THE DAY AFTER: OHIO STATE
The Volunteer fanbase showed up for the College Football Playoffs...man, did they ever! Too bad the football team didn’t!
So after sleeping on this and giving it a little time to set, it’s still abundantly clear to me: Tennessee’s first round loss to Ohio State Saturday night in the first expanded field of the College Football Playoff, this one’s gonna leave a mark...for a while!
On a weekend where Vol Nation conducted a master class in fandom that caught the attention of seemingly every college football fan and media member in the nation, the Tennessee football team laid an egg of epic proportions, losing 42-17.
Must have been the cold weather...right?
Nope...we had players on the field pre-game with no shirts on!
Must have been the home crowd taking over the game, right?
Um...it was almost like a neutral site game, thanks to 30,000+ Tennessee fans making the trip up north, and representing like the King’s and Queen’s they are!
So it HAD to be Nico...Freshman quarterback, felt like the stage and the moment was too big...yeah, that’s it...right?
Jesus! Nico was playin’ his ass off out there!!! Thank God for Nico last night!
What it was...was exactly what we discussed earlier in the week on Under Review on Fanrun Radio. As we analyzed this game, Sam Beard and I talked about how elite this Ohio State roster is, and how is it possible that they only scored 10 points in their regular season finale against Michigan? We said it...more as a point of conversation than a prediction: if Ohio State gets on track, with all of that talent...all of those dudes, then whoever’s playing them is in for trouble...let’s hope it’s not us on the other side of that awakening.
Well, the awakening happened, Saturday night, against (sigh), us.
It’s almost like Ohio State Football took all of the Buckeye fanbases vitriol towards them and Ryan Day and used it as a motivator for them to rise up. And hell, maybe all of the hype surrounding the “Tennessee Takeover” may have been added rocket fuel to those guys. If that was the case, props to them, because that shows me a different type of personality for Ohio State than what I’ve seen all...and I mean ALL season! But it was more than that...much more, that made Saturday night such an ambush.
Sure, Ohio State has the superior personnel, but they finally figured out how to use them properly...just in time for the College Football Playoffs. That type of team...they can win it all!
And that to me, is what the difference in this game was...
Say what you want about Ryan Day. Hell, I’d say that Josh Heupel is every bit the X’s and O’s Coach that Ryan Day is...maybe even better. BUT, Ryan Day has the wherewithal to surround himself with a Coordinator like Chip Kelly...a former College and NFL head coach and renowned offensive play-calling savant. Jim Knowles at Defensive Coordinator is also pretty high cotton too, but back to Kelly; he was in his element on Saturday night, and absolutely cooked Tennessee. SO many plays where Buckeyes were wide open and with space to run even more, Will Howard, a guy who I felt was inferior to Nico heading into this game, ended up 24-29 passing for 311 yards and 2 TD’s...and a 188 QBR! TreVeyon Henderson, 134 yards total offense and 2 touchdowns, Jeremiah Smith, 103 yards receiving and 2 touchdowns...the Buckeyes nearly doubled the Vols in total yards in this game. The defense held Nico to 104 yards passing...the Vols leading receiver, Bru McCoy had 40 yards receiving. This game was a mismatch from the very start. Say what you want about the untimely early facemask call on Tennessee and how things may have been different if that penalty hadn’t occurred. Please! That team we saw in Scarlet...coupled with how unprepared Tennessee appeared, would win at least...at least, 9 out of 10 games against the Vols.
I could go on and on, but by now most Vol fans know why what happened, happened. Better personnel, better coaching, and...that’s it! So how do the Vols take this and build on it? Here are a couple of thoughts:
1) More NIL Money: And at a minimum, a more creative and strategic way to build and leverage NIL. It’s truly become an arms race that’s not for the faint of heart, with new, big money coming into schools every week now it seems. Remember that moment in time when Tennessee’s NIL Collective was ranked by On3 as “The Most Aggressive NIL Collective” in the country? That feels like dog years ago...hell, there’s talk of North Carolina Football generating $20M in NIL money now that they have Bill Belichick in charge. This feels like a point of inflection for NIL, and it feels like Tennessee’s no longer the tip of the spear. For our recruiting and transfer portal game to grow to where it needs to be so it’s not just relevant, but elite, this is priority #1
2) On the field, fix the offense: We’ve talked about it all season long. Honestly, it’s been going on for two season’s now, but we blamed Joe Milton for most of last season’s struggles. Now, we know better. Teams have figured Tennessee out, they’ve neutralized the tempo. This team would’ve been 8-4 or 7-5 without Dylan Sampson. The receivers are mid, and injury prone, and because of that, we’re not getting the best version of Nico at QB that we can have. AND...an offensive line that looked rough at times (last night for example) is largely going to graduate out now, so a rebuild is in order there. While we’re at it, PLEASE rebuild the receiver corps as well...all of this leads to....
3) Josh Heupel needs to make some hard choices: Yeah, I said it. Josh is loyal to his coaching staff. Some are good at their job, some are not so good, and some are FOJ’s (Friends of Josh), and feel a bit, how should I say this...exempt. After seeing what Chip Kelly did Saturday night in Columbus, it’s clear to me that we could stand to have some change on the Vols Coaching staff...that is if the Vols have any ambition of upgrading to “Elite” status. If not, then we may very well be witnessing the ceiling for Josh Heupel. Like...8-4 next season. Not good Bob...
Now, let me be clear in saying that, if you asked me prior to the start of the season if I’d be happy with a Tennessee Football team that would finish the season at 10-3, would have beaten Alabama and Florida, and would have made the inaugural 12 team field of the College Football Playoff, I would have said, SIGN ME UP! There’s no way we can look past what was accomplished this season, and how far Josh Heupel has brought this program in 4 seasons. Think about how dire things appeared when he was hired...I tend to forget it, largely because things have been pretty damn good since Heup’s arrival! But after the Georgia loss, I said on the radio that this team “was not a killer”...we’re “a nice team”, with “nice players”, and “a nice coach”. Nice...but that won’t cut it in this new age of College Football, not if you want to be elite...and man, were we ever reminded of it on Saturday night!
So let’s take the positives from the painful loss to the Buckeyes...we know what elite looks like, and we’re not there...yet! Now it’s time to begin a whole new climb. The Vols climb to the playoffs: Been there done that...and we’re proud as hell of it! Now it’s time for the next phase. Win playoff games, and get closer to the Championship...you know, what elite programs do! That can be us; we just need to address the issues, which are clear and right in front of us.
