The Ballad of Bryce Brown is Over

This year’s Terelle Pryor, at least in terms of length of recruitment, has chose to cast his lot with Al Davis’ BFF up in Knoxville. Is it a good or bad thing for Tennessee? Depends on whose colors you wear.

The Oakland Raiders Put Tennessee On Notice

“As you are undoubtedly aware, Mr. Kiffin is involved in arbitration with the Raiders. Not withstanding the fact that Mr. Kiffin must have told you about the pendency of this proceeding, we want to put you on notice of it, and the University’s involvement in some of the underlying facts.”

The Raiders have been feuding with Lane Kiffin since before they fired him near the beginning of the 2008 NFL season. The team believes that Kiffin broke NFL rules, breached his contract, and “induced” assistant coach James Cregg to breach his contract by leaving before the end of the season to work at Tennessee.

CBS Sports managed to get a copy of a letter the Oakland Raiders sent to the University of Tennessee, and the quote right at the beginning is in it. It details the team’s list of grievances against Kiffin, but that’s not all.

The Raiders apparently plan to use some of the statements that Kiffin and Tennessee Athletics Director Mike Hamilton made about the Raiders. At Kiffin’s introductory press conference, the two laughed about Oakland and called it “dysfunctional.” The team, however, says any dysfunction was a direct result of Kiffin’s alleged rule breaking and lying to the team and media.

The letter is also notice to Tennessee that the Raiders plan to get access to all of Kiffin’s employment agreements with the university. They feel those documents are necessary evidence for sorting out the grievance Kiffin filed with the NFL over whether he was entitiled to the remainder of the money in his contract. Oakland’s front office refuses to give him any of it since it believes he breached his contract.

That request for documentation really isn’t the biggest deal of this whole thing. UT is a public university, and those documents can probably be obtained as a part of whatever freedom of information act the state of Tennessee has.

The biggest accusation is that the team believes that it is “quite possible” that Kiffin gave information about the Raiders to opponents while unemployed. The Raiders also estimate that the arbitration process will occupy some of Kiffin’s time over the next five months.

The idea that Kiffin would give inside information to opponents should not sit well with any fans, and it certainly wouldn’t go over well in the SEC if proven. For instance, a contingent of Alabama fans became vocally upset last December when news broke that former Utah and current Florida head coach Urban Meyer discussed Alabama with his friend and current Utah head coach Kyle Wittingham.

The idea of devoting time to this case over the next few months will also probably chafe Kiffin himself. After all, he was the person who (fictitiously) said he fired someone over being 25 minutes late to pick him up from the airport to illustrate how much time he wanted to devote to his job.

Whether much comes of this, I can’t say. It seems to me that at this point, just about everyone has his or her mind made up on both the Raiders and Kiffin. If you read the letter it will become clear though that Oakland will drag Tennessee into this arbitration process, and the team practically advocates for UT to fire him:

“It cannot be in the best interest of the University to continue to serve as his ally in his personal, though misplaced, war to rewrite the past.”

I think this will be a story worth watching regardless of what Kiffin has said and done over the past couple of months. I cannot remember ever seeing an NFL team publicly feud with a university, so this fight makes for a unique precedent.

All those who were cheering Kiffin on as he made Tennessee “more interesting” had no idea just how right they were.

UPDATE

Kiffin and his lawyer have fired back:

“Starting with Al Davis’ nationally televised press conference publicizing the firing the head coach Lane Kiffin last fall, the Raiders have continued to attack coach Kiffin in the media…

“Starting next Tuesday at a hotel in Oakland, the Raiders will no longer be able to rely on unsupported allegations made in the media, as a key Raiders personnel, starting with Al Davis, will finally have to answer questions under oath at their depositions, a process that coach Kiffin is confident will demonstrate that he was fired by the Raiders without cause and show that the continuing assault of allegations being made against him are false.”

Kiffin’s Speech Wasn’t Just for the Fans

This is going to be the last thing I write about Lane Kiffin until SEC media days. Or until he opens his mouth again. Or unless I write something about USC from earlier in the decade. Or something.

Anyway, there were two major theories about his now-infamous speech on the day after signing day. One is that he was just being stupid. The other, which I subscribe to, is that he knew exactly what he was doing and was trying to re-energize the Tennessee fan base.

