Positives Only Thread

[JRHEETER]

I think all facts considered, going against a strong Tennessee team with our team who had a lot of holes to fill in the off season and staying relatively competitive in this game, that we should be excited about the future.

Fran has this team in the right direction despite the loss on Saturday.



In my eyes, this years season is the tune up for next season where I expect a special season

 

[Red Holzman]

Not mentioned yet: AFAIK no injuries of note -particularly the season-ending variety!
Something to be thankful for -important and hope the trend continues.

Team stats compared favorably in many categories. As noted already- SU played TN even the final 3Q.

 

[Yeti]

I think all facts considered, going against a strong Tennessee team with our team who had a lot of holes to fill in the off season and staying relatively competitive in this game, that we should be excited about the future.

Fran has this team in the right direction despite the loss on Saturday.



In my eyes, this years season is the tune up for next season where I expect a special season

I think having that loss and being able to show the team how and why they need to improve in certain areas + 2 tune up games will have us in a good spot moving forward this year.

 

[RedtheGOB]

Serious question for the positive rant. Was Tennessee's DL and OL the best we'll see this year? Sure the competition is better but ND, Clemson, Miami all looking suspect. I'm sure all will be better later in the year and at home but some surprises.

Miami with a running game and a pass rush (where did that come from?), Clemson with no running game and a heisman frontrunner with nothing to show for it at home, and ND's looking suspect on both sides of the line. I know it's week 1 but damn.

I'm all the sudden thinking that we have fixable issues on the OL in pass coverage and a legit running/passing game. Defense has a long way to go but not giving up big plays and making stops on 3rd down may be all we need from them.

 

[sabach]

It's football season. Had a fantasy draft with my sons on Friday, watched the game with them on Saturday, going to the game with them this Saturday. Making memories is always positive. Tennessee is better than their ranking. We did not get embarrassed. Tighten up the D and we go bowling this year.

 

[Orangezoo]

After the first quarter, if you didn’t look at the early deficit, there was not clear separation between us and Tennessee. They have the best coaching staff they’ve had in a long time ( since Heupel came on board) and won the game with tactics more than talent even if they still had the advantage there.

Angeli did have two turnovers but on both it was more about the Tenn defense making a play and also Angeli with his first true start. Otherwise he was composed and had clear command.

I think we will be able to run the ball on pretty much anyone this year and not have to put too much pressure on Angeli to put up huge numbers. Willis is going to break more than a few and Nixon looks really solid especially in the flat.

The defense likely won’t see as good of a running scheme all year nor the level of game planning now that we head into the normal week to week cycle. There is a ton of work to do here but the reps for the youngsters paired with still having most everyone come away reasonably healthy is a positive.

Looking forward to playing UConn and this time being a very hungry team at home vs a team being a little over confident like we seemed last year.

 

[Yeti]

Serious question for the positive rant. Was Tennessee's DL and OL the best we'll see this year? Sure the competition is better but ND, Clemson, Miami all looking suspect. I'm sure all will be better later in the year and at home but some surprises.

Miami with a running game and a pass rush (where did that come from?), Clemson with no running game and a heisman frontrunner with nothing to show for it at home, and ND's looking suspect on both sides of the line. I know it's week 1 but damn.

I'm all the sudden thinking that we have fixable issues on the OL in pass coverage and a legit running/passing game. Defense has a long way to go but not giving up big plays and making stops on 3rd down may be all we need from them.

I suspect Clemson's D-Line will be the best we'll see (but i know nothing about ND).

Tenn's secondary was pretty incredible. Willis roughed up their LB's and DL a bit though. Their star linebacker got dinged up, and DT Moi was injured early.

 

[Orangezoo]

I suspect Clemson's D-Line will be the best we'll see (but i know nothing about ND).

Tenn's secondary was pretty incredible. Willis roughed up their LB's and DL a bit though. Their star linebacker got dinged up, and DT Moi was injured early.

At least with Clemson there is familiarity. I look forward to seeing Nixon have at the ACC this year with more film to study and prepare with.

