1) Any time a team is struggling, there are two questions: Why are they struggling? Whose fault is it? Every year, the second question actually becomes more common than the first. Every single time a team loses, the breakdown is who is on the hot seat and who has to pay? Auburn fans want Gus Malzahn's scalp again. Texas fans are begging for Urban Meyer. Closer to home here, we have people saying Ryan Walters and Brick Haley need to go. The first two, whatever. Those aren't my concerns. The third is dumb. Assistants aren't getting fired two weeks into the season. The defense had an awful week. There's no doubt about it. But what if it was just an awful week? I'm not saying Missouri has a dominant defense. I'm just saying let's at least give them the last eight weeks of the season before we decide.
We always have to have someone to blame. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, especially when a coach is in his first year in a pandemic-ridden season. Is it Eli Drinkwitz's fault that Missouri isn't very good? No. But it's now his problem. We can go over and over whether Barry Odom was kind of bad, very bad or incredibly bad. Who cares at this point? He's not the coach. I know that doesn't mean we're going to stop talking about it. Missouri has eight games left. It's going to lose somewhere between four and eight of them. We're going to have the same discussion four to eight more times (and probably eight because even if they win, there will be quite a bit of "Odom never would have won that game. Thank God we have a new guy.") I mean, we're still talking about whether Missouri basketball's slide started with Mike Anderson or Frank Haith or Kim Anderson. None of that really matters anymore either. But it's not going to stop people from talking about it.
2) So what's the issue on defense? We talked about the defensive line yesterday and it's an issue. To me, clearly the biggest one. I mentioned yesterday that Tennessee ran the ball 51 times and never lost yardage. If you've got a team that's getting beat in man coverage, you can change to zone. If you can't get pressure on the quarterback you can blitz. If you're missing tackles, that's something that can often improve. But on Saturday, Missouri was simply getting blown off the ball. The Tigers missed 11 tackles on Saturday according to PFF College. That's more than last week when they missed seven against Alabama, a game after which Ryan Walters said "if we tackle like that all season I will be happy." (For a comparison, Tennessee missed only three tackles on Saturday). I didn't watch that game and think missed tackles were a major issue. Yes, there were some. But it's not like those tackles were happening at or behind the line of scrimmage. Only two of the misses were by defensive linemen (both by Markell Utsey). The rest were in the back seven, which means they were mostly downfield after the Vols had gained yardage anyway. The issue is simply that Missouri was getting whipped up front.
I didn't initially give Tennessee's OL enough credit. They may not be as good as Alabama, but they may be better than any other group the Tigers face all season. So we'll see how Missouri does going forward. But if you're just getting shoved off the ball, there's not really a fix for that. And that's concerning.
3) The biggest question for the Tigers right now is quarterback...although I'm not sure there's much question.
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