Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Optmism Vanishes In K-Town

John Pennington on the Vols From GoVols.com

John Pennington finally posts his reviews from the scrimmage last Saturday night in Knoxville. You've probably read some of this already, so this post is kind of late, but it's still worth reading.

Here are the highlights after Pennington watched the entire scrimmage on tape:



"1. Inconsistent play from the quarterback (one minute, Erik Ainge would throw a perfect dart... the next he would float a spinning duck).

2. Shaky decision-making from the quarterback (tell me if you've seen this one before, Ainge is pressured deep in his own end of the field and throws up a duck that SHOULD have been easily picked off at the 10 yard line).

3. Failure to take care of the football (on back-to-back runs David Yancey and Arian Foster negated good runs with fumbles... also, the quarterbacks behind Ainge bobbled at least 5 snaps).

4. Not knowing what to do (the Vols had practiced for a week, they had put in the 'new' offense, their quarterback now understood the offense, so when they step to the line to run the very first play of the scrimmage they... call time-out. And then they call another one just a couple of plays later).

These aren't the 'defense being ahead of the offense' problems that are to be expected at this time of the year. These are the same problems that plagued last year's offense. They're the bad decisions and 'failure to protect the ball' issues that turned possible victories over Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama into defeats.

Hey, 8-3 would have looked better than 5-6 wouldn't it?

All of this isn't to say that the Vols are a wreck. They have plenty of time to fix things. But, going into the CAl game, things could get pretty tense".