Coach Doug Mathews
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To say a lot has transpired since our last “Talk” would be a huge understatement! Three different people have occupied the big office in the athletic department, I’m not sure if we have a permanent provost, I know we do not have a permanent chancellor and we all know the current president of the UT system has his bags packed. Thank goodness football season is finally here and we can all get back to what matters on the Hill.
Let’s start with the change in direction of the overall athletic department. Whatever the circumstances that allowed for Phillip Fulmer to become athletic director were/are is not material right now. We now have someone who actually has a diploma from the university, someone who has actually coached a sport that wears the orange, someone who this great fan base can understand and trust to at the very least make decisions that he believes are in the very best interest of the university. This, in my opinion, is not a “job” for our former head coach…..it is a “mission” to rebuild what was once a great athletic department back to a nationally respected “front porch” of the University of Tennessee. As the late, great John Ward once said about Billy “the Legend” Justus…..”I’d bet on him”.
Job #1 for the new AD was hiring the right man to get our football program headed in the right direction. Options appeared to be limited and while I was not privy to everyone Coach Fulmer was interested in talking with, there was no doubt in my mind that the next head coach for the Volunteers would need to convince him of three things: 1) first and foremost that he would embrace and build upon the great history and traditions that are Big Orange football, 2) he would have to have an extensive background and/or knowledge of the three teams that we must compete with at the championship level…Florida, Georgia and Alabama. 3) he would have to show that he was a relentless recruiter as a head coach. Plus it was a good bet he would hire a defensive minded coach that had experience coaching in the SEC. That man turned out to be Jeremy Pruitt.
And so….here we are two days before the Jeremy Pruitt era officially begins in Charlotte, North Carolina against a first time opponent for the Big Orange – West Virginia. A personal note here….my first thought when I saw West Virginia on the schedule brought a smile to my face as I remembered George Cafego. “Bad News” was a native of West Virginia and often shared with me stories of his upbringing that were entertaining at the very least. If you are a believer that “kicking” wins football games for the Volunteers then Coach Cafego is on your Mt Rushmore of players and coaches for the Volunteers. He is certainly on mine!
The Vols enter this game about as healthy as any team in my memory. Credit a lot of this to the way Coach Pruitt has utilized practice, a rigorous off season and summer strength/conditioning program and frankly a little luck. Early season playing depth should not be a problem and while we certainly do not have a lot of quality depth there is enough to beat West Virginia IMO.
The two head coaches in this game could not be more different in their coaching philosophies. Jeremy Pruitt has been a defensive coach his entire college coaching career and his philosophy is rooted in the Nick Saban brand of defensive football. Dana Holgerson is a from the Hal Mumme/Mike Leach offensive tree of coaching……defense is something you do until they can get their offensive back on the field.
West Virginia offensively runs a typical up tempo, fast pace, spread the field and throw the ball all over the place system. Most of their passing attack is catch and run….short throws many of them behind the line of scrimmage that let their receivers run with the ball. This does two things, it gets the ball out of the quarterbacks hand quickly thereby making it hard to sack him and it puts pressure on the defensive secondary to make open field tackles. This will be the Vols biggest challenge on defense….don’t let those short pass completions turn in to long catch and runs. WVU’s offensive scheme is to spread the formation with 4 wide receivers (they do not use an online tight end), make a defense cover the entire 53 1/3 yards width of the field, throw short passes and make the defense tackle quick ball carriers in open space. Solid tackling, limiting RAC (run after catch) yards is the key to defending the Mountaineers. How good we are in the secondary will be a big determining factor in winning this game from the defensive side. That area of defense, the secondary, just happens to be the area that Coach Pruitt personally coaches every day in practice. And a big plus IMO……Coach Pruitt will be calling the defensive plays in this game. By virtue of his big game experience as a defensive play caller at Florida State, Georgia and in two national championship games at Alabama…..this is a huge advantage for the Vols. He has seen, game-planned and defended this style of offense many times. There is no substitute for experience and our head coach has a bunch of it against this style of offense.
Vols offense…..there are 60 minutes in a game and the job for this offense is to keep the ball for the big majority of those 60 minutes. If ever the old adage of “they can’t score if we have the ball” were true it is this opening game. WVU wants to speed the game up….we need to slow the game down. Utilize the 40 second clock, pick up first and tens and keep the play clock running. Fortunately this type of game plan is exactly what our offense is made for. This offense will surely feature a lot of online tight end, some use of the I formation with a lead blocking fullback and an offensive line that is strong in run blocking. Add to that physical blocking wide receivers and we have the formula for attaining the goal of keeping the ball.
Unlike the defensive scheme we will run under Coach Pruitt, there is some intrigue in what we will run on offense. I am assuming it will have a strong run, play action pass base but there are many ways to do that and this will be what I am watching early in the game. However, it doesn’t take a math major to add 2 plus 2……this head coach knows what type of offense compliments his defense and conversely knows what type offense doesn’t compliment his defense. We can expect a 60/40 run to pass ratio in play calling, we can expect two or three running backs to tote the ball a lot, we can expect play action off those runs and attacking their corners with deep outside throws, we can expect getting the ball to three physical players in the passing game….Jennings, Callaway and tight end Wood Anderson (Vol fans are going to like this young man) and we can expect this smaller West Virginia defense to have a long hard day tackling them.
How we win! Get the game into the fourth quarter with in a touchdown or better. Our winning edge offensively is the running game when the defense is worn down in latter part of the game. West Virginia’s defense is built for Big 12 passing attacks (think Oklahoma)….not physical running teams. We’ll find out if we are a physical running team when the fourth quarter gets here Saturday.
Let’s “Talk” next Thursday.
New this year….. pre-game and a post-game audio analysis on www. coachdougmathews.com in addition to the podcasts of Big Orange Sunday and Football Saturday.
The schedule: Chalk Talk on Thursday, pre-game audio analysis on Friday and post-game analysis on Sunday. All of the above will be available at 6 PM CST.