I'm not nearly as down on the defense. But still Georgia's not a good offense at all and they had 300 yards in the first half. Averaged 7.5 yards per play. A lot of that is on the offense but can't say we bullied them with that.
-1 yards rushing. That’s damning I was spoiled by the 90’s. I don’t mean to rag on our OL but we really did get manhandled. And the pre-snap penalties were an embarrassment
We let ‘em off the mat on 3rd and medium-to-long a lot, but we buckled down and got stronger as the game went on, up to the point where we had the bust that put them up 30-21. At that point it was pretty much over.
To be fair, they lost their OL coach and 4/5 OL starters. Conversely, we have same OL coach, same system and 4/5 starters are 5*. We have the talent to be elite. We weren't even remotely competitive today on OL. I wasn't expecting to dominate what is likely the best front-7 in CFB, buy I did expect to be competitive. OL was shook.
We needed competent OL play, a couple big plays from our playmakers, and mostly mistake-free ball. We win with 3/3. We’re competitive with 2/3. We got 1/3.
The D made a ton of mistakes and sloppy play. For the most part they persevered. I applaud Pruitt and Ansley for their work here, but again tougher offenses are on the horizon. The OL was sloppy and never improved. JG is shit, we all know this, but they didn't help him. UGA was getting consistent pressure with shifts and 4-man fronts. OL didn't handle their business and I put most onus on Friend. If Pittman was our OL coach, I think this is a different story. Pruitt, IMO, is going to have to fire his oldest Friend on the staff, no pun intended
Yeah, we don’t have a 90s defense, but we’re looking better all the time. Still haven’t had to go against a good QB since we knocked out Tua, so there are still questions, but the progress is undeniable. Some of the offense looking miserable is Georgia’s defense being ridiculous, but we had *one* drive of more than 40 yards in the first 58 minutes of the ball game. Even against an elite D, it has to be better. We looked last week like we’d taken strides, and this week it looked like same ol’ same ol’. Shouldn’t be long before we find out how much of this was on Georgia and how much was on us.
While our decent/good D did okay against a decent O... and our decent O faltered against an elite D .. I don't know how well as a team we stack up against the remainder of the schedule. I just don't know we're consistent enough on O to keep up with A&M, UF and possibly Auburn. I still think at best were 7-3 or 6-4
If you offered me 7-3 I would take it and run. IMO the bar for this team is showing that we belong in the Florida/Auburn/A&M tier and not merely at the top of the Kentucky/South Carolina/Missouri(?)/Arkansas(?) tier. Sweep the latter and go 1-2 against the former is a solid season. Sweep the latter and go 2-1 against the former and we’re in a better position than we’ve been in since at least 2007.
With the absolute terror that off-season was for us with missed practices and players being out, I'd take 7-3 with losses to Bama and A&M
I think you're overreacting to what A&M did today, and I think every Vol fan on every Vol/SEC site underrates the shit out of UGA. Tennessee is much better than when it beat Auburn in 2018, and I'd argue that Auburn is worse. They're a matchup dream for us. Hell we matchup very good against everybody sans Alabama and Florida still left on our schedule. And if Pitts goes down that complete changes that game. We are playing MUCH better so far than I expected. There is exactly one more defense left on the schedule who can make us one dimensional without risk like UGA did today and I'm not so sure even Bama has that kind of defense.