Pandemonium Reigns
Episode 166 - What was that?
[MUSIC] Pandemonium rains. >> What was that? That's my biggest question coming out of Saturday. And the ball's performance over in Gainesville, Northwest. Which is what I think I'm going to call Fayetteville, Arkansas. Until things change over there because well, you know, those games, the games that have happened in the games over the last 20 years, as well as Fayetteville, Arkansas in the last 20 years. Kind of mirror image each other if you ask me. Garbage performance on the road, Tennessee drops the inexplicable top of loss. Much earlier in 2024 than at least 2022, 2023 you had Florida. You had the way that you lost Missouri, all of those things. And in 2024, it happens week five coming off of a bi-week when you're as healthy as you've been since week zero. And you know, if there's 22 starters on the field, 11 on offense, 11 on defense. You know what, let me leave the defense out of that. If there's 11 starters on offense, I've got about 9, 10. What the heck's for you guys and really poor grades. If I were to be given them out, I'm not even going to bother because. Well, I think my questions that I'm going to pose will give the grades for me. Just some, what a comedy of errors Saturday was. I mean, quick synopsis, Arkansas goes Mark full mark stoops on you, full Kentucky. And they take about nine minutes to almost 10 off the clock on a, on a big trip that resulted in just three points, the only three points of the first half. And then, you know, again, Tennessee's offense just sputters and shoots itself in the left foot, then the right foot on offense in that first half is what that looked like, didn't protect, didn't, didn't create separation, didn't complete the past when the separation was there. And, you know, the running game wasn't its usual jovial self full of, full of sparks that, that keeps the change moving, that, that makes defenses move up in order to give yourself some shot opportunities. You know, I question when we will, I don't understand why not attack the middle of field in some situations, or even run routes that, that, that would go over the middle of the route tree was a disaster. I was trying to give us an opposite. So I'm already off on a tangent, uh, second half, you know, texting buddies, texting non Tennessee buddies. And I'm like, we're doing it. We, we, we've, uh, you know, we've adapted again with adjusted, made great adjustments at half. Here we go again, game on, so to speak. And you marched on the field once with Samson hitting a big run that, that, you know, kind of exploited Arkansas and what they were in at that time. Another one that was propped up a little bit by Arkansas shooting itself in the foot, at least one foot, uh, here or there. I know there was a late hit on Nico on an incomplete past. I believe brew. Um, but again, nonetheless, you go down the field, you get 14 quick points. And I'm, I had been telling everyone around me if Tennessee gets this game to 14 to three, it's over. And I think if you'd watched the game, you know, at least from my perspective, it should have been over. You should have been able to went to Oklahoma Arkansas at that point. Just, you know, running the ball, running clock, defense continuing to stand strong, which it did for much of the not as much as you can ask any defense to do with, with these modern offenses when you're facing Bobby Fortuno on the other sideline. Uh, because he's still a dang good offensive mind. There is no denying that. Um, but again, you asked, you asked your defense for probably two, too many favors, I think, uh, especially when you look, you bring in something like Jordan Ross and his attempted hero play to block that punt. I mean, Eckler's unit probably had their worst performance of, of the era. And he's been amazing on special teams, not allowing punt returns at all. Uh, fielding punts pretty cleanly, taking care of the ball and not costing yourself in that aspect of it. Um, but again, it just comedy of errors, they, they came together to be the perfect storm to allow Arkansas to really continue what was a, an insane day of college football where Alabama lost a Vanderbilt, where Miami stormed back in that fourth quarter and was like the only ranked team that beat it on an unranked team that day. You know, a little exaggeration there, but what, what an insane day of football. We're like, yeah, let's go with that. You know, when you have an opportunity to separate at the top, when your rivals, Georgia and Alabama have losses already. And again, Alabama had that loss as this game was kicking off, you have to take your opportunities to separate to join Texas at the top of the league, to join Texas A&M in conference, who's undefeated, which is mavic credit to Mike Elko and, and really exploiting Missouri, really, really good, huge credit to him. What a, what a dominating win that was. But again, when you have an opportunity to separate at the top, you absolutely have to freaking do it. And it's like Dylan Sampson and a lot of the defensive players were the only ones that had that in mind. I mean, I've rented, I've raved, I've given a brief synopsis of the game. You all