However, I’m beginning to think it was as much for a group of people that weren’t at the booster function. His players.

Rewind the clock a little more than four months. Tennessee conducted a press conference to announce that its ultimate company man was leaving, and it wasn’t his choice. It was a very emotional day for everyone there, and even I, a rival fan, couldn’t help but feel bad for Phillip Fulmer.

But as bad as I felt for him, I wasn’t angry about it. Fulmer’s players were angry about it, and they made sure that the UT administration knew about it. The Knoxville News Sentinel described the scene like this:

“Players marched en masse from UT’s football complex a few blocks away to arrive in the stadium 30 minutes before the 5 p.m. press conference. Some grumbled, while others interjected, including wide receiver Josh Briscoe, who asked [athletics director Mike] Hamilton during the press conference why it was more important ‘that we make a dollar than it is to keep a tradition and keep the Tennessee family the way it’s been for years.’”

That’s right, the Volunteer players practically stormed the castle with torches and pitchforks and openly questioned the athletics director during that press conference. Say what you want about Phillip Fulmer, and someone probably has already, but he definitely created an intense bond with his players.

Now, every new coach has to work to do to win over the players that were there before him. For instance, Urban Meyer’s 2005 team struggled heavily because many of his new guys were unhappy about the vanishing of the player’s coach regime that preceded him. In Tennessee’s case, it was going to be a tall task for whoever followed Fulmer in Knoxville given that they all clearly were not happy about him being forced out.

With his speech that angered rivals and turned the world against him, Kiffin may have turned his team for him. He said at a booster event yesterday that the controversy has “re-energized” the team:

“The bottom line is that our players are extremely motivated, because what’s happened is that, yeah, we’ve said some things that may have ruffled some feathers. We’ve maybe gone in and not been exactly as polite as we can be when we go into a school and wait our turn. But you want to know what? [The players] know we’re doing that, and I’m saying things publicly because they have to perform. When they feel their head coach and their staff have so much belief and so much trust in them, they’re down there working harder than ever.”

It’s probably pretty easy for players to be inspired by a coach who has yet to run them hard or chew them out in practice. When push comes to shove, there will be some guys who don’t fully buy into what Kiffin is selling. That much is inevitable with any new coach.

For now at least, he has them refocused on work. They aren’t sitting around trying to figure out how Coach Kiffin compares to Coach Fulmer, they’re figuring out how they’re going to make sure Kiffin’s verbal checks don’t bounce this fall.

With the goal for 2009 undoubtedly being a return to a bowl after missing one in 2008, that change among the players may be the most important side effect of his speech of all.

Lane Kiffin: Kickin’ Ant Piles and Takin’ Names

One of the endemic problems in Tennessee’s football program over the past few years was a lack of excitement and interest. Even when the Vols surprisingly made the SEC Championship Game in 2007, most people yawned and assumed they’d lose to heavy favorite LSU. The star of Tennessee, as well as that of its coach Phillip Fulmer, had been eclipsed by those of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and LSU within the conference.

When Lane Kiffin took over in Knoxville, he probably knew that. He knows that Tennessee fans are a very passionate bunch, but the program had stagnated into boredom.

That is why I don’t believe for a second that Lane Kiffin did not know that there is no NCAA rule barring coaches from calling players who are on official visits to other schools’ campuses. He has been around the recruiting block enough enough times to know what the rules are, and besides, he passed the NCAA recruiting exam. You know, the one that Steve Spurrier hinted Kiffin might not have taken.

In addition a Tennessee spokeswoman said that the school did not plan on turning in Urban Meyer for calling Nu’Keese Richardson while the receiver was in Knoxville. That notice came a couple hours before Florida athletics director Jeremy Foley issued his statement confirming that it was not, in fact a violation. My guess is that Kiffin invented the “violation” for the purposes of firing up the Tennessee fan base. After all, he said so himself in his public apology.

So no, I don’t believe Kiffin was ignorant of the NCAA rules, as some have him accused him of being. I can buy though that he was not aware of the SEC ethics rule against publicly criticizing other conference coaches. The guy has only been in the league for just over two months, you know. If he knew a reprimand from Mike Slive was coming (and it did), he probably would have held off.

I also might buy that he didn’t know how much of a media firestorm it would create. The SEC is covered like no other league and until you’re in it, it’s probably hard to understand just how close the scrutiny really is. I wouldn’t be surprised if he bad mouthed other Pac-10 schools while at USC booster functions and it wasn’t reported widely, because the media attention out there is not like what it is down here.

