Were UT fans fooled...or duped?

[Tnphil]

Go to the 9:35 mark.

https://youtu.be/0NX7Tdo6yBU?si=KxQBcayGZSbE4VlI

[droner]

The general consensus by reasonable UT fans was that this year would be a step back, although hopefully a slight step back. 8-4 or 9-3 was the general prediction for this team by realistic fans. Only the dreamers predicted better.

We can still go 8-4 or 9-3 but, obviously we will have to play much better.

So before crazy fans and the talking heads looking for clicks write off this team, let's see how it plays out.

We can write the autopsy after the season is over.

[Tnphil]

What bothers me is having a senior heavy team and looking as bad as we do.

[droner]

What bothers me is having a senior heavy team and looking as bad as we do.

True. We lost the best players we had and the seniors were recruited mostly by someone else. We will find out how much better it gets when JH's players are filling the spots. Hopefully.

[FLVOL]

What bothers me is having a senior heavy team and looking as bad as we do.

Those seniors are poots, so I'm not very surprised.

[Tnphil]

And the key ones we won 11 with last season was Poot's players too.

[murfvol]

I was in the 8-4 group, but we've looked worse than anticipated on the OL.

[BanditVol]

I don't think we have been duped.  Florida is a team that always plays its best against us, particularly in the Swamp, for whatever reason.  We had two key players missing on the OL and played completely like shizzle in the first half.

In short, we can do a lot better and I am hoping we will.

As for the talking head d-bag, he doesn't tell me or any of the rest of our fanbase that "we got duped because we thought we were a top tier program now".  That condescending POS can stick his shizzlety opinion where the sun doesn't shine.  He doesn't know shizzle about what I think, and I think a lot of other fans think like I do based on conversations with them.

Which is this.  We are not a "top tier" SEC program, but we are a lot more competitive than we used to be.  "Top tier" would be, I suppose, bammer and uga.  We are not in that group, but we are a lot closer than we used to be.

I can put it very succinctly.  Looking back through all our coaches following Fulmer, the best we ever did was back to back 8-4 seasons under Jones.  That....was...the best we did, which is very sad.

Now with Heupel, we might go 8-4 and its a disappointment.

If 8-4 going forward is the worst record Heupel ever has (other than his first year), then we are in a lot better place!

Only a hopelessly naive person would have thought UT was a "top tier" SEC program now.

But thinking we have taken a big step in that direction...well, we did!  We almost made the playoffs last year. It literally doesn't get better than making the playoffs in terms of being "elite".  And we can reasonably think we might routinely compete for that now.

[FLVOL]

And the key ones we won 11 with last season was Poot's players too.

yep, and they were the exceptions to the rule. A Heisman candidate & the Belitnikov winner. A strong case can be made that the rest of them are either not great players, discipline problems, or a combination of both.

I think the consensus was that it would be an 8-5 season, so struggling shouldn't come as a shock and it doesn't mean that UT staff is terrible.

[Tnphil]

Also had some lineman that made a difference...Wright was huge.