watched it. We were all trying to hill pass it and I'm bringing up all the stuff at this point. But some of these, some of these things I just have to ask, you know, when I was talking about having the opportunity to, to really Oklahoma home of that game, to really run the ball, you know, drain clock, also gain yards, perhaps give your defense a cushion because they've, they've propped you up in, in the largest way possible of that game. And, you know, you have the audacity to then, if you were trying to Oklahoma, if you were trying to be Arkansas on their first draft to snap the ball with 15, 20 seconds left on the play clock to, you know, this is, this is a special top of play. This is not your, this is not that. But you gain that big play on the, on the Nico scramble left. What the heck lance heard if you haven't seen that play, go watch it. Nico scrambles left hit Thornton. Take a time out there. Okay. Take a time out there. I know you want to exploit off of Arkansas having to sprint down the field and continue to, to move towards the end zone at that point. But you didn't and you gave up 15, 20 seconds. So clock management is one of the biggest, what the heck's in this game. Snapping the ball too early, all throughout the second half. At the same time, barely trying your tempo in the first half or maybe the early parts of that second half, just, okay, I've got a few questions for tempo. I don't think it's Nico. I think Nico's already proven in some of the lopsided wins, some of the, you know, the, the nobody opponents that he can handle the stuff. Okay. Look at the dot that he dropping it to, you know, to Thornton against Oklahoma. Look at the way that he has thrown over the middle in the early parts of the season now. And I mentioned that a moment ago, when, when they're dropping eight or conservative seven, you know, and, and they're doing it from everywhere. They're doing, again, what Dan and, and I would have loved to have seen where they're showing pressure from everywhere, then they're dropping out of it. I understand that the middle is not your, your best friend at that moment, just looking at like the pick that Nico threw against North Carolina State. But you do have to mix it up. You do have to bring your tempo because when, when you refuse to run your tempo, then you are doing what Tennessee's not asked its team to do. You're asking your offensive line to win you games to, to give great pockets, to consistently do these things in order to have movement down the field. If, if you don't use the tempo, then you have to impose your will at the offensive line positions and, you know, we got Campbell for a whole game. Most of the game, you know, we had a little dang Davis, but I'm not convinced that dang Davis shouldn't be your left tackle right now because whether it was the fact that hardness them up to football, whether it's the fact that he's afraid of getting hurt again, or he is still a little harder, you know, he's got mixed signals coming in either side of his, of his, of his helmet, ear holes. He's not playing to the standard that we need him right now. He's not playing to the level that he was earlier in the year. Okay. There was one time, and I'm speaking about tempo here is why I mentioned this, but there was one time I think late first half, I think maybe late, maybe in the first half, you know, I don't even know at this point because of, of what happened, but we did run tempo. We hit, I believe a first downplay, at least 15, 20 yard play. And we're, we're sprinting up to, to at least get to the line. Who knows when we planned on snapping it because that was, that was a mess. And he's like the last one to the, to arrive like, dude, if he, if he doesn't have the conditioning because of the time he's missed, then Davis is your best option. Okay. I understand that you're paying big bucks for herd that, that you move Campbell to the right side in order to get herd and, and really show what he can do at left tackle. And early in the year, it looked like it was a major hit, but right now it looks like a big miss. And it looks like something that could really devolve further. I mean, if, if someone's out practicing him and they need to, they need to be playing in that spot. Or if he's showing veteran practice, then how the, how in the heck do we get that to the field, Glenn L.R.B. Because this unit is, is pathetic in your fourth pathetic 2022 class. They're obviously a pretty big miss. Some of those guys aren't even there anymore. Hello, Addison Nichols. That Tennessee should have been able to take mad advantage of. And, you know, to that point, we decided to rush for for most of the night. And look, it worked for most of the night. You really made life difficult on Arkansas because of the speed, because of the, the, the pressure off of the edges. James Pierce, you know, he, like he went from playing like 15% of a game to playing like a hundred and five percent of a game. It felt like it seemed like we, we cut our defensive line rotation way down. And I don't know that it was the move, but again, I'm not sure what, what calls we made on Saturday that were the route move at this point based on how