 

[Archimedes]

Looking forward to playing UConn and this time being a very hungry team at home vs a team being a little over confident like we seemed last year.

I agree we were over-confident against UConn last year or maybe a little distracted. But with good reason. We were coming off a big win on the west coast. We had Miami coming up next, a game everyone had circled.

It'll be different circumstances next weekend. Everyone knows the best path to a bowl is to win out at home.

 

[anomander]

1. Willis
2. OC Nixon
3. OG Ferguson

4. Villari (Props to him. After watching him at TE last year i didn’t think he could make the transition. Looked like he worked hard and now looks like a TE

5. Antoine and Samuels - Don’t think either looked ready to start, but their true freshman opening against Tennessee. Of course the one play that sticks out for Samuels is the long bomb, but i thought he did well minus that. I think both will progress through the year and will both be starters for as long as they are Orange.

6. S&C/Culture - In teams past our guys would drop like flies against a physical team with Tenn. It seemed to be the opposite, even though i don’t know if they were all injuries. No cramping and never gave up. I could see past teams being down 17-0 getting boat raced 52-10 or something like that. We hung in and made it interesting at points. I give credit to the culture. Also, nice seeing a lot of big names alumni at the game.

 

[C-Mart]

Someone at my ATL gate turned their poodle into a giraffe. Not sure if that’s a positive or negative. But it captured the attention of everyone within 50 feet.

View attachment 254572

The crippling hangover may have had something to do with it, but when I first saw this dog from 20 feet away, my literal first thought was, “Wait, what kind of animal is that?”

 

[Cusefan69]

I suspect Clemson's D-Line will be the best we'll see (but i know nothing about ND).

Tenn's secondary was pretty incredible. Willis roughed up their LB's and DL a bit though. Their star linebacker got dinged up, and DT Moi was injured early.

Agreed about Clemson BUT having played against the Vols and candidly the DCs different looks. I think our guys, especially oline will be ready and Clemson coaches will show that game tape and tell the dline this oline from Syracuse is big, strong and physical. Our coaching staff needs to promote that mentality these next few games.

 

[RedtheGOB]

1. Willis
2. OC Nixon
3. OG Ferguson

4. Villari (Props to him. After watching him at TE last year i didn’t think he could make the transition. Looked like he worked hard and now looks like a TE

5. Antoine and Samuels - Don’t think either looked ready to start, but their true freshman opening against Tennessee. Of course the one play that sticks out for Samuels is the long bomb, but i thought he did well minus that. I think both will progress through the year and will both be starters for as long as they are Orange.

6. S&C/Culture - In teams past our guys would drop like flies against a physical team with Tenn. It seemed to be the opposite, even though i don’t know if they were all injuries. No cramping and never gave up. I could see past teams being down 17-0 getting boat raced 52-10 or something like that. We hung in and made it interesting at points. I give credit to the culture. Also, nice seeing a lot of big names alumni at the game.

The drop like flies comment really hit me when you said that. My god that’s so true. Especially when they had 3 tough running backs splitting reps and a fast pace on offense.

Guarantee Tennessee guys are waking up just as sore as we are today. No way anyone would say that the last 25 years about us.

 

[wfschrec]

I wanted to wait to form some opinions and let the week finish and watch a few teams. Honestly after watching several games I feel a whole lot better. I know a few Tennessee fans that I would consider far more rational who were not high on the squad like they were last year, they were pleasantly surprised by how UT performed. Now for the positives:

- There is no way in hell there are 23 teams better than Tennessee .. just no way, their ranking is 18 in the coaches poll and even that could be considered low. This UT team would probably dog walk half the top 25 just based on what I saw in other games provided they stay healthy. K State barely beat North Dakota and no not the Bison but the real crappy North Dakota squad and looked meh at best. UT will beat Bama which was something I wasn't confident in until you saw the effort vs FSU. I mean how do you lose to a team that only completed 9 passes that isn't a service academy? I could see UT being better than a few higher ranked SEC teams (South Carolina, Alabama, and Ole Miss for starters). I also wasn't impressed with ASU or Michigan to be honest, that doesn't mean these teams won't improve but I think the rankings will see a tectonic level shift by mid-year.

