Send The Message

OK Ducks, now you're just showing off.

Just like in the old western movies, Oregon put Tennessee's dead body up over it's horse, pinned a note on it, and slapped the horse's butt to send it running back to the SEC ranch.

What did the note say? If you listened, you heard the Autzen crowd chanting it.

"WE WANT 'BAMA!  WE WANT 'BAMA! ...."

Or LSU, or Georgia, South Carolina, A & M . . . . We don't care. Send out your best. Send out someone who can play against us. Let's finish this.

59-14? Are you kidding? The Ducks coaching staff were left scratching their heads asking, "How did Tennessee ever score 14?".

The point spread was 28. Tennessee was hoping to keep it closer, maybe make it a game, a little bit of a struggle. Instead they got their worst defeat since 1910 -- back when people who were living are now all dead.
Pics from Oregonian and Daily Emerald

Say what?!?
Does somebody need to explain the definition of 'homecoming' to them?

I was really hoping the Vols would have given Oregon a better game. Indeed they came out hot to start, stopped Oregon's first drive, scored first, held Oregon to a rare field goal on their next drive. . . .

Then Oregon fired off eight touchdowns, including one on a 4th and 6 in the middle of the field.

Gotta be the shoes!
The Vols' Adidas failed against Nike U.

The Duck calls it as Huff cruises to the endzone.

 

March of the yellow hi-liters.



Gotta be the shoes 2.
Still not getting to Mariota.



Who will end up with the ball, DAT or Mariota?
Your guess is as good (or bad) as Tennessee's.

Taylor Hart: Yellow People Eater

DAT's fast. But good blocking makes him faster.

OK now that's just pretty.
Like a yellow daisy with an orange center.

Nope. Still not gettin' him.

DID THE DUCKS FIND THEIR GEHRIG?


Freshman Jon Mundt, #83. "The Mundster"

Oregon has a man-child for a third string tight end. True freshman John Mundt,  blasted his 6'4", 232 pound frame over poor defenseless defensive backs with just five catches for 121 yards and two touchdowns. He played in the absence of Colt Lyerla, who was out for unclear reasons (He's ill.  No, he's being punished.  He's
being punished for being ill . . . ???)
 
But as Columnist John Canzano tweeted: Colt Lyerla… meet Wally Pipp.
(For you young kids out there, Wally Pipp was a Yankee first baseman back in 1925 who sat out a game and. . . . Oh just google it, dumbasses.  I ain't your history teacher!)

OREGON HAS A DIFFERENT AND INNOVATIVE . . . DEFENSE?!?!?
Another surprise may have been brought to our attention by a Vol player. Just how especially good is Oregon's defense? Read this quote from the Oregonian:
Added Antonio “Tiny” Richardson, the Vols’ 6-foot-6, 327-pound left tackle, who is a preseason All-SEC lineman: “You know what, I don’t want to get too technical, but the defense they ran, it was tough on us. It was hard for us to get any angles, double teams. It was different.’’

What does he mean "different"?  What makes a guy who supposedly has seen the toughest defenses in the SEC and perhaps the nation get taken aback by Oregon's.

At around the 9 minute mark of the third quarter, the commentator begins to explain Oregon's defense. Oregon only has three or four linemen up front playing what he calls "2-gap" assignments, meaning that they are responsible for the gaps on either side of the O-linemen in front of them.

Their primary job is to find and plug the running gaps, then the rest of the defense finds the ball carrier who may be searching for an unplugged gap.

He goes on to note the Duck D-linemens' set stance. "They squat down like frogs," he says, "and they're actually reading the helmets of the offensive line and just trying to build a wall. It's an incredibly difficult technique to learn. It's very hard for a team to get ready to play . . .You don't have anyone on the team of Tennessee that knows how to play this technique." 

And as I look, I see that he's right. They Ducks are in a four-point set with their butts squatted as low as they can. When they come forward, they shift to one side of the offensive linemen or the other, and then the rest of the D fills the other holes.

It's interesting to watch, I just still don't understand WHY it works. Do me a favor. Watch it for yourself, then explain it to me. Click on the video below and if it's not already there, slide the play bar about two-thirds of the way down to the 11-minute mark of the third quarter (1:33:36 on the video time counter). That's when they start talking about Oregon's D and how it is manhandling Tennessee's all star offensive line.



OTHER GAMES:
Hey 'Bama, 49-42 winners over Manziel's Aggies, congratulations on squeaking past the quarterback who decided not to come to Oregon when he heard Mariota was going there. (True story.)  At Oregon, Johnny "Football" would've earned his nickname for holding the football perfectly for point-after-kicks after every touchdown scored by Mariota. And then he would've been kicked off the team for being a pin headed idiot.


Oregon State went to Utah and defeated the Utes in a hard fought back-and-forth overtime battle. This win helps to make their fans forget they started the season with an embarrassing loss to Eastern Washington.
  So I'll remind them: HEY BEAVS. YOU LOST TO EASTERN WASHINGTION! 
HA HA HA HA HA HA . . . .


NEVER ASK A BADGER TO MANAGE YOUR TIME
Wisconsin was down by two to ASU. They drove down the field and got to the 17 yard line with 18 seconds left and no timeouts.

Stop the clock. Kick the field goal. Badgers win, right?

Watch this video.



Flash back to the Rose Bowl in 2012. Oregon and those same Badgers. Oregon is up by seven. Wisconsin is driving hard. Two seconds left, out of timeouts, they've given themselves one shot at the endzone, right?  Do you remember? Watch this:


Clock management in the final two minutes of a ball game is a game in itself. It requires a cool head, good instincts, belief in your team, knowledge of the rules, and most importantly, an awareness of the time.