you lost the game, based on how it unfolded, how we got there. I'm not sure what was good, what was bad, because it was mostly all bad. So that kind of is, is my resolution where I stand for the clock management aspect of it, including tempo, because it just, when you, when you don't run your tempo, you ask your offensive line to do so much more and they are not equipped to do it right now. And I, you know, I say that understanding that in 2022, especially, but also in 2021, we ran the tempo, we ran the tempo until we absolutely did not have to anymore until we were down big or we were up big, we ran the tempo and it, again, it had, it had defenses reeling. It had us winning at every position across the field. It seemed like it, you know, I think it propped up a run game at that point. That was a freshman jellin rot and probably the healthiest, you're very small that we ever had until, you know, his shoulder started really caused him long term problems. But I just want to know where that Josh Hopple is, where that offense is, because it seemed like until Saturday, we were the most equipped that we've been under this era to run that, that tempo offense to, to get the ball to playmakers in space. Is that not like the, the, the calling card of Josh Hopple? And, and it just felt like a half, you know, what attempt to do so and I hate that. So again, recapping one final time so far. Clock management, tempo, route tree, I don't understand the attack. It seems like we run into coverage more than we try to, you know, get into open field and I don't know where that breakdown is. I don't, I don't know where that breakdown is at this point. You know, if, if it's a goalish issue, then I would think that we'd have analysts or Hopple himself that could go back and watch film and bottle some of those up or at least redesign some of those looks. If it's a receiver issue, it seems like we should have double the number that we used to have to throw at guys, to throw at teams. And we don't, we still just don't rotate them until like they're hurt or exhausted or, or who knows what. I mean, it just doesn't make sense. Um, if it's a quarterback issue, I have a hard time believing that because of Nico's accuracy that we have seen. Um, because of just the ability that we, we feel pretty confident that he had and he had a rough knot, but going back to offensive line, when you get him blasted or you get him sacked over and over again to start a game, you're going to see ghosts. You're going to miss open guys and, you know, breaking news, Nico doesn't have the all 22 field view that we see where we see Dylan Sampson open on the second to last play of the game, where we see Nimrod about halfway across the field on the last play of the game. He doesn't have that view. He's been the one taking the hits because of all the reasons we talked about. And, and also, I mean, I actually hate this reason, but he is still young. But I will say this, his, his ultimate ceiling probably took up small, you know, average hit, in my opinion, based on him running out of bounds with, with all of the factors that we have now, helmet communication. Okay, we've got tablets on the sidelines. It seems like all these things should lead to exploiting looks that they've given you throughout the game. And also, it's got to go to the end zone should be the helmet communication would have been on, ball has to go to the end zone. Okay, all those things he takes a little bit of a hit in my book. Okay, I know he shows all the tools, everything you could want. And one new aspect that I haven't talked about quite yet is why we are not running him at all. Okay, we tried to run Joe Milton more and Joe Milton was one of the least willing runners I've ever seen in my life. And I'm not asking for you to give Nico 15 design runs in the game. But when you're stuck in, not only mud, you're stuck in like quick sand, offensively, for a half of a game, run your quarterback. Okay, if it's a draw, run a draw. If it's getting him to the edge, I think that's heavily effective because he's got great speed. He takes long strides because of his natural build. And he's in, you get an added blocker at that point where, again, the offensive line is causing you major issues. The last thing, the greatest reason that I've seen that you need to run Nico, whether it's getting him out to throw on the run, whether it's getting, you know, again, adding a blocker, picking up easier yards. Okay, did y'all see Milro running against Georgia? And I'm not saying he's, he's Jalen Milro. He's not the athlete that Jalen Milro is, but he's a good athlete. Okay. Did you see the way that running quarterbacks have hurt Georgia and Alabama over the years? And they've both hurt them. It happened to Georgia on a smaller scale because Peyton Thorne isn't Jalen Milro on Saturday. And look, we've been saying all along that 10 and two probably get you in the playoff. We're now saying like, yeah, you've got to split those games at work at, yeah, worse to get to playoff look. You just made it tougher. That goes back to me asking and begging for separation when you're approaching the top of the conference. You've got to create