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We need to give a shout out to Randy Shannon

I asked a guy close to the program. He said;

"You're misinterpreting that.

Fans wanting desperately to believe that Jim McElwain is the right guy for the program have convinced themselves he took over play-calling in the fourth quarter."

Also the play calling was basically the same in the 4th quarter anyway until the final desperate drive. The only difference was we broke a few big runs I think.
 
The play calling on the drive we scored our first TD was fine, Toney should have had a TD on a good play and thrown perfectly in the endzone... and the Powell call in short space twice fit and worked and was the reasons we scored. Short motion and across the formation and let Franks whip it to him for the TD. That was the only drive I liked all day, no coincidence it ended in a Score.. We finally had some urgency to get to the endzone and finally felt it was necessary to win doing it.
 
Gardner could be an elite CB. He has potential as a safety but he will have to improve his tackling.
 
You think Marco Wilson, CJ, David Reese, Chauncey Gardner and Kylan Johnson suck?

They're very good, which is why the defense looking the way it has is a problem. I mean we did this same thing with Nuss excusing all the BS with lack of depth, they're young, blah, blah, blah and now three years later people are seeing that for what it is. Hopefully it doesn't take that long with Shannon. There aren't 30 teams with more talent than us young, lack of depth or not much less 99 of them with better talent.
 
There's a play in the 4th Quarter at the beginning with 13:14 left in the game that Polite makes that's just pure effort and want to. Playing their ass off surely isn't the issue with this team and the talent we have. They play hard the full go for sure.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but UT had 3 points and only 198 yards of offense heading into the 4th quarter. That's pretty good no matter who you are playing. The 4th quarter shows that the defense was obviously tiring out. UT didn't all of a sudden start figuring out how to score points on us when they couldn't do it thru 3 quarters.
 
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And they got even more basic with their play calling while down by 2 scores, they just moved the ball flat out by running hb passes and draws.. The only good play they called of the day and only good throw they had was the TD to the TE, the only guy I was worried about against our defense going in for their passing game...

If we weren't as dead without the depth, their play calling would have just run the clock out with their stupidity because they still refused to open it up while needing a score and would have just looked as dumb as they are to finish it out.. If that Malik TD would have stood, it would have been interesting to see if they just scrapped the run and dropped back every play at that point. Either way if that TD stood they would have been done right then and there and we would have never seen our guys have to actually fight and earn a win. I was glad it happened the way it did, because they needed to be tested and see what kind of resolve we had. Usually we are really bad in close games and are always the team on the other side of the comebacks.. It was looking that way again, Nuss remembered what happened last year and opened the playbook and offense to try and score those last few drives and not just piss it away leaving it on the defense again. It was obvious, because before the last few drives it was going exactly like that again
 
Ok so maybe we should petition the NCAA to only play 3 quarters. And what is with this worn down nonsense? They defended 72 snaps, that's below average in today's college football with all these uptempo offenses. In fact, 72 offensive snaps per game would be good for a pace of 65th...below average.

People act like they were on the field for 100 plays and UT only had the ball 5 more mins TOP and that's almost entirely due to their last drive where they ate up 3 mins. Before then it was basically the same. Three of UT's shortest drives actually occurred in the second half. Their last TD they scored in 30 secs and that was after our defense had been on the sideline for nearly 4 mins. So they got worn out in 30 secs? Seems legit.
 
Through 3 quarters UT had run 55 plays, or 18 per quarter. They ran 17 in the 4th. So apparently our defense got worn down defending less plays than they had per quarter up to that point.
 
Ok so maybe we should petition the NCAA to only play 3 quarters. And what is with this worn down nonsense? They defended 72 snaps, that's below average in today's college football with all these uptempo offenses. In fact, 72 offensive snaps per game would be good for a pace of 65th...below average.