Russell Wilson (a great QB for the Seahawks today) learned the hard way that you cannot spike the ball to down it with two seconds left. In fact these days it's an official rule in college football. Three seconds must show on the clock in order to spike the ball. If he had it to do over, he would've just run the play.

BREAKING NEWS: It has just been reported during the writing of this dribble that the refs of the ASU game have been reprimanded for their part in letting the clock run down. Fair enough.

But still, QB Joel Stive, WHAT WAS THAT? Don't make it hard for the refs. You've seen it a thousand times. Your coach says you practiced it. Drop FULLY to one knee, then give the ref the ball.

The truth is he panicked. He lost his cool. He lost.


Next week, BYE week. No game.
Oregon fans, surprise your sweetie next Saturday and tell him or her you want to skip your dumb ol' Duck game that day and do something special, just the two of you!

--kb

Vols: "Don't be Cruel Ducks!"

Iconic stamps of Tennessee's favorite son.

Remember these stamps some 15 cents ago? Two iconic Elvis images were released for the enjoyment of stamp collectors and fans of The King.

One was young, slender, jacket-and-tie Elvis. The other? Fat, old, make-up and sequined white jumpsuit Elvis.

The first was him at his best. Beautiful, fresh, healthy. The second was still enjoyable, but very different.  Watching him as a dated Vegas act might give you the opportunity to remember the early years when he was at his prime. But when you weren't thinking of the good times, you were watching him in the present. And that was kind of sad.

The Tennessee Volunteers of today are like fat old Elvis. Oh sure, they got a great new coach in Butch Jones, formerly from the Cincinnati Bearcats; and he's the man to raise them back to a great level again. But for now, he's little more than a brand new rayon-silk blend sequined suit. This season's fat and sad Tennessee Volunteer team looks better than last season. But it's nothing like the kings of college football back in the 90's and particularly '98 when they won the National Championship.

The Vols are off to a great start having thoroughly dispatched of Western Kentucky and Austin Peay. (It's too bad the BCS computers don't score you very high for defeating a team with a word like "pee" in it's name.) But they and everybody else all know the same thing. They're going to lose at Autzen.



Coach Butch Jones:
"I'm eager to see how my boys
react to this loss .... uh, I mean
trip to Oregon."

Yes, they're all talking the brave talk. They believe in themselves and are looking forward to the trip. But Coach Butch is realistically looking at this as more of a learning experience. He's already wondering about his team's resiliency.
This article from The Chattanooga Times Free Press pokes the usual fun at Oregon and it's uniforms and Nike connection. Then it faces facts, then Coach Butch throws in some tough talk and strategy (They're going to work the clock.)

And then comes this final paragraph.
Whether it begins Saturday or somewhere down the road, you get the feeling that Oregon’s shiny helmets aside, when it comes to coaching, Tennessee could well have the brighter future of the two schools.
I'm going to give the writer the benefit of the doubt that what he meant was that Tennessee's future will appear brighter because they have so much farther to go. With the exception of winning the National Championship -- Oregon's primary goal -- the Ducks have nowhere to go but down. Tennessee, on the other hand, has hundreds of goals ahead of them. So he meant the Vols have more opportunities for bright spots . . . . either that or he's just an idiot.

YA, ABOUT THAT BRIGHT FUTURE . . . . .
This just in: Tennessee Defensive End Maurice Couch is one of five current and former SEC football players who were identified as taking cash payments while in college. Coach Butch Jones has ruled him ineligible for the Oregon game pending further investigation.
 
The story here from Fox Sports says that along with Couch was a former Tennessee QB, two players from Mississippi State, and D.J. Fluker -- a former Alabama offensive tackle who started in both National Championship games. Furthermore, former Bama defensive end Luther Davis was the key link between NFL agents, players and their "financial advisers".

Alabama . . . . Alabama? . . . . .That rings a bell.  I seem to remember Alabama coming into the conversation the last time there was a "huge" scandal.

Back in the summer of 2011 a writer for the blog "Roll Bama Roll" characterized Oregon as a school "in trouble" when they overpaid back alley scout Willie Lyles for connecting them to hot recruit Lache Seastrunk. Here's a paragraph.
For Oregon, though, this is just plain damn ugly, and it's easy to see why they recently secured the services of a high-end boutique law firm that specializes in NCAA enforcement issues. It's almost impossible to read any of this and legitimately believe Oregon AD Rob Mullen's contentions that they are doing everything the right way. If it looks like thinly-veiled pay-for-play and smells like thinly-veiled pay-for-play, well... you know how this ends. How can you legitimately defend handwritten letters and e-mails from key institutional figures? It's possible, to be sure, but exceedingly difficult.

Pay-for-play? He was in error. Oregon didn't pay anyone to play. But it remains that if you want to see "pay-to-play" defined and explained, you'll apparently still want to ask someone from Bama.

Bama coach Nick Saban, the greatest football coach he's ever known, said yesterday that he was confident the university will "handle the situation appropriately". He went on to offer this vote of full confidence of his players.
''For as many high-profile players as we've had around here, I'm fairly pleased with the way most of them, for the most part, have managed their circumstances and their situation and focused on what they need to do for the University of Alabama,'' he said

"Fairly pleased ... with most of them, for the most part".

With that fairly mostly assured statement for the most part, you can understand how shocked and disappointed Coach Saban was when reporters only wanted to talk about Alabama's paid players and not about the Tide's upcoming game against Texas A & M and their star paid player. See the short video of his interview in that same "story here" link from Fox Sports above.

All eyes are now on the NCAA to see how they kid glove these latest violations in the SEC (Stash Extra Cash?).

Tennessee at Oregon game time: 12:30 Pacific on ABC or ESPN2