Got to give this staff credit for not losing the locker room earlier in the year. You can see what that looks like at Arkansas and Maryland. They somehow held the team together
Maybe it is just because we've suffered under so many bad coaches, but it always makes me happy when a team kicks a bad coach to the curb. I just like seeing them get fired.
The interesting thing about that is that the end results look a lot different but the process looks the same. First 3 drives, UK averaged about 35 yards per possession. Last six? About 35 yards per possession. Just didn’t break in the last six. I wonder if there’s any real difference in yards per play or whether it’s as simple as “we let them convert 4th downs early, we stopped them on 4th down late”
Always cracks me up when people try to turn it into some sob story. You were bad at your job, so here’s ten million or so dollars to not work. Oh the horror.
We gave up yards but we also held them scoreless for 3 straight quarters too. Would have like to have seen us lock em down a little better but we did what we needed to.
I asked him on twitter and he said we were about a half-yard per rush better late, which is a notable difference against a team basically running option. I’m just less down than others on our first quarter D. They had one easy TD, and it was a 25-yard drive. Not once in the entire game did their offense drive the field and get into scoring territory without relying on bailout penalties or 4th down conversions or both (their opening TD drive had both)
I rewatched the game today. It looked to me as Tar Volon is saying. More than anything, the squandered drives of the first half and the large volume of rushing plays eating up clock made the score tight. The defense dominated for the most part. The offense with JG was pretty potent. The difficulty Tennessee had rushing in the 2nd was probably due to the cast on JG's hand hindering handoffs.
Having so few drives really colors perception. I had to go back through the drive chart to double-check, but every single (non-victory formation) drive with JG in the game was either a touchdown or undone by an unforced fumble (the Chandler fumble that we lost and the fumbled snap that put us into 2nd and long and ultimately forced a punt). That was it. They didn’t actually stop us. We just only had the ball four times.
Don't get me wrong, I'm tickled pink that we won. Teams that have been where we are have frustrating games like last night. Finding ways to win them is what separates the also-rans from the teams who are determined to be winners. But if I'm watching last night with a critical eye, I see a squad that was poorly prepared and a defensive staff that seemed to be gameplanning based off of a UK scouting report from the days of Hal Mumme.
There was a hell of a lot to clean up, I don’t deny that. But we also kept them in front of us and didn’t give them anything easy all night. A better performance might’ve led to a more comfortable win, but in a game where you only allow 13–six of which game on a short field—I’m not mad at the defense (although if I’m a defensive coach like Pruitt I probably have a lot of things to correct for the future)
I dont agree about poor coaching in the game. 3rd and 7 early when we jumped changed momentum. We gave up 0 points after q1 vs a triple option type offense, and made a change at QB which changed momentum, all while mentally and physically drained. Revenge game and game of the year for them under the lights, off a buy week and rested. Thought our lack of panic showed poise.