Archive for July, 2009

This Week’s Roundtable is hosted by:

Your Mother Slept with Wilt Chamberlain

This week’s Big Orange Roundtable is hosted by Thomas the Terrible over at YMSWWC.  As you may have noticed, I have been a bit scarce this week, while HSH has been burning it up with his awesome series of 2009 SEC Football Previews (which, by the way, are now linked and accessible via the links on the countdown widget in the sidebars).  Given the fact that he has done yeoman’s work this week already (and the fact that I have been so un-helpful due to a spate of pesky depositions), this week I am flying solo on the Big Orange Roundtable.  Which pretty much means that this set of responses will suck more than usual.

At any rate, here are my thoughts for the week:

Week 3

1) Now that we have covered the receivers & QB’s, let’s get to the running game.  Just how much improved do you think the running game will be??

Lawvol: Every time I make predictions about how good someone is going to be, how many games someone will win, or how likely it is that Charlie Weiss develops a gravitational field and causes opposing coaches to go into orbit, I look like a fool.  I am awful at this sort of thing.

I suppose that Niels Bohr got it right when he said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

All that said, I do think that the running backs this year have the chance to really do some special things … or fall flat on their faces.  We really have no choice but to lean on them.  My gut tells me that Bryce Brown will be great someday, but that it is simply unreasonable to expect him to come exploding out of the gates from day one.  While he might end up factoring-in significantly by mid-season I don’t see him being the cure-all for the Vols offensive woes from last season immediately.

For this reason, I see Montario Hardesty as the man on which the Vols’ early-season offensive hopes hangs.  If he can stay healthy and stay focused, I think he has the potential to really put up some gaudy numbers behind the re-tooled offensive line with its zone-blocking scheme.  Of course, no matter how good Hardesty may be, if Tennessee cannot improve its passing game at least a little, then defenses are simply going to stack-up to kill the run all day long.  As a result, I think whether Hardesty is able to actually make things happens depends a great deal on whether the quarterback under center can play his role effectively.  If so, then I think that Tennessee’s backs should be more than strong enough to score some points.  If not, then the scores may be low—and the risk of injuries to the running backs great—as opposing defenses pound away at the Vols ground attack.

Still, I am hopeful and optimistic that running backs, now coached by Eddie Gran, are up to the challenge.

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QUICK NOTE: Before I begin with the last of the SEC previews, one thing I want to point out. If you hadn’t noticed, lawvol has added an extra bullet (“2009 SEC Football Previews”) to the widget just to the right counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to the beginning of the football season. If you click on it, the widget flips over and gives you links to each of these previews that have run here at the Gate over the last week. So it’s a quick link if you need to refer back to a specific preview, in case you need to check something or come back and call me a fool as South Carolina and Arkansas prepare to play for the SEC title. Anyways, now on to the final preview…

Prior to the 2004 season, Tommy Tuberville hired Al Borges to run his offense at Auburn. It’s not that Auburn’s offense was necessarily broken, but Borges – with the obvious help of having Cadillac Williams, Ronnie Brown, Jason Campbell, Courtney Taylor and others – was essential in Auburn’s 13-0 season 2004.

Auburn was 33-5 with Borges running the offense, but things went downhill after Auburn lost those three NFL first-rounders – Auburn’s scoring average went from 32 ppg in 2004 and 2005 to 25 in 2006 and 24 in 2007. In addition, Brandon Cox was outstanding his first year as a starter in 2005, but by the time he graduated after 2007, there were probably a fair share of Auburn fans glad to see him depart.

Then Tuberville decided to hire Troy’s offensive coordinator Tony Franklin. It worked out in his first go-round, a 23-20 overtime win over Clemson in the 2007 Chick-fil-a Bowl.

But that was as good as it got. Franklin’s offense never caught on, rumors abounded of him clashing with players and fellow coaches at practice, and Tuberville canned him mid-season, after Auburn lost to Vanderbilt.

That loss in Nashville – where Auburn led 13-0 at halftime – and the offensive coaching issues sent the Tigers into a tailspin: their only win the remainder of the year was over Tennessee-Martin. The offense was the obvious culprit, as Auburn averaged only 17 points a game last year, scoring more than 22 points three times (UL Monroe, Southern Miss and UTM).

Rumors swirled about Tuberville’s job, and he eventually resigned after ten years on the Plains. Auburn then hired Gene Chizik, much to the anger of their own fanbase and the comedic relief of everybody else. But Chizik’s quietly gone about hiring a solid staff and trying to raise Auburn’s recruiting profile to compete with Nick Saban and Alabama. So things are a little brighter than they were a few months ago – how will that translate on the field for the Tigers this fall?

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I must admit, I was a little perplexed when Ole Miss hired Houston Nutt from Arkansas as their head coach after the 2007 season. While Nutt was an upgrade as a head coach from Ed Orgeron, Nutt didn’t exactly have incredible success while in Fayetteville. Sure, Nutt was a good coach, but how much success could he really have in Oxford?

