Tennessee Spring Football Review

[tsweezy]

Well folks, after tonight the spring season is officially wrapped and it was a fun one!

First let's go over the new scheme changes and what we've learned:

Initially there was some thought to going with the vertical offense, but in the end Tennessee chose to lean on Savage as much as possible and decided to roll out the air raid. Savage is a shotgun quarterback and air raid featured all shotgun formations. Across the 3 games plenty of plays were run out of each formation to give a good basis to analyze. In addition, we made sure to test out RPOs and see if those would get added to the arsenal. Spoiler, they aren't going to be the main play called.

Offensive distributions - Again, needed to get a big enough sample size from targeting TEs, RBs, and all WRs to see who could make a name for themselves. Also collect enough run/pass/rpo types to decide which are the most effective going forward. You'll see the WR success later, but it was pretty clear what was most successful.

Defensive schemes - again mostly looking at different formation looks against pass vs. run and experimenting with blitz ratios. This was tougher as the defense did great in 2/3 of the games but I'm really unsure in the WVU game whether to pin the blame on bad players or a bad scheme matchup (or just bad luck)

 

Game Recaps:

Week 1 - Vs. Tulsa (in Knoxville)

A worrying game against a way-too-early top-5 ranked team who was #2 in the talent composite. I think they botched their offensive gameplan because QB Cam Larkin and WR Tony Sherman were complete non-factors en route to a 34-10 opening win to set the tone for the year. Savage was nearly perfect, Joe Williams stole some TDs, the RPO game looked thoroughly mid.

 

Week 2 - At WVU

Supposedly the easiest of the 3 games, WVU showed they are ready to make some noise this year as the Mountaineers won 31-30 on a game-winning drive at the end of regulation (helped by Hayes's costly fumble on a 54 yard reception that turned into 7 WVU points). Savage racked up the yards but the offense stalled out a few times in WVU territory and the defense keyed in too hard on RB Guzman holding him to 4.6 YPC but allowing QB Reid to uncork some bombs to Kevin Purcell. Needed to figure out a way to tighten up against that threat.

 

Week 3 - Vs. BGSU (in Knoxville)

Again, a worrying game against a team I think could be top-3/5 this year. Their defense looked supremely stout and this was intended to be a referendum on our ability to go against an elite CB like Dingus and to handle a very balanced offensive attack. To say we passed with flying colors would be an understatement, this game legit worries me the other way, that something was simmed wrong and we won't be able to replicate another performance like this. 77-17 as the defense absolutely clamped down with the backups allowing 0 points in the second half and we got to see a lot of new faces. Joe also popped a big run which we've been waiting to see from him.

 

Next: A look at the players and how they performed, position by position

QB:

Brandon Savage - 72/99 for 1475 yards (14.8 YPA), 11 touchdowns, 0 INTs, 7 sacks.

Well he definitely is showing that last season was no fluke. Most proud of the 0 INTs with that kind of passing volume, he's gotten a lot smarter with the football. Still taking more sacks than I would like though.

Mark Koch - 6/14 for 98 yards, 1 TD, 0 INTs, 2 sacks.

Taking 2 sacks in 14 pass attempts is an abominable ratio for a guy who's supposed to be the most athletic in the room. Not giving me a lot of faith here

Jake O'Conner - 6/13 for 111 yards, 1 TD, 0 INTs, 0 sacks.

Better sack avoidance from #JOC + a higher YPA. he's definitely the true QB2 but will take a redshirt anyways

 

RB:

Joe Williams - 44 carries, 175 yards, 4 TDs.

A bit of a touchdown vulture in the first 2 games, Joe didn't really impress much until the BGSU game where he ripped off a 66 yard run to show what he could do. All the other RBs got < 5 carries for < 5 yards so he really has no competition

 

WR:

Hayes Edwards - 18 catches / 26 targets - 637 yards, 3 TDs, 1 game-losing fumble

That fumble against WVU pretty much directly cost the game and it's not something acceptable from a (Sr). But hopefully that's out of the system because he's a damn good WR and the clear number 1 on this team. Almost impossible to shut down he's going to command attention all year

Quincy Stanton - 16 catches / 21 targets - 331 yards, 3 TDs

Alex Smith-Schuster - 11 catches / 13 targets - 190 yards

These two (So) WRs are battling it out for the WR2 slot and both have made good arguments. ASS with a higher catch rate while Quincy has much more yardage and touchdowns. They may go back and forth all year, who knows.