Florida wasn’t the only target of Kiffin and his staff though. Lance Thompson, a former Alabama assistant who joined Kiffin’s staff just a few weeks before signing day, jabbed his former employer a bit today as well. Kiffin said that Nick Saban should thank Thompson for eight of the Tide’s 2009 recruits. Thompson also referenced Alabama’s loss to Utah in the Sugar Bowl in a mocking manner.

LSU fans also got ticked off at Kiffin today over former Tiger recruit Janzen Jackson committing to Tennessee. He said he waited until today to announce for his family to be together for it, but also that he had “known for weeks” that he wanted to be a Vol. Jackson reaffirmed his commitment to LSU on Tuesday, but he obviously was lying about it. That has caused some LSU folks to accuse Kiffin of personally orchestrating the episode.

On top of everything today, Kiffin yesterday needed only 40 seconds in his signing day press conference yesterday to boast about turning two former Florida commits to his team. He even tweaked Georgia a bit by implying that Bulldog signee Marlon Brown would have gone to Knoxville if not for his grandmother’s objections.

The end result of it all has been to unite Bama, Florida, and LSU fans against him. This EDSBS commend thread lays that out fairly well, and it even has Georgia fans popping in to warn about what happens when you make Urban Meyer mad (hint: for them the answer was 49-10 plus two timeouts).

It’s not like Tennessee did any better than that the last time the Vols visited Florida Field anyway.

The national reaction has either been the way of those UGA partisans—warning that a hellacious beat down in the Swamp is coming—or to cheer him on for trying to re-energize the Tennessee program. What everyone seems to agree on though is that he’s displaying an inordinate amount of arrogance for someone who has yet to win a game in the SEC and went 5-15 at his previous head coaching gig.

Even the SEC’s prince of arrogance himself, Steve Spurrier, largely held his tongue until he started winning. His only public jab in his inaugural 1990 season that I could find was his famous line about 20 books being destroyed in an Auburn dorm fire (“The real tragedy was that 15 hadn’t been colored yet.”). Florida beat Auburn 48-7 that year and finished first in the conference, though the Gators didn’t officially win it thanks to Galen Hall-era probation.

Considering what the Tennessee roster has right now, it would be a tough task for the Vols to beat anyone 48-7, much less an eight-game winner like that ‘90 Auburn team was.

Regardless of what happens from here on out, Kiffin has achieved what I believe to be one of his first goals when arriving in Knoxville, that of raising the profile of his new program. Mission accomplished, Lane, the nation’s eyes are squarely on Tennessee now. Here comes the hard part: capitalizing on it and restoring UT to being a national title contender in the most competitive era the conference has ever known.

Maybe he can do it, maybe he can’t. The one thing we know for sure is that the ride won’t be boring.

Is Lane Kiffin Really the Best Tennessee Could Do?

Is Lane Kiffin really the best Tennessee could do?

I look at it this way: if Kiffin did not get the head coaching position with the Raiders, would Tennessee be offering him Phil Fulmer’s job? The answer is almost certainly no. Coordinators in their early 30s rarely if ever get head coaching jobs at BCS schools, and they definitely don’t at such high profile places as Tennessee.

So in essence, the Vols allowed Al Davis to figure prominently in their coaching search. I don’t know about you, but that would make me feel very queasy if I was a Tennessee fan. If you’re letting Al Davis’ judgment sway you significantly, it’s time to head, scratch that, run back to the drawing board as fast as you can.

It would also bother me that a former coworker of Kiffin’s does not exactly give him a ringing endorsement. Chris Huston, a.k.a. the Heisman Pundit, was the sports information director at USC for a number of years and ran Carson Palmer’s and Matt Leinart’s Heisman campaigns. The most charitable thing he has to say about Lane Kiffin is that he’s a good talent evaluator, though he has an “abrasive” personality.

Huston continues on about how Kiffin is not as good a recruiter as he’s made out to be, that he won’t get along well with SEC culture, and that he brings a complex offense that players will struggle to learn. In other words, Huston is basically calling Kiffin a younger Charlie Weis. Well done, Vols.

