Spring Practice 2016

Simply stating it was winnable. If you look at the flipside, 6-6 was equally probable as 10/11-2, and definitely required epic choke jobs by UGA and USC that greatly resemble the UF/OU games.

 

While we're going that far, wee had a fourth quarter lead against Alabama with three minutes to go

 

That's a bit of a stretch. We had a 17-0 lead on USC, and (IIRC) never trailed. Hard to call that an epic choke on the level of UF/OU. We did come back from down 21 against UGA, but we were actually dominating UGA early. They had a 21-point lead because they had two fumbles (one of ours, one of theirs) returned 60+ yards for touchdowns. Both were surely losable, but we didn't take advantage of chokes anywhere near our own

 

USC fumbled on the 5 yard line with 30 seconds to go down 3. UGA dropped a wide open TD to tie the game at 38. Both were sizable choke jobs.

There really wasn't an underlying point other than it's ridiculous how drastically different last year could have looked in either direction -- which kind of takes the wind out of my sails for this upcoming year.

 

For being on the 5, they were suspiciously outside the red zone. And yeah, UGA dropped a pass. In both games, we benefitted from opponent mistakes that kept it from going OT. We could've lost either one. I grant both. I just think comparing the USC game to our chokes is a bit silly. The UGA comparison makes more sense on paper, but we were outplaying both Florida and Oklahoma for most of those games. Georgia wasn't outplaying us for most of that game (or even most of the first half). If you want to compare the UGA game to the Arkansas game, I think that's fair.

 

I don't understand what you're trying to say in the first sentence. UT recovered the fumble on their own 6 yard line with 32 seconds to go. That's inauspiciously within the redzone.

The only difference between the USC and UF/OU games is that USC choked at the end of the game instead of UT. Like the other 2 games, USC was down 2+ scores, only to slash away at the lead, and on their final possession march down the field in attempt to win or tie.

 

Easily.

Which makes the UGA game that much more baffling. I was convinced the team had started to give up at that point of the season.

 

UGA I think had a bit of give up in them, too. Bama had just thrashed them and Chubb just went down for the count. I think the writing was on the wall that it would be another Richt season full of promise and short on results.

 

Regarding the first point, that's just false. The fumble occurred around the 20 yard line (the hit that jarred it loose was at the 21, not sure it totally flew free before he crossed the 20, but it's thereabouts), and we recovered at the 13. This isn't a big issue, just a correction of an inaccuracy.

Regarding the second point, I'm trying to say that the level of choke is vastly different. The South Carolina choke was on par with UT against Georgia in 2013. Wasn't even close to UT against OU or UF. That's beside the "could we have gone 6-6" point, but if you're trying to say that it took some epic choke jobs to win both of those games, I'd disagree.

 

Has 6 months turned our infants into toddlers yet?

 

Turns out they are all late bloomers.

 

Ah, I forgot there was an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty applied after the fumble. I couldn't see the numbers, so I assumed where UT set up was where it was recovered.

And we'll just agree to disagree on the USC/UGA games. I see those more as "USC/UGA lost/gave away" than UT won. Luck is instrumental in winning, but it's like it's Jones's only means of victory in close games.

 

Good. Don't want these guys to have to dream up new excuses.

 

You know its harder to recover from injuries the older you get?

They are racking up.

 

There's always a bit of both in close games. OU made some pretty good plays to beat us. We made some pretty big mistakes to let them. I think that in the UGA game, the giveaway plays fairly well evened out (I have in mind their kickoff return fumble, their dropped TD, our fumble inside the five, and our punt coverage unit just collapsing after the ball hit the turf). With South Carolina? We earned every bit of that lead. We were trashing them until we let off the gas at 17-0. So we certainly made plenty of "win the game" plays. But they did make a conspicuous "lose the game" play.

 

I think Arkansas was a bad matchup for us. The timing of the game didn't help.

 

Seemed like OU was a lot to do with a ton of little plays, which were allowed by us doing so little on offense that they felt comfortable going to a four down offense very early.

 

Seems like they had looked like crap all season and had a zillion injuries when we met. Not great timing for them, either. Had them at home, too.

 

Heck, I forgot how 4th down defense was a two game swing against us between OU and UF.

 

Yeah. We gave them life to finish their season.