a separation. You've got to take steps. You're not going to do it with this offensive line, with this group of playmakers. If you're not willing to get him moving, get him moving and throwing, get him moving again with an added blocker, utilizing his speed. He's also really shifty. Somehow at that six frame, I don't understand how he has such an agility rating at, you know, just being the still that he is. He's got great agility for a bean pull because he's still small, but the way that they refuse to help their offensive line, to help Niko get guys open and help everyone. Just getting him moving would help literally every aspect of this offense. It's like there's a clause in his NFL deal that said, you know, we won't do it. Or he's not going to be hit, mama, we promise. Like it was their clause for that because it's such a weapon in modern football. And it's especially a weapon when your offensive line can't block straight up, or guys can't get open the same way. I mean, we don't even run it that often, but the wife Thornton handled that scramble drill to the left on the final drive of the game was magnificent. I mean, if you have to do that to exploit Thornton's speed more so than getting one-on-one on a slant or a skinny post against Oklahoma, do whatever it takes. That's the job now. The job is not to keep running the same crap into the ground asking five to block four and felling, and then you've got Florida on the docket, and they're not going to sit back and rush four. They're not going to do it. Any team that does that now at this point, after Saturday, and after some of the issues that we saw against North Carolina State and Oklahoma, you need to be firing your DC if that's your plan of attack for Tennessee. If you just want to sit back and rush four against this offensive line, you're crazy. You're begging to lose. You're begging to get ripped apart. But also, it would be no happy medium. I would never rush four. I would either rush three and drop eight, or I'm bringing six and seven, asking them to figure it out because they do not communicate. They do not pick guys up. If they don't block you straight up, they won't block you, okay? Just look at some of the assignments that stays and spargans and Samson and Bishop, and coming out of the game early, I was asking for more Bishop because he just runs hard, because I don't think it's prudent to run Dylan Sampson 20 times in the game. Just like I don't want to run Nico 15 times in the game or 10, really. I don't want to run Sampson 20-25 times in the game to be able to pick up a measly 115 yards conservatively when he's not breaking off big runs. You've got these guys that are not improving in this area, okay, and I understand that Bishop's also a young player. He's in the same class that Nico is, but it's been an issue for like three, four years. Running back is not picking guys up. Offensive line communication, more so in 23 and 24, and it just doesn't add up. That's not how you take steps as a program. That's not the top of program that I believe Josh Hopper wants to build. I believe that he wants to build the program that does separate on Saturday. That is undefeated in the conference, outside the conference, and is right up there with Texas and he and Texas A&M at the top of this conference right now. It shouldn't be Mike Elko, even though that was a talented roster in a pretty good spot. Yeah, they're going to wish to have that Notre Dame game back, but it shouldn't be year one programs, and look, I'm not saying it should be Alabama losing to Vanderbilt. I'm not excusing anyone giving anyone a pass here because it was a bad week, but I believe that Hopper wants to build that championship level program. I think he's that level of competitor. We hear it from everyone that talks about him or that comes across him, and Saturday just did not reflect that. I know I've been all over the place, but just these questions are outrageous to me. Few of the things that I want to get into before I wrap up, again, my moaning and whining and complaining about Saturday. Also, let me go ahead and really acknowledge this real quick. This season is not over. This can serve as the greatest wake-up call that this team, this year's Vols team gets. You'd like for that to come in a game where you did get the ball in the end zone there at the end of the game, or that you didn't go back to your same first half offense after those two touchdowns in the second half, you want to learn your lessons and wins. That's what I'm trying to say. It doesn't always happen like that, okay? We've seen from the greatest coaches to the worst coaches, they lose games that they're not supposed to lose. It happens. It's part of the game. Any given Saturday, that's a thing. Any given Sunday, we know it. Okay, you want to learn your lessons and wins. This team has a chance to learn a huge lesson in a loss, and I think the way that you do that, and I'm not jumping ahead yet. I'm not done talking about this game yet. I think the way that you do that, you come out and you treat Florida just like they are. Okay, I know that they be UCF, but UCF is not what we thought they were either. You know, they're