Eric Barnhart - 3 catches / 7 targets - 66 yards.

Not a great spring for the Sr A- red zone threat who actually was a pretty pivotal piece last season. Instead of moving up to WR2 it seems like he's been passed and will be WR4/5 this season shockingly.

B.J. Flash - 8 catches / 15 targets - 184 yards, 3 TDs.

Wow. the true freshman from DC got his chance against BGSU as the coaching staff wanted to see if his speed would help at the 3 slot. He got a TON of targets and they paid off. Not the best catch percentage, but he looked great out there and may have played himself into the starting rotation and avoided a redshirt. At minimum he'll be out there for the first 4 weeks as an audition

TE - Kendrick Mateo - 5 catches / 7 targets - 82 yards.

A nice safety valve over the middle, his primary role is providing blocking support to the OL but he's shown capable hands

 

OL:

Not much to report. Le and France reportedly were in the mix to be starters but the current consensus is they will run with the second team for a few weeks in case of injury, and then take a redshirt this year. Tough to say more without stats about who gave up the sacks this spring. Also their run blockign sucks but that was well known.

 

DL:

Probably the most intense position battles, you have the returning (Sr)s Cano and Anderson trying to fend off the underclassmen London and Doug Dimmadome Jr. Son of Doug Dimmadome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome. I'll pop the stats below:

Matthew Cano - 16 tackles, 5 TFLs, 1 sack

Mike Anderson - 5 tackles, 3 TFLs

Doug Dimmadome - 7 tackles, 2 TFLs, .5 sacks

Roger London - 5 tackles, 2 TFLs, .5 sacks.

Cano is the definite DE1 but it's really hard to decide between the others. I think London and Cano will switch off depending on opponent gameplan. We actually tried Dimmadome at DT a fair bit to get him on the field and it looks like it panned out pretty well, although that also keeps Sowell off the field who we want for next season.

Speaking of, DT1 we had to rely on (Fr) Ernesto Moran and he gets a shout-out for holding it down with 12 tackles, 2 TFLs and a sack which are really good numbers for a freshman DT.

 

LB:

Linebackers are such a rough group for us. Albert Falu is the best OLB with 11 tackles and 1 TFL. Jonathan Adame also locked up the MLB  spot with 5 TFL (although ILB Joe Lawson gave a push collecting 2 forced fumbles). The other OLB spot kinda sucks. Henry Andriese is just a guy. Good news is we finally saw Freshman Tee Sweezy get on the field and collect 2 tackles so we have visions of a good future

 

CB:

We mostly held Tulsa and BGSU passing games in check, but WVU had a lot of success. Not much to shuffle though. Ben Jordan remains at CB1. Gsellman got an INT as CB2 and Lorenzo Travis looked acceptable as CB3.

 

Safety:

Matt Richardson was just ok at FS, 9 tackles, 1 TFL while SS Jawun Burfict had 11 tackles and 1 FF. Can't tell how much coverage support they provided but I'm tentatively giving them a good grade (unless they got blown past by Purcell every play)

 

Special Teams:

No big returns given up (or made). K Marquez Garces gets his first year of starting and went a perfect 18/18 on XPs and 7/7 FGs while P Marcus Jackson hit 14 of his 18 points inside the 20. Looking solid there.

 

Lessons learned:

I'm not telling you shit, the games that actually matter are about to start.

Speaking of, I was hoping our game at Wisconsin would get flexed to week 0 but alas, we have a bye week before our only challenging OOC game. Wisconsin looked ok during the spring but tough to tell how hard they were really trying to win vs. experimenting. This should be a great matchup and if we can win this game comfortably we should be able to cruise through the year with only UGA / Kentucky as the big hurdles. If we struggle we may need to circle the Alabama, Florida, and Arkansas games as well. 

Regardless, I think we've shown we can compete with the best of the nation (except maybe Baylor) and if things fall the right way it's plausible we go to playoff #3.

 

As usual, go Vols!