The CheckerBoard

Fire a coach after a win? When many are already moaning about how bad UT's PR is?

....let's be logical. If your defense is terrible, and ours is, the offense needs to help it out. I mean sure you can say "WELL ALL THEM DARN POINTS ARE THE DEFENSE'S FAULT", and you're absolutely right. However, those points are still on the scoreboard. Whereas if we take the air out of the ball, take long drives, eat the clock, keep the other defense on the field, etc, we give our defense the chance to be successful. Maybe instead of 15 possessions Troy only gets 10. Then if you get lucky and get off the field the defense starts feeling better about itself. Right now our offense either scores or gives the ball back quickly every time, and the defense usually spends most of the game on the field. When you're not playing well and you can't get any positive momentum that's a recipe for disaster.

So yes, you can blame the defense. Or you can adjust the offense to maybe pick the defense up. Right now we're playing like a Big XII team and trying to outscore everyone instead of playing pro-style football which has always been Tennessee's MO.

He has to be fired as soon as the last regular season game is over. We can't let him coach through the bowl and expect to salvage this recruiting class. Firing him tomorrow or after Kentucky is irrelevant to me, as long as he's gone and we get a new guy in place as early as possible.

I see what you're saying, and the time of possession stats definitely support your argument, I'm just not sure how you fix that. If Hunter or CP completely burns the coverage, which they do often because they are incredibly talented, should Bray not throw it to them? Should CP just fall down and not try to break every tackle and make defenders look silly? Our offense is in a position where they have to take advantage of scoring opportunities. I think you're right that quick drives don't do the D any favors, but I just don't see what they can do differently.

This offense is currently built to be quick strike. Why do you think we take shots on third and short all the time? They really don't try to sustain drives, just score as quickly as possible. I'm not sure if you can change it mid-season but once it became apparent just how poorly our defense was playing they really should have tried to make some adjustments and control the clock.

How can you keep Dooley after 3years of bad and can Sal after half a season

I see a coach who made a very good decision on his OC and a very bad decision on his DC. You make the hire you get the fire...if it's bad. I like Dooley but he hired Sal and it's up to him to neutralize him by having someone else make the D calls even if it's on the QT. I often talk about perspective because I have seen the highs and lows for UT football for 50+ years but I have no frame of reference for this.

There is some logic in what you say but it comes no where near accounting for the homerun plays we are experiencing. This is just bad D and bad D calls by the coach. These kids are so damned confused it's a wonder they have the heart to go out and compete.

The defense is horrible by any measure, 3rd and long, big plays, forcing to's.

So I have no problem with the offense trying to score a TD on every play, because they need a TD every possession to keep us in games.

Lets not mess up the offense by having them try to play D too.

My honest assessment of this team is that they are a poorly coached team, they do not play for each other, much less their coaches, and I see no way we win out with this defense. All I've heard all year is how this team has great chemistry and togetherness. Well I didn't see it today. On one of CP's many spectacular plays, he ended up getting piled on by 5-6 Troy defenders. As they were slowly getting off of him by pushing off of him and shoving him into the ground, 3-4 of our guys, mostly O-linemen IIRC, sat idly by and let this happen without ripping the Troy players off of him or helping him off the ground. It's those little things that makes me call BS on this team's "chemistry". That kind of stuff never happened when I played ball. We were always there to pick each other up and take up for one another. I saw none of that today nor can I say I ever recall noticing a great deal of it all year. And don't get me started on J-Hunt's unsportsmanlike after that late TD. Inexcusable and completely selfish, and he's supposed to be a "leader".

As for coaching, there's only one thing I needed to see today that confirmed that Dooley has no idea how to coach to win the game. Up 41-40 with around 4-5 minutes to go and our defense performing worse than horribly, we continuously snapped the ball on offense with no less than 19 seconds on the play clock while the game clock was running. Someone please explain this train of thought to me because I can't make any sense of it. And just for good measure, I'm pretty sure we had to call a TO yet again when they were about to try a FG because we didn't have enough men on the field. What happened? They decided not to kick it, went for it, got it and proceeded to shove it down our throats for a TD.

Screw his records overall, in the conference or against ranked teams, the man is obviously in over his head as he has not learned how to better coach our boys during the course of the game after 6 years of coaching, 3 of them with this team. Thank God Bray put up video game numbers and CP is a freak of nature, otherwise we would have been ran out of our own house by 20+ points by a Sun Belt team. It's time for a change.