Florida's very inconsistent at best, and you need to go make them look like that on Saturday at home, and if you'd won in Arkansas, then it would have been like the best environment that this game's seen in at least two years, because it was a great environment in 2022, but it would have been a pressure cooker, and it still should be, all right? The season's not over. Like if we got three now on the first couple of drives, and Florida's got three or six points, whatever, then don't start booing. Don't get ridiculous. Stick with them, but you'd like to learn your lessons and wins. We could have learned a ton of lessons, and even the ugliest win, 20 to 19, excuse me, if you just got the ball ends on there at the end, but you now have to learn them. You now have to split Georgia or Alabama, obviously. And the way that I want to transition back now into Arkansas is twofold here. When I think it was halftime of the waste of time that Kent State was, and now I look at it more, so that Kent State was a waste of time, because I wish we'd been tested more, rather than play UTC in Kent State, and look, North Carolina State was like a, I wish North Carolina State was the worst team that we'd played, because you got tested in Oklahoma, but you were still just in the driver's seat all game. You got tested for just a little while against NC State, but you won by 41, okay? Kent State, that was the biggest waste of time that I've seen in, I don't know how long, but there was a big moment. Year and half time at the end of the game, Hoppels got cubic, getting the information, getting the intel, and whatever you could glean from even five minutes of that game, all right? And Hoppel drops this gold line, all right? The opponent is nameless, it's faceless. You have to be the same every game, every minute, yada yada. But again, he called the opponent nameless and faceless. And I couldn't agree more, because in situations like that, you're playing against yourself more than you're playing against an opponent like Kent State. Where was that energy on Saturday? I bring all that up just to ask, where was that energy on Saturday? And then when you add in Dylan Sampson's comment about some lackadaisical moments or lackadaisical preparation, you know, during the bye week when Hoppels teams have been so good coming off of buys, and again, I go back to just how healthy you were getting back to being. But when you have Sampson, like, that is, at worst, your second most vocal leader, and he's like the smallest guy on the team. But that's your second biggest voice on the team, if not the absolute biggest. Because when you see team Hoppels, it's six, and they're firing guys up. You know, today is the day, you know, the opponent is nameless and faceless. But when you hear him say the word lackadaisical, the big L word, coming off of a buy week, it doesn't matter who you play. That Saturday is proof of that. It is the biggest proof of that, you know? And again, it's not like you lost a Vanderbilt, or you lost to Appalachian State, or an FCS team. You didn't do that. But you had an opportunity to win that game to be undefeated, to create separation, and you didn't. Whether it was the week of preparation coming in, whether it was, I don't know what during the game, because I just don't, I just don't see many scenarios where it should have played out like that. That's crushing, because, you know, that's, again, you're not treating the opponent like it's, you know, nameless and faceless. You're treating the opponent like, I don't know, they're, you treated that Arkansas defense like they were the 85 baggers or something, because you just, you couldn't move the ball. You didn't, you didn't move guys off the ball. And that's basically, again, what we asked them to do when we didn't run the tempo that we're used to. The other thing that I want to, I want to at least theorize on this, because we know, you know, if you're plugged in, if you're listening to, to other guys, to former players, to other podcasts, et cetera, you know this team practices in the mornings. And I'm asking, is it time to get the frick away from that? Because, okay, 2021, you know, again, we talk, I don't want to revisit 2021. Anything we did better than we ever expected in 2021. But in 2022, you dropped the ball in the biggest way possible in, in, in South Carolina. In 2023, you played in the swamp. You're not one there in 20 years at the time. We know that. But again, do we need to move practices from the morning to the not? Because again, it happened again. And I've already talked about it some, but if that's a factor in this, stop practicing in the morning. I mean, I mean this seriously, because I've heard, you know, if you listen to like Jason Swain, he talks about how that can help the team, get up for the noon games and the early games when the opponent is garbage. But if it's time to get away from that, we have to do it. Because this ain't like this is not sustainable. And sure, it's sustainable from the standpoint of being average or slightly above average. But it is not sustainable to take steps and keep losing this game. Like again, the ones that I've just laid out again. And