- Watching Nico at UCLA gave me the impression that they won't see much drop off at the QB position with Aguilar who while not extremely accurate is accurate enough. BTW a big positive that Fran is our coach .. DeShaun Foster is in over his head. Speaking of coaches the job Jason Beck did in week 1 was amazing and was great to see him perform well in his first outing.

- Every team seems to have a significant hole somewhere which wasn't always the case with teams like OSU, Bama, UGA, Clemson, etc over the last decade. If you have a hole it can be exploited (have fun with that one you perverts LOL).

- The B1G looked pedestrian out of the gate against MAC level teams as did Texas A&M and a few other top 25 teams like ASU and SMU who scored on two pick sixes didn't seem to have the offensive juice from last year and many consider to be weaker on D losing some critical parts to the NFL. Speaking of Texas A&M they gave up over 200 yards rushing to UTSA ... could you image what Tennessee would do to them?

- CJ Carr is pretty good and more mobile than I expected and ND will be tough but they couldn't exploit Miami on the ground like I would have anticipated. Either ND took a step back on O or Miami is significantly improved ... of course they still had an epic breakdown in the secondary so I'm not holding my breath that they are back yet. BTW has Chris Ash aged like 30 years in the last 5? Dude looked like hell last night.

- Watching Va Tech for all intents and purposes go toe to toe with SC, we go toe to toe with UT for 3 quarters, and Clemson vs LSU going to the wire along with FSU over Bama shows the gap shrinking between the ACC and SEC which in the long run helps us.

- GT looked mighty pedestrian vs a Colorado team that I think is in for a tumble along with a good bit of the Big 12 ... the conference isn't as strong as I thought it would be. When your conference favorite scrapes by North Dakota that isn't a good sign, Iowa State has the inside track and honestly even they look mediocre at best.

- ODU runs for over 200 yards on Indiana ... another top 25 team that got gashed by an inferior opponent. I think we will be improved against the run in aggregate this year but games like this will hurt our per game average. We gave up 300 in week 1 to Ohio last year ... I would have expected UT to go for 400 honestly if we trotted out that same defense.

- Angeli will be more than adequate and our QB play will more than likely be better than most of even the QB play in the top 25 ... he is currently 27th in passing yards and played a top 10 defense .. ahead of him are either guys that played two games or played some directional school that you couldn't even find on a map. The only QB ahead of him that has played 1 game and against a P4 is Sawyer Robinson of Baylor who went off against Auburn.

- Getting a game against a heavyweight in early I think will galvanize this team, they fought back hard and didn't quit which honesty bodes well ... it just means they will never feel like they are out of a game. I agree with many who feel this is better than pasting a tune up team, it makes you grow up faster and my hope is it puts a little anger in them as they go out for the next two before heading to Death Valley. Speaking of Clemson it appears they have some issues running the ball this year, losing Mafah hurt more than I thought because they gave up on the run faster than I expected. Will they be forced to run Klubnik more? If so that will take its toll over the season. Clemson gets GT right before us .. does that portend well to them getting ground down a bit before we square off?

- UT performed well and hit roughly their average offensive output from last year ... around 230 yards passing and rushing so I don't feel as bad as some about our defense which I think will grow up quick this year.

- I feel like we have a pretty good understanding of how good we are right now and how good we can be, which is more than I can say for most of the top 25 who played FCS and directional schools.

- One last reason to be positive ... we aren't Rutgers fans.

 

[baggerbob]

Kept their head and played with increased intensity after some very bad setbacks early. Matched their intensity and physicality through the whole game.

Agreed this is markedly different from these types of games and match ups from years past.

Remember what happened the last time we won 10 games, and the 2nd game of the season in the next year got blown out by a bad team.
This team basically on the road got down early and didn't quit. Still expect Fran to find a way to 8 wins. If by chance the defense gets better, who knows what might happen.

