Sure as HELL wish this game was at our place--having to go to Neyland all banged up, the second game on our SEC schedule on the road, and at NIGHT, against a resurgent Vols-team that is DROOLING at this set-up, in their eyes finally getting us "right where we want 'em"...Well, there are so many oddities AND things stacked against us that you'd have to throw our "streak of dominance" out the window, except for one little ray of hope: Deep down it's there in their heads, they want this SO bad, and the more excited and hopeful they get, the more brittle their confidence becomes.
What I'm saying is that tho' we MIGHT win a close one based on last week's blueprint, I believe we may have another option, one that we have to try to pull off, no matter what: We need to slug 'em hard EARLY. There are a host of reasons why this won't be expected--and hardly coincidentally, these overlap almost perfectly with the reasons we ought to go for it...
OK: Our QB is still relearning how to apply the skills he once found natural and was brought in here for at this level; our senior RB, who was just coming into his own in an offense that was geared for him, is twisted up with the kind of injuries that are just serious enough to keep him off the field if we ever want to see him anywhere near 100% again; our "talented and experienced offensive-line" has yet to look like anything of the sort thus far, either in opening holes OR protecting the young QBs.
So what makes me think we have a chance to pull anything of this sort off? Well, even with the injuries, along with a bunch of healthy players on the verge of being really good, we also have some depth now, guys for whom the time has come to step up...what if they all started to play as a team? What would it take? What if THIS were THE WAY? Something has to happen: There's more than enough talent on this squad to bury Tennessee...It's just time for it to show itself and, in my view, not only is it possible, but exactly the way in which we can kick start all that "maybe eventually" into "here it is NOW"--all over the field, on BOTH sides of the ball--ie. into actually realizing the talent and potential as a TEAM that we were expecting coming into the season.
One way or another, this needs to happen--that players who have come along a little slower than hoped find themselves NOW, that a whole TEAM of talented individuals started playing TOGETHER, creating that magic where "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"--and I'm just saying this could be a way to get that done. It's not even much of a gamble, really: The best part of this "plan" is that even if it doesn't quite go our way, the "tough it out"-option is still there for later. But if we WERE to snap out of it and knock this Tennessee team down early, it might do more than just win us a game--it COULD start us in a direction more in keeping with what we had in mind coming into 2012--9 or 10 wins and a real good outlook going into 2013...we screw things up here, though, and we well are looking at a slow, tough slide, maybe even a sub-.500 season.