I know that Missouri last year, that wasn't a not game, but something happens on the road and the preparation has to be different. Or, or again, you're not treating it as you should. You're not treating it as an endless faceless opponent. What have you? I don't know. I'm just pitching it. Obviously, Hoppler's not going to listen to me. If he did listen with this podcast, that would be insane. But it's time to shake things up. You can't keep going and dropping road, not games. What have you to teams that you should, that you have the talent on, that you have the speed on. All these things are in your favor and you keep dropping these games. We, you know, we keep doing it. And it's, it's, it's ridiculous. It's as bad as anything good that we've done because it just brings down your ceiling. And it brings your ceiling down from having a chance to walk into the playoff, or, or in 2022's case to, you know, to get in as a one-loss team. But now it's expanded. And if you miss 12 team playoffs, that is so much worse than, than missing a 14 playoff, especially coming off of what we were. So you just can't keep doing this. It's, it's, it's no good. It's again, just brings your ceiling down. It, it makes your ceiling to roof. I'm just riffing at this point and making fun of Jordan, but you can't keep doing it. All right. Really just want to close this episode out with like two additional questions that, that I've come across that I've seen, you know, and if you've stuck with me this long, I really appreciate it because, you know, just today getting to the point really where I could, A, have the schedule availability, but also have the, you know, the ability overall to talk about a performance like that because it didn't look like much that we've seen from Josh Hoppe when you factor in the good, you know, the stuff that was unexpected when it all started out, how good, how much better it was than, than we anticipated. But, you know, getting to the point where I could talk about this, just from a schedule and just from kind of sucking up and accepting what happened Saturday. So thank you for bearing with me. But I want to talk about this comment. That was probably two episodes, you know, Dan touched on it as well. And just kind of want to give my take on it, a comment that said, contingency, correct the issues on the O line and Nico doesn't look comfortable in Hoppe's offense. Was it a mistake to Sydney go last year to grow him? First on the offensive line, it is, it is time for L.R.B. to earn this contract. Okay. The good for Glenn L.R.B. Okay. He's got the most out of Cooper May. He's probably no, no other program could have got out of Cooper May is what we've got out of, just when you factor in his size. Okay. No, you know, Darnell Rot was not trending to be a first-round pick when the former staff was here and coaching him, yada yada, good things. The bad things, the rest of it probably, especially again, when you go back to the tempo, not helping them out, when you look at zero Hoppe recruits playing, you know, I'm not talking about transfers, I'm talking about high school recruits and it has ticked up, but it has to, they have to make the field now. They have to make it on the field and they have to start making difference makers or you have to fix your Glenn L.R.B. problem. The way you do that this year is you have to get back to your tempo. You have to get back to a blazing tempo. If that means that Lance Hart can't keep up, that means Lance Hart is out of the game. I'm not taking no for an answer on that. You have to get back to the tempo. If you want to help out this offense on the offensive line, that is one of the greatest, one of the really only weaknesses of this team. You know, we can now say the receivers are more of a problem than they are a solution, but the offensive line is your biggest problem. There is no hiding it, there is no getting around it, it's got to get better. And if it takes someone other than Glenn L.R.B. that has to be a move that's made this off season, okay? It has to be. It's tough to fix in season because then you're asking guys that didn't earn the job through spring, summer, and fall or in practice and game week to go then and outperform guys that did win the job for some reason. I'm not a practice, none of us are. You're asking someone like that to step up during the season while they're, you know, drinking from a far hose, you know, and managing everything on their plate. Okay, that's what you're asking. But it has to be, has to be supplanted by the, by the tempo, it absolutely has to be, there's no other natural path for it to get that much better. There just isn't. Nico, okay. Nico doesn't look comfortable in Hopples offense. I'm not there yet. We asked, we haven't asked much oven through the first four games. And then I'm not convinced we asked much oven on Saturday. I think we, we, I think he got sped up and he got hit a lot early and he made a terrible, the dumbest football decision that you can make at the end of the game. The situation there is that he's a second year guy playing in what his second road game, whereas Milton was at least the third or fourth year guy when he