Coach Doug Mathews
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There are few things tougher than bouncing back after losing a game that you had a real good chance to win. Such was the case last Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina. A good chance to win in the fourth quarter and the Vols came up empty. But if you are in the bounce back mode I doubt there many opponents to play more suited that the Charlotte team coming in this Saturday….just what the doctor ordered. I will look past this week’s game (something I would never have done when coaching) and focus on the remainder of the schedule.
One note here that has not been talked much about…..Tennessee went into the South Carolina game coming off a beat down by our biggest rival, South Carolina was coming off an open date. The game was in Columbia…a good home field advantage and overall SC has better talent that we do….overall. And with all that we had a chance to win on the final play of the game. Not bad….a good effort from this group of Volunteers IMO.
It is pretty simple for this 2018 edition of the Big Orange….four games remain, three traditional November rivals, and a chance to end the season with seven wins. All three SEC east opponents…..Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt….are better as a group that most years but all three are winnable games. They are also all losable games and this is where the challenge is…..beating teams that throughout Tennessee history have been wins in November.
So what are we looking for this Saturday? Continued improvement plain and simple…..building on last week’s offensive game play which I thought was the best of the season. There was only one area where I thought we digressed offensively and that was throwing the ball downfield against SC’s corners. We would have not beaten Auburn without several 30 plus yard jump balls to Jennings, we would not have scored against Alabama without a couple of deep throws and frankly I was very puzzled as to why we did not throw any jump balls to Jennings against South Carolina. Not targeting Jennings downfield was a mistake and if we expect to beat the last three opponents we better get back to what gave us the chance to beat Auburn. A cobbled together offensive line made necessary by the Trey Smith situation played about as well as could be expected last week and one would think it will only get better as practices continue. Jarrett Guarantano again played tough and did not commit a turnover.
Defensively South Carolina gave us a formation problem…..two tight ends, one as an H-back, that forced our safeties to play the run much more that we like. Good move by them and with Kongbo out our outside linebacker position is not real physical not deep. 40 runs and only 16 passes from the Gamecocks gave us a lot of problems. We never quite stopped the run and that is the starting point for and Jeremy Pruitt coached defense.
Expect a pretty simple game plan both sides of the ball with a heavy emphasis on getting better…..not a bad idea with the November SEC group ahead.
Let’s “Talk” next week.