The CheckerBoard

Put Sal on the bus back to Tuscaloosa. Call a defense meeting and poll them to find out what most of them ran in high school, and run that. Wide tackle six, whatever. But hurry.

I agree. That's what I'd do even if he does it behind the scenes to save face for Sal.

If it's the scheme whose fault is that? If it's a lack of talent whose fault is that? If it's the players not buying in and doing what the scheme tells them to do whose fault is that?

There's no easy fix there, and Dooley isn't in a position to make a long term overhaul.

At halftime, Tennessee coach Johnny Majors, whose team had dropped a 34-29 thriller to Notre Dame last year in Knoxville, ending the Vols' national title hopes, made some adjustments in his defense, which had given up 233 rushing yards in the first half. "We ganged up at the line," said Majors after the game. "You have to start doing something."

This was from the 1991 Notre Dame game. A game where we gave up 31 points and nearly 34 in the first half. I seriously doubt they practiced much of what they did in the second half of that game.

But they changed. Because they needed to. Because they had to.

The problem I saw today was we kept running the same ineffective plays on defense. In particular, that 4 man rush with a stunt that left the middle of the line of scrimmage clear. It wasn't working, but we kept dipping in that well looking for water.

Stop it. Stop what you're doing. Change. Do something different. Anything, because it's just not working.

Our best defense may have been that last series when we finally just rushed 3. Wasn't pretty, but it was different.

What a beautiful game that was. Still recall it very well. Miami scores early and TV guys (Jackson I think it was), saying something like "here they go" referring to the onslaught Miami was about to put on the Vols. Oh, what a game, and yes, what a defensive gem it was.

I have a picture, in my office, of the scoreboard with 1 second to go in the game. Another jewel was David Keith on the sidelines as Michael Irvin streaked to their first score. The producer made the mistake of choosing the camera showing Keith and the resulting F bomb was easily lip read. One of my all time favorite games.

Kirby Smart would probably keep him at DC...........

Best football and financial option is to make him LB coach at his current salary and temporarily make Conklin or someone else DC. No buy out costs and he has the option of leaving which should also alleviate the buy out costs unless demotion has been negotiated out of his contract. If he can't officially be demoted it could be done without using that terminology.