 

[PAcuse]

We are who we thought we are:
Nixon has the offense set up for the weapons we have.
Defense is still a work in progress, we lost our leaders.
Special Teams seems ok.

 

[sufandu]

You can make an argument that was the best we have run the ball in the Fran era.

I feel the same way even though our yards per carry weren't all that great. I thought we had some moments where we went physically toe to toe with TN. I hope that means we can out physical a fair number of other teams on the schedule and get a long run here and there that inflate the numbers.

 

[baggerbob]

I wanted to wait to form some opinions and let the week finish and watch a few teams. Honestly after watching several games I feel a whole lot better. I know a few Tennessee fans that I would consider far more rational who were not high on the squad like they were last year, they were pleasantly surprised by how UT performed. Now for the positives:

- There is no way in hell there are 23 teams better than Tennessee .. just no way, their ranking is 18 in the coaches poll and even that could be considered low. This UT team would probably dog walk half the top 25 just based on what I saw in other games provided they stay healthy. K State barely beat North Dakota and no not the Bison but the real crappy North Dakota squad and looked meh at best. UT will beat Bama which was something I wasn't confident in until you saw the effort vs FSU. I mean how do you lose to a team that only completed 9 passes that isn't a service academy? I could see UT being better than a few higher ranked SEC teams (South Carolina, Alabama, and Ole Miss for starters). I also wasn't impressed with ASU or Michigan to be honest, that doesn't mean these teams won't improve but I think the rankings will see a tectonic level shift by mid-year.

- Watching Nico at UCLA gave me the impression that they won't see much drop off at the QB position with Aguilar who while not extremely accurate is accurate enough. BTW a big positive that Fran is our coach .. DeShaun Foster is in over his head. Speaking of coaches the job Jason Beck did in week 1 was amazing and was great to see him perform well in his first outing.

- Every team seems to have a significant hole somewhere which wasn't always the case with teams like OSU, Bama, UGA, Clemson, etc over the last decade. If you have a hole it can be exploited (have fun with that one you perverts LOL).

- The B1G looked pedestrian out of the gate against MAC level teams as did Texas A&M and a few other top 25 teams like ASU and SMU who scored on two pick sixes didn't seem to have the offensive juice from last year and many consider to be weaker on D losing some critical parts to the NFL. Speaking of Texas A&M they gave up over 200 yards rushing to UTSA ... could you image what Tennessee would do to them?

- CJ Carr is pretty good and more mobile than I expected and ND will be tough but they couldn't exploit Miami on the ground like I would have anticipated. Either ND took a step back on O or Miami is significantly improved ... of course they still had an epic breakdown in the secondary so I'm not holding my breath that they are back yet. BTW has Chris Ash aged like 30 years in the last 5? Dude looked like hell last night.

- Watching Va Tech for all intents and purposes go toe to toe with SC, we go toe to toe with UT for 3 quarters, and Clemson vs LSU going to the wire along with FSU over Bama shows the gap shrinking between the ACC and SEC which in the long run helps us.

- GT looked mighty pedestrian vs a Colorado team that I think is in for a tumble along with a good bit of the Big 12 ... the conference isn't as strong as I thought it would be. When your conference favorite scrapes by North Dakota that isn't a good sign, Iowa State has the inside track and honestly even they look mediocre at best.

- ODU runs for over 200 yards on Indiana ... another top 25 team that got gashed by an inferior opponent. I think we will be improved against the run in aggregate this year but games like this will hurt our per game average. We gave up 300 in week 1 to Ohio last year ... I would have expected UT to go for 400 honestly if we trotted out that same defense.

- Angeli will be more than adequate and our QB play will more than likely be better than most of even the QB play in the top 25 ... he is currently 27th in passing yards and played a top 10 defense .. ahead of him are either guys that played two games or played some directional school that you couldn't even find on a map. The only QB ahead of him that has played 1 game and against a P4 is Sawyer Robinson of Baylor who went off against Auburn.

