demps, Doe, etc.
GRADE: B+

Coaching: I don't know how to judge the coach of a team that basically had too much talent to lose to Troy. Troy was poorly coached - they should have tried to mix it up with trick plays. And what wussies to kick a field goal down 49-3.
GRADE: NA

Fans: Well we sucked up and stayed in the rain for a dog game, but I think we are getting a little listless from all the blowouts. Did you realize the last home game we did not win by at least 30 points was September 27, 2008 (Ole Miss)? Tennessee is not going to change that either.
GRADE: B+ (it was pretty unpleasant)

Football 101: When we talk about a quarterback's "pocket presence" that refers to many things. It is an internal clock so a QB knows when he needs to throw the ball away and avoid taking a sack. He knows when the pocket is breaking down and he should scramble for the most years he can. He knows when to move around in the pocket to dodge a blitzer while not jumping around and panicking, so he can keep his focus down the field and make a pass. It is knowing when the play is over and it is better to take a sack then screw around and end up fumbling.

I-AA

I'm not doing a full write-up of this dog of a game. Plenty of starters did not play on defense - and when those that did play were on they field they were mixed and matched so the starting linebackers played behind the starting DL for example.

Here is what I saw:

1) Despite all the off-season hype, Tebow's throwing motion is pretty much the same.

2) While the OL my not be settled, they do have a good attitude. They were pumped for the game. You could really see enthusiasm just from the way they walked onto the field when the offense got the ball. Hopefully that will lead to bulldozing some big holes in the running game.

3) Riley Cooper is going to be a big part of the offense. They went to him often, including three plays in a row at one point. He is big (6'3" 215) and faster than you realize - he caught up to and passed Brandon James on his kick return - but his five catches on Saturday represent a seventh of the seniors' career catches. We are not rotating guys at WR anymore either -(because of no depth?) it was Cooper, Nelson, Thompson every time.

4) On Rainey's 76 yard touchdown he was almost caught from behind. He may have slowed up - I was worried about his hamstring, but he came back in. I still like him, and still think he is injury prone.

5) Demps and Rainey both lined up on the outside in 5-wide sets (not at the same time and not ever time). Usually on the other side of the field than were I was, but when when it was on my side and I could clearly see Rainey just hung out right at the line of scrimmage to be a safety-valve.

On defense I have less to say, we did not look too good, but the coaching staff was basically treating the game as a scrimmage. Still Dunlap played and against a I-AA team (admittedly a one with relatively large guys) he did not get much pressure. Joe Haden also gave up some completions - perhaps because of the missing passrush. Will Hill and big name (#1 linebacker recruit in the nation) freshman linebacker Jelani Jenkins (43) each both got totally juked out once (not the same play).

We'll know a little more after Troy.