WEEK ONE SHOWS TROUBLE SPOTS FOR SOME TEAMS
Tuesday 9/4/01
Well we are off and running for another season. As always, you can’t tell much from week one except with the teams that struggled or played a tough team. Well I think both things could be said about Arkansas in their first game. They struggled and they played a pretty good team. They officially kicked off the season on Thursday night against UNLV and played one of the worst offensive games in recent SEC history. Before their last drive in the 4th quarter, they had less than 100 TOTAL yards on offense and had 1 first down for the GAME (and that came on a penalty). That is beyond hideous. They also had multiple interceptions and fumbles. They could open up nothing for their running backs. UNLV stacked the line and dared them to pass and they could not.
Arkansas coach Houston Nutt panicked and tried 4 different QBs in the first half. This led directly to 2 turnovers. You just can’t do that. Luckily though UNLV’s offense played just about as bad and then gift wrapped the win for Arkansas with a fumbled snap on a punt and missing an easy tackle. Arkansas won 14-10 (their other TD was an interception return for a TD). Arkansas better enjoy it because unless they can find a QB it is going to be a long year. They face a brutal conference schedule starting next week against the Tennessee Vols.
Also playing on Thursday was Vandy. They lost pretty convincingly to Middle Tenn St. Now MTSU is better than your usual “something-State” team. They ran up almost 400 yards last year on a good Miss St defense. However that fact isn’t going to help head coach Woody Widenhofer much. MTSU may be a good team but if you are a head coach in the SEC you can’t lose to MTSU. Also, last year Vandy dropped their opener to Miami (Ohio). I think Widenhofer is just about finished. Vandy was also hurt right before the game when one of their top RBs was kicked off the team. It is looking to be another tough year for the Commodores ending with the head coach being dumped. But I guess the good thing is they aren’t the worst team in the East…
Kentucky was routed at home by Louisville as most expected. Louisville had a good team and the Wildcats are just down. As stated before, things look bleak for Kentucky with little talent available and painful NCAA sanctions ahead. This week’s game against Ball St will be pretty big as it could be the only win Kentucky gets this season. Again, the way you measure a coach’s worth is comparing the program when he started to what it is after he leaves. Using that I think we can safely say that Hal Mumme was a terrible coach. He coached UK to several bowl games with inherited talent but in the end completely wrecked the program.
The only other SEC team to lose was Bama. Now I would definitely classify Bama in the category of playing a tough team but I think the game showed that things won’t turn around overnight at the Capstone at least on offense. The defense under Carl Torbush looked much improved. They held UCLA RB Deshaun Foster to a little over a hundred yards and forced QB Cory Paus into a hideous night throwing the ball. He only went 8 for 22 for 123 yards. The defense got the job done. On offense though Bama was plagued by penalties and was unable to score for most of the game. Both of Bama’s TDs came on strange plays. Now it is good they were able to jump on UCLA on these plays but not so good that they were not able to score on a sustained drive.
The biggest play of the night was Bama being stopped on 4th and 1 and the UCLA 2 yard line. I completely agree with the call to go for it but not the play they went with. Franchione chose to run wide on an option instead of just going toe to toe with them. When you are down that close it is pretty hard to go wide especially if your OL outweighs the other team’s DL. To me that is the time you just have to go straight at the other team. I guess that is debatable but regardless it was one of the biggest plays of the game. Franchione’s game plan of running the option out of the shotgun was surprising and curious. It was fairly effective against a UCLA team that didn’t know what to expect but how will it fare against top SEC defenses that are prepared?
Well now we head toward week two of the season and we should start finding out about everybody else.