Positives Only Thread | Page 5 | Syracusefan.com
.

Positives Only Thread

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.
They did, but I'm going with the close doesn't count philosophy as long as we clean it up.
 
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.
Couldn’t agree more with all of this. I’m feeling better today than I was Saturday afternoon.
 
We're all annoyed and posting lots of complaints. Let's focus on some positives only for a change...

Few thoughts:

1) Antoine did a pretty good at MLB. Was talking with a former player after the game who thought he did really well for it being his first collegiate game. Really liked how he attacked the running game. Thinks he's going to be a special player.

2) We have talent at WR. Russell even did a nice job filling in for Cook.

3) Cook. Enough said. He's going to drive ACC defenses crazy.

4) Nixon is healthy and did a nice job out of the backfield.

5) Willis can be a beast.

6) It was nice to see a lot of recent players at the game. Helped it being an off week for the NFL but saw Bergeron, Zaire, Lequint, and Bullock, plus a bunch of players from the 90s and early 2000s, too. Lot of support for what Fran is doing. They all noticed the size difference and the talent influx.
Thank goodness for reasonable minds. I thought we played quite well. If not for some ineligible men downfield and some other penalties we would have made this a game. It was essentially an away game
 
Anyways the schedule is absolutely murderers row. Going to be hard to win more than six games. Need to win every single game at home and maybe can pull one win off on the road.

Villari also messed up twice with illegal shifts or illegal man down the field or whatever he was doing when he was releasing as tight end and being covered. He needs to clean that up
Gonna be some tough games... But I love the caliber of games on our schedule and win or lose, Fran ain't running from them! Let's go play.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
174,027
Messages
5,129,405
Members
6,098
Latest member
volsfan

Online statistics

Members online
203
Guests online
1,796
Total visitors
1,999


...
Top Bottom