It took me a while to muster up the strength to even recap what happened on Saturday. I’m depressed and feel like I just watched a puppy get ran over by a semi. We love to beat the Gators. They are our biggest rival, and the game always seem to be dramatic. It never feels great to lose to them, especially the way we lost to them this past Saturday. Here’s a recap of what happened and what went wrong.
JOHN KELLY CONTINUES TO BE A BEAST
Despite the loss, John Kelly played extremely well. 6 receptions for 96 yards and 19 attempts for 141 yards and a touchdown is a productive damn day. He continues to run hard, and is clearly the heart of this team.
What I don’t understand is why the hell we didn’t hand it to him at least once when we passed it 3 freaking times in the end zone. He was running excellent on the perimeter, Dormady had already thrown 3 interceptions, yet we decided that 3 pass attempts with the game on the line was the best decision. I don’t care what your analytics or stats say, the eyeball test says hand it to Kelly and he will get in there. There is no reason to not trust Kelly with the game on the line. He’s a man among children out there.
Through 3 games, Kelly has racked up 341 yards rushing with 6.2 yards per carry. He’s quickly boosting his draft stock the way he’s played this season.
DORMADY SHOWS GROWING PAINS
I knew that Dormady’s inexperience would show up at some point. I just wish it wasn’t this game against the Gators. He tried to make plays when we didn’t need to make a play, and he ended up with 3 interceptions. That seemed pretty bad, until he somewhat redeemed himself with a beautiful TD strike to Ethan Wolf. I still don’t think there should be a quarterback controversy. If Guarantano plays lights out against UMass next week, then maybe. However, from what I’ve seen Dormady is still the starter.
If Dormady just remembers that not turning the ball over is better than getting a first down, he will be alright. In his first SEC start, I figured there would be some mistakes, and there were. Our receivers didn’t help him either. They had trouble getting open all day and it made things that much worse. I’m not sure what this passing game looks like this season.
FORGOT OUR BREAD AND BUTTER AT TIMES
This is a run first team, and we were having a lot of success on the outside running the ball. However, Dormady attempted 39 passes this game. Sure we were playing from behind, but John Kelly is lethal enough to trust in that situation. Any handoff to Kelly can be a home run with a top speed of 22 MPH. We only rushed it 33 times, 19 were with John Kelly.
I have no clue why we passed it that much knowing that Dormady wasn’t having a good day, but our run game was working pretty well. It’s like this offense forgot who we were and what’s working, so I’ll say what I think it is. This is a run first team (mainly with Kelly), who has an inexperienced quarterback and a lackluster receiving corps. Therefore, if the run game is somewhat effective, we should continue to run the damn ball until the passing game opens up. Once it does open up this will give Dormady some easy completions to build his confidence and help him grow as a quarterback. So when in doubt, run the damn ball with John Kelly.
SHOOP SHOULD BE REPLACED BY HOKE IMMEDIATELY
Shoop was brought in to beat Florida, which we barely did last year. This year we lost, and our defense has not gotten better, it’s gotten worse. Statistically, this defense was way better under John Jancek. In 2016 we gave up 460 yards and 29.3 points per game; this year we are giving up 416 yards and 28.3 points per game. In John Jancek’s last year, 2015, we gave up 370 yards and 21.2 points per game. The stats don’t lie. I don’t want to hear how the player’s have changed or any excuses. The stats say what they say, and they say in 16 games under Bobby Shoop, Tennessee gives up another touchdown and 50 more yards a game then we did with Jancek.
I predicted this at the beginning of the season, maybe not exactly like this, but I can see why Butch brought Hoke in. Sure Hoke was terrible last year at Oregon, but Oregon has almost no recruits and he was only there a season. Overall, Brady Hoke’s body of work as a defensive coordinator is pretty good. I just don’t see how Shoop can keep the job after that terrible defensive call at the end of the Florida game. Keep four guys up front, put four somewhere around field goal range and keep 3 way back in case there’s a throw in the end zone. Instead we didn’t do any of that and brought 6 or 7 for pressure. What in the hell were you thinking?
This isn’t Madden, you dumbass. As Hank Hill would say, “Damnit Bobby!” Not only was the play calling awful, but these guys can’t tackle. Under Jancek, this team at least had the fundamentals down. Put Hoke in and I bet the defense gets better.
WORST KICKING GAME UNDER BUTCH JONES
We missed 3/5 field goals on Saturday. I don’t even know what to think. Brent Cimaglia missed the first 2 in his kicking debut. Then Aaron Medley missed one. What are these guys doing in practice? They obviously aren’t kicking field goals because they sucked ass on Saturday. Unacceptable and we’re going to lose a lot more football games if we can’t make 50% of our damn field goals. Not only that, but the kickoffs weren’t spectacular and we ended up giving a lot of yards up there. Sure, the offense should have gotten it closer and maybe scored a touchdown, but we need to make field goals.
STILL HOPE FOR THE SEASON
I’m not quite on the ‘fire Butch Jones’ train yet, and it will take a while for me to get there. It is possible, but highly unlikely for us to go 11-1 and then no one will be saying fire Butch Jones. It’s possible, and slightly more likely for this team to go 9-3, win a bowl game and get double digit wins for the first time in a long time. It is still possible for this team to win the SEC East. Either way, these ‘fire Butch’ people will be eating crow if any of that happens. This season isn’t over and it’s important for us to keep in mind that there are 9 more games to play. I’ll get into my thoughts on the current coaching controversy later this week.
Smokey covers the Tennessee Volunteers for the SoBros Network. He loves a good backpacking trip, but hates taking a shit in the woods. Follow on Twitter: @SoBroSmokey
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