VTTW Board Index

I'm stuck painting instead of watching, so your keen insights are appreciated.

We suck... other than that ....we will win this one.

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Penalties and fumbles. :banghead:

Yikes! Unmm, anything positive?

Guarantano still looks good.  Should have had 2 more TDs but a fumble at the goal line by Banks trying to reach the ball across the goal line..and penalties..way too many penalties.  Just frustrating to watch.   

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Nice 81 yard run by Chandler for a TD.  Best positive of today!  17-0 Vols

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Thanks Granny!

Nice drive.. 11 plays, 71 yards by the Vols..24-0 now

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What an electric atmosphere in Neyland today. I could practically smell the excitement emanating from my TV. :rolleyes:

LOL!!!

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If this were high school football I would say we might get mercy-ruled in all 8 SEC games. As it is, I’m afraid we might wish that CFB had a mercy rule.  :rolleyes:

Meh.  Lackluster effort today still a 24-0 snoozer, and UTEP was running the shot clock down every play.  Could have been much better today, but truer test against the gators next week.

they suxes also BTW   :dance:

Florida is killing a team right now that would beat UTEP by 30

There is absolutely no way to put lipstick on this pig right now. Anyone who tries to extol the positives of today’s game is grasping at straws.

Yep.  Hoped to see something today that gave me hope vs UF... what I saw today was not that.  What I saw today looked like a 4-8 team.

Well let's face it. If we were any good we wouldn't be on our fourth new coach in the last 10 or so years.

I hate that we have to rebuild. I hate year zero, year one, wait 'til next year, give us a few years of recruiting, so on and so on, blah, blah, blah.

Hell, I'm not getting any younger and I hate this situation.

But that's where we are and all that fans can do is clench the cheeks and hope for better days. Soon.

Without some major improvement, I see 3-9. We'll beat Charlotte. But find me another win.

I still don't think we lose to Mizzou, Vandy, and UK.

No one is putting any lipstick on pigs.  Just not going to read too much into this game one way or the other.  It was just a scrimmage.  Not going to get too excited about it. 

That's pretty optimistic. A lot can change between now and November- but if any of those games were being played next week, we'd be underdogs to all three.

I'm going to be brutally honest here: That team I saw out there today would struggle to beat Charlotte. Yes, I know Charlotte was 1-11 last year and they're still brand new to the FBS, but they were a tougher team last year than their record indicated. They played some decent teams close. And they're improved this year. As of right now, Charlotte would beat UTEP by 2-3 touchdowns, at least.

Now, I'm assuming that Tennessee is going to improve enough between now and November that the Charlotte game won't even be close. But I didn't think the UTEP game would be close either. I also see a 3-9 season at this point, but I'd love to be wrong.

That's just the problem. This was a scrimmage team, and we could manage only a field goal in the first quarter, only 10 points in the first half...a mediocre FCS team scored more on that bunch IN THEIR STADIUM than we scored on them today in our place. That's embarrassing. This is the worst Tennessee offense I can ever recall.

I hope you are right. Vandy just lost by 5 to ND today. I'm thinking..... to bad we don't play Arky. We might beat them. I just worry about all the SEC teams beating us bad in the trenches.

I am really dreading the 3 game run of UGa, Auburn and Bama.

To be fair, today's game wasn't really "close". Maybe the final score was closer than we'd like, but it's not like we were ever in danger of losing- this wasn't a UMass-type game. Plus, between turnovers, penalties, and a terrible replay review, we left at least 2 TDs on the field, probably more. And all of those things are easily fixable. We outgained them 512-134, so the score would've been much more lopsided if we had just played cleanly. I'm not reading too much into this game.

But I AM reading a lot into what our future opponents are doing. UK won by double digits in Gainesville. Vandy gave ND all they could handle in South Bend. We'll be decided underdogs to both. And though we don't really know much about Mizzou as of yet, I DO know what happened when we played the only other pass-heavy team on our schedule two weeks ago. So I don't feel so good about that one, either. And those are our three "easiest" games remianing (besides Charlotte).

It looks like the two worst teams in the SEC (other than us :frown:) are Arkansas and Ole Miss. We miss them both this year, natch. :banghead:

It wasn't pretty, but that's taking it pretty far.

That's where I'm at right now. I don't think many grasp just how bad UTEP is. They're a far worse team than Charlotte.