I don’t know if the two had some sort of personal conflict that keeps Huston from being able to say nice things about Kiffin. That is always a possibility. At the same time, he says Kiffin was “about as disliked as you could get as an assistant at USC,” and he points out that the most common comments he heard from USC players regarding him was, “I hate that #$%&$#!” Even if those remarks are exaggerated, they are big red warning flags.

There was an interesting exchange at his introductory press conference too. He said, “I’m really looking forward to embracing some of the great traditions here at the University of Tennessee, the Vol Walk, running through the ‘T,’ singing ‘Rocky Top’ all night long after we beat Florida next year.” (emphasis mine) The next thing he said was, “That line was Mike’s idea, by the way. All right, Urban?”

So let’s see… he’s bold enough to talk some trash about a rival, but then he immediately pins it on someone else and tries to keep that rival coach from being mad at him. Never mind the fact that it’s been a couple years since Tennessee has been competitive in a game against the Gators, that the Vols could use a strong guy to stand up to a coach that has never lost to them, and that Urban Meyer always tries to crush rivals regardless.

Is that the leader you want, Volunteer Nation? Your rivals are not supposed to like you. Either don’t say the words if you don’t want them to be bulletin board material, or say them and own them. Rivalries are big in the SEC, and you can’t take something you said back. The fact he wanted to attribute his own trash talk to someone else lends some credence to Huston’s doubts about Kiffin’s leadership.

Ultimately, the more important Kiffin coming to Rocky Top is his father Monte. It will be fascinating a couple years down the road to see if his Tampa 2 scheme can counteract the Gators’ spread option attack. I have been a Buccaneers fan my whole life, and I can tell you that Monte is as much a reason for the team’s decade-plus streak of success as Tony Dungy and Jon Gruden have been.

Even so, Tennessee finished fourth in the country in total defense and twelfth in scoring defense. John Chavis was not the problem for Big Orange. It was the offense. Dave Clawson was brought in to install a complex new offense that the players never fully grasped.

Now, Kiffin comes in with his pro-style offense that is complex itself. It will take more than a year to get everything installed, and even then there’s no guarantee it will work well. Tennessee does not have anywhere near the offensive talent USC did, and guys like Bill Callahan and Sylvester Croom have showed what can happen when you try to bring complicated NFL-style offenses to colleges without the talent to run them. There just aren’t enough NCAA-allowed practice hours in a week to pull it off.

The current SEC is not a forgiving place for guys who haven’t been head coaches before (Kiffin’s farcical tenure in Oakland notwithstanding). It is unlikely that Urban will let Kiffin off the hook for his comment, as he’s a master motivator who will use just about anything. Steve Spurrier was already speculating before the official announcement that Kiffin may have broken NCAA recruiting rules, though Lane cleared that up at his press conference. He will also have to face Alabama and Nick Saban every year as his designated inter-division rival, and most years Mark Richt puts a pretty good team together himself.

If you’re going to take a risk, there were worse risks Tennessee could have taken than picking Lane Kiffin. However, if they were going to go for a guy with no ties to the school or the SEC, there were probably better options out there.

Why not Cincinnati’s Brian Kelly, a turnaround specialist who has had near-instant success follow him around everywhere he’s gone? Why not Turner Gill, who took Buffalo from being a perennial Bottom 10 dweller to its first bowl ever in just three seasons? Why not Jeff Jagodzinski, an offensive guy who has improbably led Boston College to two consecutive ACC title games?

All three have more head coaching experience and all three have had success so far. They may not know the southern recruiting territory that well, but how much does Kiffin? Pair any of them up with a recruiting dynamo (and there are several that float around every year), and I’d give the Vols a better shot at near-term success, and potentially long-term too, than I would with Kiffin.

So as a Gator fan, I applaud the hiring of this completely unknown quantity who may not be everything he’s cracked up to be. I can’t wait to see another year of Big Orange struggling to grasp an overly complex offense and thereby waste yet another year (and perhaps the final year) of having the talented and frightening Eric Berry on defense.

But as a college football fan, I can’t understand what Tennessee was thinking.

Just a Thought

It would never happen, but just imagine it for a second.

Auburn fires Tuberville at the end of the season. The boosters there don’t like him anyway, and the community thinks he betrayed their values by going after Tony Franklin and selling out to the spread. They want a return to pound-the-rock football. They want a guy who can recruit and raise money. They want someone Alabama hates.

