| FTBL Tennessee's biggest deficiency...

[BamaGradinTN]

...in my opinion, is their wide receiver coach. The play of the Vol WRs was absolutely pathetic.

I'm not talking about dropped passes.

1. At least three times, while the game was still winnable, on 3rd down the Vol WR ran his route one yard short of the first down marker. Any idiot knows that on 3rd and 8, you run a 9 yard route, not a 7 yard route. The O-line did it's job, Stephens makes a nice pass, and the guy catches it, but we drop him immediately 2 or 3 feet short of the marker. This happened three times, and Tennessee punted each time, putting that tired defense back out there again.

2. Penalties. Once for 6 men on the line, because the WR wasn't on the line. Another killer, after the TE, Briscoe, makes a nice catch for substantial yardage over the middle, the play is called back because the idiot WR had lined up on the line and covered up Briscoe, making him ineligible. The penalty was technically an ineligible penalty on Briscoe, but it was the moron WR's fault. All the guy has to do is glance over at the head linesman or line judge beside him...if the official's arm is raised parallel to the ground, he's off the line, if not, he's on the line. Again...very poor coaching at WR.

Bill King, on the radio here in Nashville, has often said that their WRs have never been coached. Now I know what he means.

 

[RollTide1980]

I loved the 3 & 15 dump pass to Foster for 1 yard! lol

I think that sums it up.

~Bryan

 

[alagator]

...in my opinion, is their wide receiver coach. The play of the Vol WRs was absolutely pathetic.

I'm not talking about dropped passes.

1. At least three times, while the game was still winnable, on 3rd down the Vol WR ran his route one yard short of the first down marker. Any idiot knows that on 3rd and 8, you run a 9 yard route, not a 7 yard route. The O-line did it's job, Stephens makes a nice pass, and the guy catches it, but we drop him immediately 2 or 3 feet short of the marker. This happened three times, and Tennessee punted each time, putting that tired defense back out there again.

Generally speaking your first point is correct, but there may be technical reasons an eight-yard route is run on 3rd-and-9.

Pass routes are usually not determined by the distance to a first down, but are usually part of a general scheme - and in combination with other routes.

Have you ever heard a color guy talk about the 'layering of routes' on a pass play?

A player may run a eight-yard route because that is the 'layer' his route is designed. Eight yards may be the proper distance to hold a LB at a certain level to allow another receiver to get open behind him (the second guy finding a hole between the LB and Safety over the top). The idea when the play was called was to draw up the underneath coverage and hit the longer route - only the QB made a wrong read or the underneath coverage reacted in time to deny the deeper route and make the stop on the completed shorter pass.

This is not the case always, but often when a fan sees a pass completed short of the marker they think it was a poor route by the WR when that is not always the case.

And sometimes defenses force a pass to a guy short of the distance marker with presser. This is what happened on the first 3rd-down stop on UT's first possession. We did not give the QB enough time to hit a longer route and we had a player in the proper spot to make the stop. (We forced UT into a 'hot route' but had the hot route covered.)

And. Sometimes a WR just pulls a bone-headed move and runs the route too short. But more times than not, it is probably a scheme thing and he was probably not the first option for the pass.

 

[Guest]

To me, UT's biggest problem is recruiting. I find it inexcusable that they have no answer whatsoever at QB. How does that happen? They should have been able to get a replacement for Ainge (not that he was that great) with the amount of visibility and resources they have. I don't understand how they could have thought Crompton was the answer. He reeks and Stevens isn't much better. They should have seen that. I did.

 

[Kirk Van de Graaff]

UT's Biggest problem....

 

[TidePride50]

...in my opinion, is their wide receiver coach. The play of the Vol WRs was absolutely pathetic.

I'm not talking about dropped passes.

1. At least three times, while the game was still winnable, on 3rd down the Vol WR ran his route one yard short of the first down marker. Any idiot knows that on 3rd and 8, you run a 9 yard route, not a 7 yard route. The O-line did it's job, Stephens makes a nice pass, and the guy catches it, but we drop him immediately 2 or 3 feet short of the marker. This happened three times, and Tennessee punted each time, putting that tired defense back out there again.

Generally speaking your first point is correct, but there may be technical reasons an eight-yard route is run on 3rd-and-9.

Pass routes are usually not determined by the distance to a first down, but are usually part of a general scheme - and in combination with other routes.

Have you ever heard a color guy talk about the 'layering of routes' on a pass play?

A player may run a eight-yard route because that is the 'layer' his route is designed. Eight yards may be the proper distance to hold a LB at a certain level to allow another receiver to get open behind him (the second guy finding a hole between the LB and Safety over the top). The idea when the play was called was to draw up the underneath coverage and hit the longer route - only the QB made a wrong read or the underneath coverage reacted in time to deny the deeper route and make the stop on the completed shorter pass.

This is not the case always, but often when a fan sees a pass completed short of the marker they think it was a poor route by the WR when that is not always the case.