did it. I'm not excusing it. I'm just laying out the differences. He's looked, he's looked comfortable to me in other games. I mean, like after one of the interceptions, after the first interception, his North Carolina State, he came back and went right down the field. You know, I know that he didn't have a ton of time. He didn't have a great performance against Oklahoma, but you can't tell me that he doesn't run this offense well. But again, my thing on that is that this is not Tennessee or Hopples offense. This is not it. The route tree is so much more limited. Don't know the solution that I, you know, pitched it earlier. I don't know what it is. The route tree is different. The play designs are different. That has to be fixed as well, or we'll be getting to a really quick point of saying, not only are you looking at replacing Glen O'Ree, but you're also, you got to do something in the Halsey spot. Maybe he's a quarterback coach at most. I don't think that's it because I think Hopples does so much more in this offense than, you know, I'm sorry. I think the OC does so much less in this offense. I don't think goalish was some savant. I think that Hopples has a huge hand in this offense. He's seeing stuff that tells him to limit the tempo or, you know, to limit the play design, whatever. And we have to improve from that. Do I expect Nico to take a big jump from his first year starting 2024 to 2025? Most definitely. Would I be shocked if Nico's fourth year college player? I still would, okay. But the team will not be the same next year. That's why I run this year. That's why separation at the top this year was so much more important because next year, you're looking at like one of the current five offensive linemen being on campus. And again, I go back to zero Hopple recruits out of high school playing on this offensive line. You got two transfers that they recruited that are your two liabilities at this moment and camp wouldn't hurt. Then you're losing spragons. You're losing Cooper Mays. You're losing probably carrot. I don't even know. You're losing three to, no, I'm sorry. Yeah, three or four fifths of your offensive line is brand new next year. Okay, that's a huge problem. But the bigger problem is your defensive line. All of these guys that have, you know, James Pierce obviously being the crown jewel. All of those guys are gone next year. For the most part, yes, there's some youngsters to be really excited about. Jordan Ross is going to bounce back from that pun that ruffing the punter, running into the kick or whatever. He's going to bounce back from that. He's going to be a great player Tennessee. If he's got the speed as an ed rusher to go block punts, we know he's going to be a good athlete. We know that he's currently got one of the best position groups for defensive line coaching him, but you will not have the same group of guys. You will not have the same depth. You're not going to be looking at 12, 13, 14 guys that you can rotate in and out next year. And again, you're looking at losing the very best one in James Pierce. You know, and you'll be lucky to hold on to some of those other guys that are making big impacts when the NFL is going to be, you know, looking at calling their name. So all reasons that you have to work on fixing this stuff now, that Tennessee has to treat this loss like Dan talked about when it was cleansing in 2016. And again, I'm not previewing Florida yet. I hope to later in this week, but you absolutely have to take out Saturday on Florida. You have to treat them for a 100% what they are inconsistent. Lack of speed and playmakers, you have to you have to treat Florida for what they are. You cannot play an average Tennessee Florida game. You cannot lose this game. I'm not even getting, you know, when I say play an average Tennessee Florida game, again, you need to convince me that steps are being taken on the offensive line, that steps are being taken across the field offensively, other than Dylan Sampson. Dylan Sampson does get it fast because play is hard out on Saturday. But again, everything else has got to take steps. It's got to improve. And, you know, otherwise you're going to be asking your defense to not take you to another tier up in college football, but just again, you're going to be asking your defense to carry you to like eight, maybe non wins. If you if you don't take these steps offensively, when the town hasn't greased so greatly. So I'm going to wrap it up with that. Again, just a huge, frustrated, you know, disheveled rant, because that's what games like Saturday, that's the state that they put me in. But I do feel like I at least checked off the names coming out of this game, that I wanted to check out and get talked about playing about them really. But also, try to highlight some solutions and ask the questions of what they're doing for the other issues that they've been doing, so. Thank you so much again for being with me. As we've worked in New York, it's all an outcome that it was. Appreciate you guys so much, continue to check in. Get your special tips on YouTube, give us a hand, follow us on the podcast and get your stuff. God bless, go be going. [Music]