So they hire… Phil Fulmer.

It would never happen of course. Phil is too close to UT I’ll bet to forsake it for another SEC school that quickly. Still though, what could be a bigger sideshow than Fulmer coaching inside the state of Alabama? Oh please, make it so.

So Long, Phil

It’s official – Phil Fulmer is leaving Tennessee at the end of the season.

I knew this news was coming, yet I didn’t fully believe it would happen until the word came down yesterday. He was by far the dean of SEC coaches and he’s been a Tennessee Man all his life. He brought the Big Orange a national title and two conference titles along with 150 wins. Only General Neyland himself has more in UT history.

Fulmer, along with Bobby Bowden, is one of the two great villains of my youth. He is one of just two rival coaches to bring home a national title in my lifetime, and he gave Florida an absolutely crushing defeat in 2001. Georgia and Auburn coaches came and went and LSU was no threat, but Fulmer was there and he was a winner.

Here’s the thing though: I don’t think I ever truly hated Phillip Fulmer. He was an easy target for mockery, from the “Can’t spell Citrus without UT” line to the Krispy Kreme jokes to his players’ frequent off-the-field issues. I can’t ever remember him condoning the injuring of other players like Bowden tacitly did, and he often took the high road in public disputes.

Loyalty doesn’t begin to describe the guy. I can never remember hearing Fulmer’s name attached to any other coaching job, college or pro. He played, was an assistant coach at, and and was head coach at UT. His assistants have almost never had to worry about losing their jobs. I’d even be willing to bet that David Cutcliffe, a guy who probably knows Fulmer better than any coach other than John Chavis, would tell you in private he wouldn’t have taken the Duke job had he known the new offense this year would lead to Fulmer’s departure.

Fulmer was a pivotal character in the growth of the SEC into the premier conference as college football has really hit the big time over the past couple of decades. He and Steve Spurrier kept the conference afloat in the national power rankings during an era when Georgia, Auburn, and LSU were going through troubles and Alabama was only periodically good. His Vols continued to be competitive and relevant for much of this decade too, winning the SEC East three times. He was even better about playing outside the region than just about anyone else in the conference, frequently scheduling road games at places like Notre Dame and Pac-10 schools.

Ultimately, he has not been living up to the standard he created for the program lately. The level that Tennessee attained means that two non-winning seasons in four years will get any coach shown the door. It is usually the guy who follows the legend who gets caught by high expectations, the Ron Zook and (soon to be) Ron Prince types, but Fulmer stayed around long enough to be that guy himself.

It is a shame that someone who won 150 games at one school cannot leave it on his own terms. Tennessee football is a bigger part of his life than any school is to any other active coach not named Paterno. Watching the press conference even made me feel a little emotional, because I could tell he was hurting so badly. There are no winners in cases like these.

So long, Phil. You were a credit to your university and one of the guys who enabled the conference to reach its lofty status. This Gator wishes you well in your life after coaching, and may the fish in the Tennessee River quake at the sound of your voice.

Florida-Georgia Preview: Common Opponents

Despite playing in the same division of the same conference, Florida and Georgia have played just two common opponents thus far in the season: Tennessee and LSU. That is mostly because Georgia always plays South Carolina and Vandy at the beginning of the season, while Florida always plays them at the end.

The games against those common opponents for both UF and UGA were played under different circumstances, but I am going to try to pull some insight out of them to help preview this weekend’s game.

Tennessee

The biggest difference between the games Florida and Georgia had with the Vols is that UF got them in Neyland while UGA got them in Athens. Plus, Florida faced Jonathan Crompton at quarterback instead of Nick Stephens, for whatever that’s worth. About the only other thing to mention is that Florida played Tennessee before the collapse of UT football was fully evident, while Georgia caught them reeling at 2-4.

You may recall that the Florida-Tennessee game sparked a lot of debates about the new clock rules. Both teams were intent on controlling the ball and slowing down the game, with a result that neither team reached 60 total offensive plays in the contest.

The 30-6 final score was more indicative of the pace than the way the game actually went. Florida jumped out to a 20-0 first half lead and pushed it to 27-0 before finally settling in to the 30-6 end score. However, Florida punted only once before garbage time, and the Gators had one final drive to run out the clock where they could have scored if they wanted to. If the game had been played at a normal pace with a normal amount of plays, UF could have scored a lot more.