Like I said, I expect us to improve enough between now and November so that game isn't even close. But if it were played right now, we'd struggle to beat them. I really believe that.

It was close enough that if they had any semblance of an offense, it would've been in jeopardy until the end. (I'm crediting our defense with having a lot to do with their lack of offense, but that QB is by far the worst we'll face this season.)

Wow.  Battered Vol syndrome in full effect for sure.  Sigh.

Okay. Remember your post below that criticized some of the Vol callers for reading too much into the ETSU game?  You are doing the same thing on this game only from the other side.  You are overemphasizing the importance of the final score, as if Tennessee ever actually felt threatened by UTEP.  Believe me they did not.

Worst Tennessee offense you can every recall?  Really?  We averaged 6.9 yards per carry on the ground.  They basically couldn't stop us.  Run game so effective that - subtracting a kneel down and two sacks - we ran the ball a whopping 47 times and only bothered to throw 19 times, 16 of them by Guarantono.   

They didn't stop us, we stopped ourselves with stupid penalties and a TO inside the one.  Take away that TO and a few key penalties and we score 2 or 3 more TDs.

And here's the deal...penalties are correctable..  We didn't have too many the first two games.

I'm not saying there isn't anything to be concerned about.  It's disgraceful that we gave up two sacks to UTEP (though I think one of those is on JG for holding the ball too long). I attribute the low score to lack of focus and intensity, which in itself could be a big problem going forward. Then again - it was UTEP.  Our players should not have acted like all they had to do was show up, but actually that was pretty much true.

The stupid penalties are concerning. OL play was again atrocious at times, and our RBs made a lot of those yards on their own.  And again, no excuse for giving up a sack.  Calloway played very badly on PRs for the most part.   Their WRs were open many times but their QB seems to throw worse than me, and that's really not much of an exaggeration.

Backing up to my original point, I think we easily could have scored 3 more TDs today without some obvious and easily correctable mistakes, and a good deal more motivation.  It certainly wasn't lack of talent as no matter how many of you think our talent is beaten down, we exceed UTEPs talent by an extremely large margin.

If you shouldn't read too much into last weeks' 59 points, you shouldn't read too much into this week's 24 points.  You can't have it both ways. 

The very fact that you can't put much stock in blowing out teams like ETSU and UTEP is exactly why you should be concerned when you can't blow those teams out. When a team like UTEP is consistently getting stops at the line of scrimmage or in the backfield, that's an issue. Yes, we were able to run on UTEP...on the edge. We couldn't run between the tackles at all. You can bet your bottom dollar that we won't be able to run with that same consistency on the edge against any SEC defense.

Here's the deal: We rank 13th out of 14 teams in total offense, despite playing UTEP, ETSU and a West Virginia defense that ranked 106th in the nation last year. (They're 55th so far this year, mostly because we only put up 301 on them...they gave up 392 to mighty Youngstown State.)

If you're looking for a silver lining, the only SEC team ranking behind us in total offense is Florida, and the Gators only put up 341 on Colorado State yesterday. I just don't think we're ready to compete with UF. If we are, great. I'll be happy to eat that crow. But I'm not sure we can score on them, even as atrocious as their run D has been.

We easily beat them with a shizzlety effort no matter what the final score was, is all I am saying.  Had it gone down to the wire and we gave up 21 points, I would elbow you out of the way and be at the front of the concerned line.  But this game was never really in suspense IMO.

Spot on.  In fact, the lengthy post above by me is mostly redundant but I didn't see yours first. 

Andi I definitely agree about the November opponents.  Definitely with the exception of UF, the softest SEC teams on our schedule.  But not as soft as they used to be.  Will be tough to beat them all, but like Vinnie I still think we can.

For on thing, Mizzou had no defense yesterday and I find our offense encouraging compared to last years (I know thats faint praise, but it is HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION).

Furthermore I see Pruitt constantly trying to coach the kids up and having a history of being able to.  And I am banking that it will pay dividends in November.  We will see, but I have a very strong hunch that whatever his other characteristics, Pruitt will be >>>>> Jones on player development.  I see some glints of it already.  JG much bettter, Gooden playing well, week to week improvement in the DBs, etc.    Long way to go, but cautiously optimistic we will be much improved in November.