I hate to harp on the same things repeatedly, but I don't know how one off-season fixes all of the depth issues for this squad. OL, DL, LB, CB and safety are baaaaaaaaad. Scheme overcame the OL play, but they were not good at all against the better teams. Ole Miss rushed 3 all night and still got pressure. I never feel confident that freshmen can come in and contribute year 1 on the OL, so I don't think Nichols/Clipper/Reddick/Grant will be contributors for a year or two. Even with Mincey, I feel like we need another 2 capable bodies on the OL if Calbert comes back. 3 if not. Jeremy Banks played hard this season but is still not there. Instincts are lacking and because of that he still gets pushed around on some plays. Just a bit too late to the plays. Aaron Beasley did not play well all season. After Mitchell went down, the linebacker play got way worse. LB corps needs about 2 bodies capable of immediate contribution this offseason. I really don't think I've ever seen a worse group of collective starting DBs than this one. Jackson and Alontae played well all season, but the rest were that bad. McCullough, Flowers and Burrell actively cost UT multiple drives and points by busted coverages or being that bad in coverage. DBs need 4 immediately capable bodies this offseason to replace Theo and Alontae plus replace all the chaff. Desmond coming in is helpful. DL will be nice to have Elijah back next season. Getting Verse to add to Young and Baron would be huge. Ideally Omari has a great offseason and contributes more next year, but I think we still need 2 DTs that can affect the line of scrimmage.
Feel bad for Burrell. Really, he was right there all night in coverage it seems. Most of his penalties wouldn't be in the sec title game or nfl game with both guys hands on each other, especially as a wr slows his route down. We need instinct back there and anticipation. Nobody back there looks capable and poor Rucker looked like the slowest player on the team, not the fastest
Concern issues for me: * Hooker starts game like an All-American but ends it looking rather average. * OL * Entire Defense. * All-or-nothing offensive strategy
There is something to discuss regarding that last point. We do seem to be swinging for the fences a lot, when consistency/high probability plays were needed frequently in short yardage. That's very fixable.
The possession at the end of regulation was just awful. Getting into comfortable FG range was basically a gimme and we treated it like a 12 year old playing PlayStation.
Hard disagree here. Once we got to midfield, we threw two deep shots that were wide open and tried underneath plays twice that resulted in a total of 10 yards (3 on a scramble). We didn't ignore the underneath stuff, we just didn't have a lot of guys open. We did have guys open on the deep shots. So throw to the open guys. That we missed the throws doesn't mean they were bad decisions.
Throwing deep into double coverage woulda been dumb. Throwing to a wide ass open wr is always the right decision.
How did Hookers stats end up as far as single season for UT qbs? 31/3 td/int. More rushing yards than all but Dobbs I assume. Historic season for him as far as numbers
Obviously no small feat given the roster, but plenty of SEC teams did the same. Good seasons from Cincinnati and Michigan no doubt, but they aren’t any better than the top 5-6 SEC teams and on an off day could get smacked by SEC teams outside the top 6.
Not many hit them deep like we did. Also not many totally fell apart on defense like we did (although I think there’s reason for that).
Heupel himself mentioned that was his fault at the press conference. If only he had repeated Kentucky before halftime
I didnt see that. Man I like him. Seems to mostly say and do the right thing. Most genuine coach we've had since Majors.