The 26-14 final of the Georgia-Tennessee game was not really indicative of the distance between the teams, but it was indicative of the fact that the Bulldogs never fully put the Vols away until late in the fourth quarter when a field goal pushed the score to its final amount. Tennessee pulled to within six late in the third quarter, and an early fourth quarter field goal for the Bulldogs didn’t completely put the game out of reach mathematically. A nine-point lead with 14:00 to go isn’t that big in college football.

Georgia was a lot more impressive on the stat sheet, and it was Matthew Stafford’s first 300-yard passing game of his career. However penalties, dropped passes, and missed opportunities on defense kept the game from ever getting out of hand. Tennessee was never out of it far enough to lose hope, but if you watched the game you know they weren’t fully in it the whole time either.

We’ve seen two Georgia teams this year: Good Georgia, which mimics the team of the second half of 2007, and Sloppy Georgia, which mimics the team of the first half of 2007. This was definitely Sloppy Georgia.

LSU

As with Tennessee, LSU met the two teams under differing circumstances. This time it was Florida’s turn to be at home with Georgia going on the road to see the Tigers. Florida was the first team to really unmask the LSU defense, putting up 51 points, but Georgia did them one better by putting up 52 after everyone knew the Tiger D was shaky.

Florida’s defense was the big factor in allowing UF to jump out to an early lead. A tipped ball allowed Percy Harvin to score a 70-yard TD of course, a play that kind of knocked the wind out of the Tigers, but it was stuffing the run and forcing punts that made 17 first quarter points possible. Les Miles would say after the game that Florida had gone up by 17 before the Tigers could catch their breaths, indicating that the outburst effectively KO’d LSU for the rest of the game. LSU would pull to within 20-14, but a quick TD drive after that put LSU away for good.

Florida eventually gave up 321 yards in the game and held LSU to 3.1 yards per rush. The Tigers’ third touchdown came after a fumble on a passing play that really shouldn’t have been called given the Gators’ 41-14 fourth quarter lead at the time. This one easily could have been 54-14 or worse.

I didn’t get to see much of the Georgia-LSU game I must confess. After the Florida-Kentucky game I went to a friend’s house to watch more games and, me living in Charlotte and all, the house was full of Hokies watching VT-FSU. I did see a bits of it, and it seemed like every time I flipped over to it, Georgia had the ball and was driving.

I trust the DawgSports review of the game, because the folks over there do a great job of covering the “Classic City Canines” as they are wont to call them. The major concern of the game was some missed tackles, and that bears out in the box score.

LSU put up 497 yards of offense and averaged 4.6 yards per rush. Many of those yards came after the game was already decided (take your pick – either when UGA went up 38-17 in the third or 45-24 in the fourth), just like many of the Tigers’ 38 points did. Still, it was not as dominating of a defensive performance by Georgia as Florida had against LSU. At the same time this one was a road game for Georgia, whereas Florida got LSU in front of what was by nearly every account the rowdiest Swamp atmosphere in a while.

Nevertheless, this was an appearance by Good Georgia.

Conclusion

Florida definitely had the better showing against Tennessee, and the performances by the two teams against LSU are basically equal (though I’d give Florida a slight edge). The differing circumstances keep the comparisons from being exact, but at least with these two opponents, the Gators have had more success. Georgia, to its credit, has had the good sense to lose to a currently undefeated team rather than a currently .500 team.

The game this Saturday is a completely different animal. There will be no Tigers or Vols in sight (though the random Miami Guy will probably be there). It will just be Bulldogs and Gators, and there’s more coming on that matter later this week.

The Offense Against Tennessee

I sat down with my recording of the game today and took a good long look at Florida’s offensive drives. I only looked at the first six of the seven, since Urban Meyer deemed the final drive as not having any “competitive plays” in his Monday press conference.

Before we get too far into this, let’s first consider some quotes from Tim Tebow after the game:

“I don’t think our offense scheme is exactly how it was in 2006, but we are focused on controlling the ball, controlling the clock, our turnovers, good defensive position; all things we’ve done pretty well so far.”

“The playbook is all there, thankfully we haven’t had to use.We’ve tried to run some different things, which have worked for us. We haven’t felt the need to open up with the leads we’ve had early on in games.”