People act like they were on the field for 100 plays and UT only had the ball 5 more mins TOP and that's almost entirely due to their last drive where they ate up 3 mins. Before then it was basically the same. Three of UT's shortest drives actually occurred in the second half. Their last TD they scored in 30 secs and that was after our defense had been on the sideline for nearly 4 mins. So they got worn out in 30 secs? Seems legit.
Well honestly we don't have a lot of depth. I believe at one point in the 4th quarter we had Garcia out there at LBer and both Gardner and Dawson were out banged up. Also there are issues with our S&C program.

Fact of the matter is we shut them down for 3 quarters. UT didn't all of a sudden just figure out how to score in the 4th quarter. Shannon called a good defensive game against UT. I'm not sold on Shannon either but as of right now we have much more pressing issues than him being the DC.
 
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Through 3 quarters UT had run 55 plays, or 18 per quarter. They ran 17 in the 4th. So apparently our defense got worn down defending less plays than they had per quarter up to that point.
Well that is kind of stupid don't you think?? Wouldn't you naturally be more tired defending play #55-72 than you would be defending plays prior to that??

Just like any sport the longer the match goes the more fatigued you get.

That is like saying in a 5 set tennis match sets 1-4 lasted 45 minutes each but the 5th set only lasted 25 minutes. So why would you be tired in the 5th set if it was shorter than Sets 1-4? That logic makes no sense whatsoever.
 
Well that is kind of stupid don't you think?? Wouldn't you naturally be more tired defending play #55-72 than you would be defending plays prior to that??

Just like any sport the longer the match goes the more fatigued you get.

That is like saying in a 5 set tennis match sets 1-4 lasted 45 minutes each but the 5th set only lasted 25 minutes. So why would you be tired in the 5th set if it was shorter than Sets 1-4? That logic makes no sense whatsoever.

What's stupid is claiming our defense was fatigued when TOP was almost identical throughout the game. Why the hell didn't UT's defense start giving up yards in bunches then? If we're defending the same amount of plays per quarter there's no rationale for them falling off a cliff fatigue wise to the point where they give up almost 300 yards in one quarter they weren't put under any additional stress they weren't already under. Like I said three of UT's shortest drives were in the second half. In one instance we let them go 75 yards in 30 secs after the defense had been on the sideline nearly 4 mins. Clearly there's no lengths y'all won't go to to excuse shitty tackling and playcalling. The ONLY explanation has to be we got tired.
 
Yes tackling was bad becuase of fatigue as and in some cases poor technique but that can happen when fatigue sets in as well. So far we haven't subbed very much at all on defense and I suspect that is due to lack of depth and lots of youth in backup positions.

Defensive playcalling all of a sudden just didn't get bad in the 4th quarter. UTs offense was shutdown through 3 quarters with only 3 points and less than 200 yards of offense. The 4th quarter didn't go as well defensively but not because of poor defensive play calls.
 
We watching the same game? They rotated the entire first half. We went whole drives where the backup DL and LB's were in the game. There were multiple drives where Zuniga, Jefferson, Clark, nor Bryan were on the field the entire drive, and this was done to keep us fresh. So this we got fatigued and fell of a cliff theory really doesn't hold up under scrutiny. UT's strategy changed because they were forced to be more aggressive once they got behind and we had zero answers for Kelly once they started feeding him and stopped shitting around trying to let their QB win the game. And shit tackling has been a problem from game 1 quarter 1 and the announcers even talked about how Shannon mentioned what a poor tackling team we are, it didn't all of a sudden show up in the 4th quarter of this game.
 
I don't know who of ya'll is right in this argument. All I know is that in the 4th quarter against Michigan and UT, we looked an played gassed. Lake of conditioning, lack of quality depth, guys playing banged up? Don't know. To me, though, as hard as the defense has played they don't look as good as they did last year. They kept us in the game and gave us a shot to win, but couldn't stop the Vols in the 4th quarter. That's not a good sign going forward, regardless of where the blame lies.
 