And sometimes defenses force a pass to a guy short of the distance marker with presser. This is what happened on the first 3rd-down stop on UT's first possession. We did not give the QB enough time to hit a longer route and we had a player in the proper spot to make the stop. (We forced UT into a 'hot route' but had the hot route covered.)

And. Sometimes a WR just pulls a bone-headed move and runs the route too short. But more times than not, it is probably a scheme thing and he was probably not the first option for the pass.

Great post.

 

[Nate]

UT's Biggest problem....

;w;w

 

[BamaGradinTN]

...in my opinion, is their wide receiver coach. The play of the Vol WRs was absolutely pathetic.

I'm not talking about dropped passes.

1. At least three times, while the game was still winnable, on 3rd down the Vol WR ran his route one yard short of the first down marker. Any idiot knows that on 3rd and 8, you run a 9 yard route, not a 7 yard route. The O-line did it's job, Stephens makes a nice pass, and the guy catches it, but we drop him immediately 2 or 3 feet short of the marker. This happened three times, and Tennessee punted each time, putting that tired defense back out there again.

Generally speaking your first point is correct, but there may be technical reasons an eight-yard route is run on 3rd-and-9.

Pass routes are usually not determined by the distance to a first down, but are usually part of a general scheme - and in combination with other routes.

Have you ever heard a color guy talk about the 'layering of routes' on a pass play?

A player may run a eight-yard route because that is the 'layer' his route is designed. Eight yards may be the proper distance to hold a LB at a certain level to allow another receiver to get open behind him (the second guy finding a hole between the LB and Safety over the top). The idea when the play was called was to draw up the underneath coverage and hit the longer route - only the QB made a wrong read or the underneath coverage reacted in time to deny the deeper route and make the stop on the completed shorter pass.

This is not the case always, but often when a fan sees a pass completed short of the marker they think it was a poor route by the WR when that is not always the case.

And sometimes defenses force a pass to a guy short of the distance marker with presser. This is what happened on the first 3rd-down stop on UT's first possession. We did not give the QB enough time to hit a longer route and we had a player in the proper spot to make the stop. (We forced UT into a 'hot route' but had the hot route covered.)

And. Sometimes a WR just pulls a bone-headed move and runs the route too short. But more times than not, it is probably a scheme thing and he was probably not the first option for the pass.

That makes some sense, but I don't think that's the case here. I doubt that Nick Stephens is adept enough yet for them to be giving him too many options. And even if the receivers were secondary receivers, all they needed was one more stride to put them over the marker. Whether it was a bone-headed move by the player, or a bone-headed scheme, the problem is still with coaching the receivers. On a critical possession down, the receiver has to know where the marker is and adjust his route accordingly. You gotta know where that marker is.

 

[alagator]

That makes some sense, but I don't think that's the case here. I doubt that Nick Stephens is adept enough yet for them to be giving him too many options. And even if the receivers were secondary receivers, all they needed was one more stride to put them over the marker. Whether it was a bone-headed move by the player, or a bone-headed scheme, the problem is still with coaching the receivers. On a critical possession down, the receiver has to know where the marker is and adjust his route accordingly. You gotta know where that marker is.

I was not arguing the specific plays you mentioned, only stating that it is not as clear that it was the receivers fault as one might suspect on first blush.

And in most cases the coaches do NOT want players adjusting the routes because that would mess up the layering scheme of the routes.

The deepest layer of a play might contain a player breaking his route off at 14 yards, an intermediate route at seven yards, and a release route at the line-of-scrimmage. The QB procession might be deep-intermediate-release.

If the player running the intermediate route decides on his own to run his route at eight or nine yards deep he could (most likely would) crowd up the deeper route. And in many cases could allow one player to both deny the deeper primary route because he was not lured shorter by the intermediate route AND cover the intermediate route - forcing a dump-off to the even shorter release route.

This three person route would not be an overly difficult read for even an inexperienced college QB. UNLESS one of the players decided on his own to layer himself somewhere other than where the QB expected based on the play call. This freelancing would result in a QB not being able to trust the 'keys' or 'reads' he has for that play scheme. He has enough to worry about while reading the players on the field he does not KNOW will be where exactly (the defense) than to have to anticipate where his own players will go and be.

Now, you may have a totally correct point that it was not wise to call a play where a secondary receiver was called upon to run an intermediary route short of the first down in case the deeper primary route is covered. But that is a different point than I was trying to make on the one specific point that a player should adjust his route at all times based on distance to the first down.

I am talking general football philosophy and not the specific three or four plays from Saturday.

 

[UAgrad93]

Alagator, you have a valid point. In those flood routes where you are sending 3 receivers to one side, they have a set depth to be at on the field. You have a deep, intermediate, and a shallow receiver. If the shallow or intermediate receivers diverge from those depths then basically one defender can cover 2 receivers. It does fall to coaching though when they continually cover themselves. No discipline.