One more: “We didn’t really feel the need to build it up and try to big-play them to death.”

That said, let’s get into it.

Rushing

This game was all about rushing on offense. When he’s on the road, Meyer likes to establish the run early and win with defense and special teams. That is precisely what happened.

The past two seasons Meyer used a fullback for some blocking, whether Billy Latsko or Eric Rutledge, but this season he’s using a tight end as an H-back to fulfill that purpose. Aaron Hernandez’s blocking in this game was noticeably better than it was against Miami, so that’s a good sign if that’s what the strategy will be from here on out.

Of the 18 first down plays the Gators had, 13 of them were runs. Of the 30 running plays in those first six drives, 18 of them were runs up the middle. That relates with Meyer’s desire to establish his team as being tough, something he did almost to the ruin of the 2006 team early in conference play. He was beaming about having a tough team again at the beginning of his coach show, so it still matters deeply to him.

Passing

The passing game was not used much and it didn’t feel all that crisp. I think that’s because passing games feel good when you hit several completions in a row. The most passes in a row on a single drive that the Gators threw was three, on all of the second drive’s plays, and the first two were either incomplete or for a loss.

Long passing plays also help, but they were used that much. Only four passes in the “competitive” drives were intended for receivers who were more than 10 yards down the field.

The first was complete to Percy Harvin for 34 yards, one of just two passes on the 11-play third drive. The second was sort of a wobbly duck that came out of Tebow’s hand wrong as he was being hit while throwing and was dropped. The third was the touchdown pass to Percy Harvin. The fourth was a deep pass in the end zone to Riley Cooper that was incomplete due to pass interference by Tennessee.

These drives had only 14 throws total, and one was a penalty as I just mentioned. Two more were dropped and on a third the intended receiver fell down. Three were bad passes and a fourth was a screen pass for a loss. Yet another was an ugly desperation shovel pass that Tebow completed on a third down to set up the first field goal.

That means just five passes that were successful as a normal part of the offense. One was an inside shovel pass, and another was the jump pass. Two more were the long passes described above and the last was a standard screen pass.

With all that disjointedness, it’s not hard to see how it seemed like the passing game lacked rhythm. That would be, of course, because it did.

Drives

Of the six competitive drives, Florida came away with points on five of them. The 2/3 touchdown to field goal ratio is not that great but it was enough to get the job done.

Thanks to two long returns and a fumble recovery, three drives started in Tennessee territory. Two resulted in TDs and one in a field goal. The field goal “drive” was the three-play, all-passing drive that gained seven yards before handing the work on to Jonathan Phillips.

Of the three that began in Florida territory, two began inside the Gators’ 10. The first was a 74-yard drive ending in a field goal and the other was a three-and-out. The final drive began on the UF 38 and traveled to Tennessee’s 9 before having to settle for a field goal.

As I reported before, Florida is scoring on 51% of its drives on the year, slightly off last season’s 54% pace. For all the complaining about the production against Miami, and considering there were a couple drives against Hawai’i where the backups didn’t do squat, that’s pretty good. That 54% mark from last season led the nation, so being close to that means you’re not doing bad at all.

Overall

Tim Tebow’s quotes above, as well as something Chris Low reported today, indicate that the Gators haven’t opened up the full playbook yet. Last season they had no choice but to drive at full throttle from the get-go thanks to the awful defense, but timely turnovers and long returns have afforded the Gators the luxury hold some things back.

The Hawai’i game was about getting everyone involved and giving the running backs a showcase game. The Miami game was about beating a rival and figuring out a way to defeat the blitz. This Tennessee game was about establishing the Gators as a tough team who can win on the road by pounding the rock, and also giving Emmanuel Moody a full test drive.

The lack of long pass plays (meaning calling them, because execution has been fine), the relatively low number of touches by Percy Harvin, and some strategies with a bigger scope than just the game they’re employed in have kept things on the quiet side on offense so far. They have been able to do that because Hawai’i is terrible, Miami’s offense barely even tried to score, and Tennessee looks capable of finishing fifth in the division.

This weekend’s game against Ole Miss could very well be the wakeup game for the offense. Jevan Snead is a mobile quarterback, and signal callers of that breed tend to give Florida fits, so the defense might not look quite so dominant. The Rebel defense has given up 24 points to Memphis, 30 to Wake Forest, and 23 to Vanderbilt, none of whom have the potential for fireworks that the Gators have.