That's called being young

Excluding the two corners, one of which doesn't even start, we're not young at all. We start:

Zuniga- Redshirt Sophomore
Cece- Junior
Taven Bryan- Redshirt junior
Khairi Clark- Redshirt Junior
Kylan Johnson- Redshirt Sophomore
David Reese- Sophomore
Vosean Joseph- Sophomore
Duke Dawson- Senior
Marco Wilson- Freshman
Gardner- Sophmore
Washington-Redshirt Senior

That's 7 of 11 starters who have been on campus at least three years. And even the sophomores have played a ton of football, Reese started multiple games last year for example while playing in every one. Same with Gardner and Joseph. The defense for years has gotten a pass (rightfully so because they deserved it) and I feel like people are giving them another pass out of habit while just ignoring the fact we have horrible habits and might be the worst tackling team in the country. Now I do expect it to get better, but tackling terribly doesn't have anything to do with being young, that's their biggest problem.
 
We watching the same game? They rotated the entire first half. We went whole drives where the backup DL and LB's were in the game. There were multiple drives where Zuniga, Jefferson, Clark, nor Bryan were on the field the entire drive, and this was done to keep us fresh. So this we got fatigued and fell of a cliff theory really doesn't hold up under scrutiny. UT's strategy changed because they were forced to be more aggressive once they got behind and we had zero answers for Kelly once they started feeding him and stopped shitting around trying to let their QB win the game. And shit tackling has been a problem from game 1 quarter 1 and the announcers even talked about how Shannon mentioned what a poor tackling team we are, it didn't all of a sudden show up in the 4th quarter of this game.

I did notice Garcia in there quite a bit and the new DTs getting snaps.

I don't like seeing us being ranked # 100 in total defense even if Michigan was in place of the usual cupcake. We gave up too many yards to Tennessee.
 
I missed the first half but caught majority of the 3rd and all of the 4th.

It appeared to be poor coaching. On the offensive side anyway. It appeared that neither OC opened the playbook until the 4th quarter. We looked to drive with ease on the BP TD.

I don't know, Shannon still has the jury out on him. Nuss is just Nussing around but luckily the UT staff made more blunders then our guys.

This resembled nothing of a Spurs/Fulmer game. Sure there were times Phil tightened up and coached a loss but he still game with a balls to the wall game plan. We have Butch's azz tightened up so much it's funny.

I'm not getting my hopes up but maybe...just maybe this will provide the spark we need. Kinda like 2015 after a miracle to beat UT we came out vs Ole Miss and kicked azz.

Just keep Franks away from GNC and Cleveland away from weed and shady women and the spark may spread into a fire.
 
The next couple of games will tell us more about the defense but the yardage given up doesn't look good at all even playing Michigan in the first game. We have been killing it on turnovers however.
 
I have now read the offensive play calling sucks. Defensive play calling sucks. Depth sucks. Strength and conditioning sucks. Hmmmm....

Sales sucks. Finance sucks. Manufacturing sucks. Short quality employees. Bet you ass the CEO is getting canned.

I know it makes people butthurt, but there is no way to have this many issues without Mac being the problem. Let me put it another way, leave everything in place and put Saban, Meyer, Harbaugh, Franklin, Mullen at the top, how long do these issues last? Not long.

I watched Tom Herman go to USC and almost beat the #4 team in the country with a freshman QB. At this point if people can't see what the issue is they are never going to.
 
Well USC isn't a top 5 team and I still didn't see it after beating one of the worse Stanford teams I've seen Shaw have, then with the built up hype extended all that next week for scoring on Stanfords bad D, USC almost lost to the team that lost at home to Maryland and only had 98 rushing yards in almost 40 carries... Then Stanford got pounded again, but by San Diego State, and then jumped ahead of us in the rankings i think...


and UT didn't open up their play calling, and they would have had to had Malik not fumbled and do something he never did once in all the numerous long runs he busted loose on film in HS, down 20-3 they would have had to totally scrap the run and HB passes they kept on with only down ten and then it would have gotten worse fast and turned into a blowout that didn't represent the actual game. Before that our defense never would have had all the troubles that appeared to happen, because of two fumbles, of course coming off huge runs that never happen with the blocking that both killed us and the defense... Especially an only Florida can do one through the endzone inside the half yard line miraculously and perfectly timed shit only our players can pull off like they are trying to...
 
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