That was one of those plays where I don't think there was a wrong decision. Either way it was a gamble and if Tennessee loses the game people are going to look back at that decision and draw a circle around it. I would've gone for it, but at the same time with Shaw injured and the way the defense was playing at that particular point, it was hard to criticize it too much.
With that said, I thought Butch went back into his shell a bit tonight as far as some of the conservative decision-making that he seemed to get away with in the second half against Georgia. I believe that in the long run he'll have to become a little more aggressive to win consistently in the SEC. Just one example, IMO, is the end of the game. We get a 1st & goal at the 3 with 36 seconds left. My vote was to get to the line and try one more crack at the end zone but at the very least I would've gotten to the line and run the ball to the middle of the field and downed it, then lined up and spiked it. USCe wound up getting a good rush off the right side. Fortunately the guy was a couple of steps too late, but it would've been nice to have had it in the middle of the field and avoided that.
But the bottom line is that Butch put his players into positions to win the football game, and it paid off. You just can't watch these games right now and not get the feeling that he's going to coach here as long as he wants to coach here.
We also had all three timeouts, over 3 minutes on the clock, and with Shaw out, we pretty much KNEW they had to run. So barring a huge defensive breakdown, we had a good chance of stopping them there with plenty of time left. I was hoping Palardy could've pinned them a little deeper than he did, but it was still the right call IMO.