I think 40 points is the threshold to watch for on Saturday. Depending on how many plays and drives the Gators get, and of course conditional on any more defensive or special teams scores, the offense should be able to get there by itself. If there are non-offensive scores, the foot will be eased off of the accelerator before the offense can get there, but it’s time to get some practice for the extended playbook to make sure it’s not rusting.

If the team cannot get close to 40 points all together, then I think there’s reason for concern. It’s a home game, and it is against an up and coming, yet still inferior team. Putting this one away by the end of the third quarter with a healthy number on the scoreboard should be the signal that things are fine after all in Gainesville.

Tennessee Game Preview

I will be out of town this weekend visiting with my fiancée who is in grad school in Ohio, so I will not be posting much this weekend. This likely will have to do until Monday at the earliest. We will be watching the game though.

I had an experience in Neyland Stadium in 2004, having visited while I was in the Gator Band. It was somewhat impressive, though it’s not as loud as the Swamp is thanks to the architecture. That was the game where Dallas Baker got the penalty at the end that enabled UT to get down the field and score to win.

We began getting our stuff together as time was winding down, knowing it was over. James Wilhoit would make a field goal with six seconds to go to lock in the 30-28 final score. I wasn’t even watching the scoreboard as those final six seconds, but I knew when it got to all zeros by the sound of the crowd. Then something hit us in the band.

Not an idea, or a thought, but an object. It was a stadium cup. More came, along with peanuts, a cheap foam seat cushion, and anything else that was small and throwable. The Vol fans were tossing garbage at us after they had won. I maybe could understand that if Florida had won on a cheap call or something, but a borderline call went their way at the end, and they won. Yet, stuff rained down on us from the fans above.

That as much as anything solidified Tennessee as the No. 2 team in the rivalry pecking order in my book, behind permanent No. 1 FSU. After all the good things I heard about the environment in Neyland, I got trash thrown on me.

The last time Florida went to Knoxville, I watched from a house in Gainesville since I had stopped doing marching band. Florida squeaked out the first in a long line of squeakers that season, 21-20. It was nerve wracking, but it was a win. It wasn’t even the most excruciating win; that honor went to the South Carolina game.

Then last season’s game happened. In many ways, the 59-20 score did more to affect the perception and expectations for Florida than any other game. The unproven secondary that had looked shaky against Troy did fine against future draft pick Erik Ainge, and the offense scored at will.

We would come to find out that the defensive performance was a fluke, and the offense only matched that production once more in the game against FAU. Nonetheless, the win over Tennessee sparked talk and hopes that Florida could repeat as national champions, and it would play into the perception that UT backed its way into the SEC title game.

Much is made of the running game in this series, as Rocky Top Talk has detailed here. I have never taken much stock in things like “the team with the most rushing yards nearly always wins in this series.” The better team will have luxury of running more, while the lesser team will have to pass more thanks to having to come from behind. Correlation, not causation essentially.

This season though, stopping the run is the key for Florida in this game. The UT offense has only really flowed in the second half of the UAB game so far this season, and that was because they took the ball out of Jonathan Crompton’s hands and gave it to the running backs. Crompton has not shown an ability yet to lead a truly cohesive offense, so making him win the game is the best bet for the Gators.

I fully expect Florida to struggle at the outset of the game. None of the numerous freshmen or sophomores on the Gators have played there yet, and only Percy Harvin, Phil Trautwein, and Jim Tartt have been starters there. This is still a very young Gator team, and some early-game jitters could be coming.

The positive is that Florida’s rush defense has been the best in the SEC two years running. The Florida offense is still run by Tim Tebow, a guy the Vols had no answer for a season ago, and Percy Harvin is the healthiest he’s been in years. Tennessee has also looked lackluster for six of the eight quarters they’ve played so far, and the coaches are still searching for their optimal level on both sides of the ball.

Tennessee wants this one badly. They didn’t like the “Tennessee quit” talk and they thought Tebow was in the game too long (never mind the fact he stayed in as long as Ainge did). Florida needs this one badly to prove itself worthy of being considered a conference and national contender.

A slow start followed by the Gators distancing themselves the rest of the day sounds about right. I think Florida takes this by a couple of scores, but it could easily be closer than that.

Game on. Let’s do this. Beat Tennessee.