Good Morning, My Friends,
Another “Win” with a capital “W”. The Vols came from behind again, but the game was much different than earlier games. The flow was much more uneven. We played both well and poorly in both halves. I was out of town visiting an Old Friend. We watched and listened to Football for three days. There was constant moaning by Georgia media about how much rebuilding Smart was going to have to do because Mark Richt had left him with “NO Talent”. What a bunch of Bull. Maybe not Bama/LSU talent but some classes better than the Vols and much better than anyone else in the East. Last year they got the #1 QB and #1 TE and we saw those kids were good Saturday.
These notes will be short and to the point. I think that both the Offensive and Defensive Coordinators called good games, but it is the story of execution by individual players on a play by play basis.
At this point let us go on to the game’s notes and analysis. The biggest factor in the Dawg’s offensive success was the number of missed tackles by the Vols. The GA players slipped some tackles, broke some tackles, and in several cases one Vol would knock another Vol off the play. Give the Dawg’s players credit you did not get them down throwing a block at them. The Vol’s defensive players just did not wrap up enough. That is “Wrap Up” as in use TWO arms for the tackle. Watching the replay, GA did a good job running the same plays that the Gators did, but they blocked those plays better. They had OL on the LB’s and DB’s coming up on the run. That was one reason we did not have as many tackles for a loss and that GA was able to turn the corner on outside runs several times. I think that GA is a better team than the Gators on offense and maybe on defense as well.
On Offense I think that the Vols had a good game called but made individual mistakes of the “One Here, One There” variety that derailed one drive after another. There were some penalties, some missed blocks, some dropped balls, some fumbles, and some poor snaps that was the order of the day for the offense. It was sort of everyone contributed to the successes but everyone contributed to the mistakes as well.
The Vols kept coming and won. That is the game story. The defense got us close, special teams, and the offense made the “HAVE TO” plays to win the game.
At this point in the season, the Vols are in territory that they last visited over ten years ago. They have beaten three teams that are currently in the Top 25 Polls. Next week we go to College Station to play a Top 10 team before a crowd of over 100 Thousand that will be louder than GA was at Sanford Stadium.
A&M has speed on both sides of the ball and is ranked above us in the Top 10 Polls. Their defense is aggressive and turns mistakes into scores. Fumbles and INT’s are really bad news against this team. Their offense has an experienced QB that throws and runs well. WR’s and RB’s are all “Home Run Hitters”. The have speed backs and big backs with speed. Missed tackles are bad news, at this point our players have been able to catch up with the WR’s and RB’s on the long plays. Folks have not been able to do that with the Aggie Speed Merchants. They are a lot like the Vols. Like the Vols they have had problems in the past two years putting a season together, and they are like the Vols in that this could be their year if all goes well. Their season comes down to this game and the Bama game later in the season. That story should be familiar to us as Vol Fans.
From my point of view I would love to be playing these guys at Neyland rather than College
Station, but that is next year’s task. This should be our toughest game of the season to this point, and that is what I expect. We need to have sound execution on both offense and defense. We also need to have some luck as well. The Aggies are favored in a close game.
Let’s go get us some Aggies!!
Go Vols!
TnBill