- Getting a game against a heavyweight in early I think will galvanize this team, they fought back hard and didn't quit which honesty bodes well ... it just means they will never feel like they are out of a game. I agree with many who feel this is better than pasting a tune up team, it makes you grow up faster and my hope is it puts a little anger in them as they go out for the next two before heading to Death Valley. Speaking of Clemson it appears they have some issues running the ball this year, losing Mafah hurt more than I thought because they gave up on the run faster than I expected. Will they be forced to run Klubnik more? If so that will take its toll over the season. Clemson gets GT right before us .. does that portend well to them getting ground down a bit before we square off?

- UT performed well and hit roughly their average offensive output from last year ... around 230 yards passing and rushing so I don't feel as bad as some about our defense which I think will grow up quick this year.

- I feel like we have a pretty good understanding of how good we are right now and how good we can be, which is more than I can say for most of the top 25 who played FCS and directional schools.

- One last reason to be positive ... we aren't Rutgers fans.

Good writeup, it all depends on if Erob can find a way to get the defense competitive. A lot of new pieces and young people playing could be good by season's end.

 

[sufandu]

I think acceleration wise he isn’t super fast but his top end speed is really good. If that makes sense

He seems like a long strider when he gets going, which is interesting for a RB.

 

[JoeSU]

Others have already mentioned but:

Special teams didn't do anything to seriously hurt us, a marked improvement from last season.

Others have already mentioned but:

Special teams didn't do anything to seriously hurt us, a marked improvement from last season.

Trying to maintain a positive spin on this, but our ST dodged a bullet later in the 2nd half, when it appeared that a Vol punt almost hit one of our downfield players (the replay was inconclusive). This might be just bad luck, or maybe coaches teach a way to avoid this. I seem to recall the SU player receiving the punt seemed to be yelling and pointing to the spot where the ball was headed.

 

[Cuse On 3]

He seems like a long strider when he gets going, which is interesting for a RB.

Agreed, I think all the muscle and how big he is really helps him move down field as well

 

[PAcuse]

Trying to maintain a positive spin on this, but our ST dodged a bullet later in the 2nd half, when it appeared that a Vol punt almost hit one of our downfield players (the replay was inconclusive). This might be just bad luck, or maybe coaches teach a way to avoid this. I seem to recall the SU player receiving the punt seemed to be yelling and pointing to the spot where the ball was headed.

Why post it if you want to maintain a positive spin.
You are harshing the boards orange buzz man

 

[sufandu]

1.) Demetrus Samuel showed a lot of courage just being out there. At his age. To do that. Just wow.

2.) It was nice to the see the option make a comeback on a TD. It warmed the heart of this 55-year-old.

3.) Angeli throws an outstanding slant pass. Cook is gonna break a few this year.

4.) I think we only ran the jet sweep once. That was a bread-and-butter play last year. I bet we see more of it. Cook could be very good running it.

5.) Stonehouse really has his act together.

I wonder if we will ever line Malachi James up to run the jet sweep. Have Willis in the backfield, fake the dive to make the LBs and S hesitate, and give it to James with a chance to build speed before turning the corner.

 

[sufandu]

Trying to maintain a positive spin on this, but our ST dodged a bullet later in the 2nd half, when it appeared that a Vol punt almost hit one of our downfield players (the replay was inconclusive). This might be just bad luck, or maybe coaches teach a way to avoid this. I seem to recall the SU player receiving the punt seemed to be yelling and pointing to the spot where the ball was headed.

The returner did what he was supposed to, but it's hard to hear at game speeds, and I imagine blockers just don't expect the ball to bounce behind them. Glad we dodged that one.

 

[baggerbob]

I wonder if we will ever line Malachi James up to run the jet sweep. Have Willis in the backfield, fake the dive to make the LBs and S hesitate, and give it to James with a chance to build speed before turning the corner.

Double stack James and Cook on the same side of the field. Send one long down the sidelines the other across the middle.