Dawgnoxious and I were there in living color. There is nothing positive that can be drawn from this debacle. As for the Vols. Congrats, you kicked the complete and total crap out of us. I'm only sorry that we bored your fans with such an uncompetitive performance.
As for us. Right now, I'm not pissed. I'm worried.
This team and this program have deep rooted flaws that have shown themselves intermittently over the past seven years. But most of the time, our toughness, strength of will, overall talent and team leadership would overcome those issues. In fact, I wrote a piece before last year's Colorado game talking about my basis of faith in the program and what makes it special. I think many of those strong foundational points are shaky right now. Although, they can be righted.
In losing to Vandy and UK in 2006, those flaws came to the surface like festering sores. To use Dawgnoxious' line...the final three wins of 2006 seem to have simply "wallpapered over" the big issues of last year. Well, they're back. They didn't go away with the miracle ending to last season.
Dawnoxious, Quinton and I aren't posting anything else tonight or most of the day tomorrow. Personally, I think everyone in the Dawg Nation needs to cool off from this. I've seen the message boards, and it's not pretty. This place has never turned south like those sites, and it's not starting tonight. I turned off comments for the night. Your existing comments haven't been deleted. They are just invisible for now. I'll turn commenting back on sometime Sunday.
It wasn't pretty execution. It wasn't pretty effort. It wasn't a pretty result. Naturally our reaction as fans won't be pretty. But it doesn't have to be instant.
Update: Commenting is on again.
PWD
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11 comments:
The absurd thing about this season is this statement:
We are just as likely to beat Florida as we are to lose to Troy. If Stanford can beat USC, Miss St can beat Auburn, Colorado can beat OU, then we can beat Florida. But, that, by no means, is an endorsement that we will beat Vanderbilt next Saturday. But, we might. Who knows? I am certain it won't be a tie. That I can hang my hat on.
Speaking of Vanderbilt, I might go to my first game up there this Saturday. Where do I need to stay/party/tailgate prior to the game. I'll do my job to be loud and rowdy and hopefully help will our boys to the first SEC east win in over a year. Yesterday reminded me that we are a lot closer to the 06 season with all the problems then we are to the 09, which will be the best UGA team in several years. UT wanted it more and you have to tip your hat to them, but we are only 6 days away from teeing it up again. Once a dawg, always a dawg how sweet it is.
i think i have a list of restaurants and stuff. but it may be really old. i'll check.
I don't remember where we tailgated though.
I don't want Georgia fans to be like Serena Williams and not tip our hat to UT, they played great (yes, we helped but they did). I'm really not sure if even playing better would have helped.
That said, these games happen (more frequently when I was in school (89-93)) and we move on to Vandy.
My main beef is after the game with what appears to be the continued use of the players as the crutch by our coaches for this type performance. The quotes from the AJC (in particular) drove me crazy Sunday morning.
"There's an awful lot of one-on-one battles going on out there, and we need to win some. Sometimes you just have to beat a block and make the tackle."
"This is not that surprising to see Tennessee's defensive line handle our guys like that,"
"They did a nice job of mixing it up, and we couldn't make plays. They just executed and were more physical and we couldn't tackle them..."
It's always our guys not making plays or winning battles. I don't want to hear that from the coaches after that kind of debacle. I want them to take all the blame (and not just saying we were out-coached one time) while knowing that anyone who watched the game knows that there is issues aplenty to go around.
And this isn't the first time, it is a consistent theme after games like this (look at quotes from UK & Vandy last year).
Maybe I'm too sensitive about this but it is the one thing that really irked me after the game.
Go Dawgs!!
We owe UT an apology. UGA has single handidly extended the Fulmer reign in Knoxville. Please accept our humble condolences.
C.Paul,
As I read the AJC, I thought the same thing. I think the coaches should shoulder the blame, "we didn't have the guys prepared and Tennessee took advantage of that", and like you said, the fans will realize that both the players and the coaches are responsible, but I think a sign of leadership is accepting responsibility for those under you (at least publicly).
I know that we only get a smidgen of what was actually said in the papers, and the AJC recycled some of those quotes for multiple articles, so I wish I would have heard more of the press conference/post-game.
ana 12:03.. Best tailgating is probably Centennial Park.
UGA fan living in Nashville..GO DAWGS!!
Anon 12:02am: There's quite a bit of tailgating around the stadium for the Vandy game. Lots of restaurants on West End. There's a Marriott hotel right next to the stadium where you can actually see the games from the concierge lounge. I'll be tailgating with my BIL (maybe, still mad at him at the moment for rub-in text Saturday) for the Vandy game.
The team stays at the Marriott at the airport if that is of interest to you. My husband works there so I'll be hanging around there too.
I'll be sporting my red and black proudly everyday this week. I can't let these big orange fans think that I'm not proud. LOL
Jason, can't rely on the AJC. Read Ching's transcript. He posts it every week.
That said, these games happen (more frequently when I was in school (89-93)) and we move on to Vandy.
Man, you just compared our current run to that of the Ray Goff era. Does that not make you realize that maybe something is wrong here? Those teams had bad games and bad seasons but they never underperformed like this.
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