Well, Nutt certainly made my thinking look foolish last year when Ole Miss burst onto the college football season after beating Florida in Gainesville. You almost forget it, but Ole Miss lost the game before – at home to Vanderbilt – the win in Gainesville and lost the two games after that – at home to South Carolina and at Alabama.

But the Rebels won the final six games of year in impressive fashion, including routs of LSU and Mississippi State and an upset win over “mighty” Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl (glad to see the Red Raiders won’t be terribly overrated again this year). Thus, you have the reason for the momentum and hype surrounding Ole Miss coming into this year.

While I still have my questions about Nutt’s recruiting ability (and his ability to do math when it comes to counting signees), he’s got a pretty stout team this year, he’s going to try to lead Ole Miss to its first-ever appearance in Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game in December.

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Off their second national championship in three years, Florida is clearly at the top of the college football world. And it doesn’t appear that’s going to change, at least for this season. The Gators return pretty much everyone from last year’s title team and are the main SEC favorites and one of the national favorites.

The Gators were in the same spot last year. After waltzing through a win over Miami and making quick work of Tennessee, Florida had unranked Ole Miss visit Gainesville. Ho-hum, UF led 17-7 at the half. Then Ole Miss scored 21 straight to take the lead going into the fourth. After Tim Tebow tied it, Shay Hodge got loose on a busted coverage in the Florida secondary for an 86-yard touchdown with 5 minutes left. Uh-oh.

But Tebow led Florida back down and Percy Harvin scored on an option run with three and a half minutes to, and you know the rest. Ole Miss blocked the extra point and did the unthinkable – stuffed Tebow on a fourth and short. After the game, this happened – you’ve seen it a hundred times already:

And the Florida football machine has been rolling people since. The only real question is this: will Florida require a similar wake-up call this year? Or will the Gators continue to run through everybody on their schedule?

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Whoo Hoo!!!

Kickoff is getting closer…

– So it goes …

Image(s) Courtesy of:     UTAD ||  Statement on Fair Use

We all remember how bad Tennessee’s 2008 season was, right? Well, think about this for a moment: the Vols had the same SEC record as LSU.

It was a pretty rough year for LSU, coming off the 2007 national championship. The Tigers lost a number of players from that team, the blow the Tigers felt the most was clearly at the quarterback spot. Ryan Perrilloux, a slightly smaller version of JaMarcus Russell, earned MVP honors in the 2007 SEC title game, and was finally slated to take over as the guy for the Tigers.

Then he got suspended and kicked off the team. LSU was left with Andrew Hatch, a transfer from Harvard and Jarrett Lee. Hatch started the first three games before leaving against Auburn with a concussion. Lee came in and led LSU to a win in that game, and things seemed well.

Lee struggled mightily, throwing 16 passes to other the team. Adding insult to injury, the other team obliged seven of those gifts and turned them into touchdowns. In addition to those issues, the LSU pass defense was the worst in the SEC in conference games. So LSU suffered some rather bad losses: by 30 points at Florida, home games to Georgia (52-38), Alabama in overtime and Ole Miss (31-13), and a blown 16-point halftime lead against Arkansas.

But as an underdog to Georgia Tech, true freshman QB Jordan Jefferson led the Tigers to a 38-3 rout, creating some confidence and momentum heading into this season, where the Tigers are poised to prove last year was simply a fluke.

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Steve Spurrier is set to being his fifth fall as South Carolina’s football coach. In his previous four years in Columbia, he has a record of 28-22. He’s just 15-17 in the SEC during that time. Many expected when the OBC (or Ol’ Ball Coach, as he’s called) was hired he was going to turn Carolina into a winner.

The Gamecocks have gone 6-6 and 7-6 the past two seasons. But I must admit I forgot that they actually got off to solid starts both seasons, only to collapse at the end. In 2007, Carolina was #6 in the country at 6-1, then lost at home to Vanderbilt and lost out, missing out on a bowl game. Last year, Carolina was 5-2 following road wins at Ole Miss and Kentucky.

Carolina led LSU 17-10 at half, before the Tigers rallied to a 24-17 win. They bounced back, beat Tennessee and Arkansas to get to 7-3. Good season, right? Well, Carolina lost their last three games to Florida, Clemson and Iowa in the Outback Bowl by a combined 118-30.

A solid, respectable season, turned disappointing.

Going back to the bigger picture with Spurrier and South Carolina, much of the reason for the Gamecocks’ struggles have centered around the offense. More often during his tenure at SC, Spurrier’s teams have relied on the defense to help them win games.

Now Carolina faces sort of a crossroads. While Tennessee’s hired a new coach and Vandy and Kentucky return good bits of bowl teams – and still well behind Georgia and Florida in the SEC East pecking order – the Gamecocks return just 11 starters and lose some important players. What will Spurrier be able to do with this team?

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