Ags lose! Let's all heal together

I like posting these on Tuesday night because by now I've been through every phase of dealing with an Aggie game. Basically I skip anger and bargaining and move straight on to grudging acceptance.

Here you go:

First quarter ~~ second quarter ~~ Third and fourth quarters

Texas A&M vs. Alabama first quarter

"Hey Andy, we need a 1-shot of Myles Garrett for this intro. He's jersey number 15"

"OK, got him. Tall, skinny, bearded guy, right?"

"Yea, that sounds right. Go with it."

LOL, Ricky-leaks.

This is as close as it gets in football to sending a guy on a suicide mission. Christian Kirk was going over the top at the Somme and Trayveon Williams was his completely ineffective artillery barrage.

Trevor Knight on this play looks like a villain who just sent two henchmen to try and take James Bond out one at a time. Colton prater got judo-chopped and Trayveon Williams went down with one punch. I expected him to eventually die by having a satellite land on him or something.

This is less than ideal: you have a play bottled up for a loss, and a running back responds by dragging your starting defensive tackle for a gain of like 5 yards.

I don't know what Speedy was thinking, casually jogging toward the oncoming defenders until this kid hit him in the brain stem with his own facemask. I feel like he learned a valuable lesson about having a sense of urgency, though. And here I thought that those hits they have in football movies never actually happen like that, silly me.

Putting a slick move on a defender, running for a substantial gain and then collapsing into a pile of knees and elbows is basically peak Trevor Knight. 

OK, cross "Daylon Mack figured out the snap count" off your Aggie game BINGO card. All I was missing was "get torched by a wheel route" and I would have won. The free square was actually Gary Danielson calling him "Dylan Mack."

Texas A&M vs. Alabama second quarer

One of my great ambitions in life is to do something so intensely badass that I am fully justified in running off in some random direction to celebrate. Not enough people celebrate by fleeing.

This play didn't get nearly enough attention during the actual broadcast. Keith Ford was the only person on the field who matched Alabama's level of irrational anger the whole game.

As an offensive lineman, the only thing worse than getting beaten by your man is trying to block him and getting completely ignored by him. Colton Prater on this play looks like a drunk guy hitting on someone way out of his league. He's about to buy a couple of drinks and get a polite smile/wave in return.

Not saying Erik McCoy's snaps tend to float, but when Christian Kirk caught the ball it had 45 Cuban refugees on it.

Claude George and Donno Wilson couldn't have coordinated this any better if they tried. George covers Damien Harris's eyes until Wilson flies in with the head-breaker. The 3 Stooges couldn't have executed that move so brilliantly, he never saw it coming. 

I have absolutely nothing bad to say about Alex Sezer as a human being or as a football player. All I'm going to point out is that this was Saban/Kiffin's first opportunity to go after him and they did, to great effect. Render unto Sezer what is Sezer's, and that apparently is getting torched for a 50-yard gain.

Texas A&M vs. Alabama third and fourth quarter

This marked the exact moment we all started to feel some hope. Before realizing that hope is desperation's bastard cousin, a salve for the unwashed proletariat to make Alabama's boot heel just a few degrees more palatable. The glimmer of hope in a 3rd quarter, 1-point lead in Tuscaloosa is the "WYD" text that turns into "seen: 1146 p.m."

Let's go live, to Coach Sumlin's internal monologue:

"Motherfucker."

Pay no attention to the right offensive tackle, who is so far past the line of scrimmage that he's interfering with concession sales. Also the WR who is blocking while the ball is in the air. If you ignore those two blatant, egregious rules violations this is a really solid play call and execution by Bama.

Alex Sezer, pictured having a better afternoon than any other Aggie. "Yeah, that's it. Riiiiiight there."

If A&M hosted a game on national TV and attempted to fix a cleanly sheared yard marker with freaking athletic tape, I would demand a significant portion of my tuition be refunded.

And Dave, the magic talking play-calling horse makes another appearance, this time for the Aggies. "Let's try and work the perimeter against college football's angriest, fastest defense! [snort]"

"You're the boss, Dave!"

Even for a true freshman OL, that's a sad attempt at making a tackle. I've seen newborn foals move with greater purpose and grace than that.

Tennessee vs. Texas A&M second quarter

first quarter --- second quarter --- third quarter --- fourth quarter

Starting to see why James White maybe doesn't get a ton of playing time. This play would not have gone differently if there had been 10 players on offense with White still on the sideline.

This play was drawn up by Wile E. Coyote at the behest of the Acme Corporation. On it, Trevor Knight had about 5 different things he could have done with the ball but ultimately chose to run full-on into the side of a cliff where he had previously painted an open tunnel.

A tall, slender person running over the middle with his arms raised over his head is like walking through a prison yard with a sign that says "SHANK ME, I'M A SNITCH" on your back. It might not end with a fatality, but thoracic trauma is certainly a real possibility.

Gallant hustles down field on special teams even though he's a bona fide star receiver and surefire NFL draft pick ...

... But Goofus fails to catch slant passes that hit him in the hands AND the face, despite being a five-star high school athlete. 

Might not be your best passing performance when you get your fastest WR lined up on a defensive lineman and hit that defensive lineman in the back with the ball.

Every team needs a player who specializes in trolling opponents. He looks like he's tossing insults at a suspect in police custody. He's the drunk guy at the end of the blackjack table hitting on 17 and winning.

This is the "Justin Evans tackle," where he launches himself at the opponent's torso and hopes for the best. It worked out pretty well in the past, notably against Alabama, but not a great strategy against large, strong, fast people.

Tennessee vs. Texas A&M third quarter

first quarter --- second quarter --- third quarter --- fourth quarter

I like watching Tanner Schorp play sometimes, because it makes me feel like I could have played for A&M if things had gone just a little bit differently. We're about the same size with roughly the same blocking and pass-catching ability, as far as I can tell.

This wack-adoodle formation got lost in the shuffle a bit, but it might have gone a lot better if Avery Gennesy hadn't been so soundly whipped by Derek Barnett. Again. Barnett in this game played the Harlem Globetrotters to Gennesy's Washington Generals.

This is the second half in microcosm. The defense had two chances to stop this play for a loss and one for no gain and it still made like five yards.

At some point the defensive huddles had to be a bunch of "Hey guys, which one of us is supposed to be guarding number 6?"

You could see a little bit of UT believing in their own "team of destiny" status here. If Dobbs falls on the ball, they probably go on to score a touchdown. But he tries to make a play and turns it over. Pride goes before the fall, big guy.

If we run "throw deep down the sideline to Josh Reynolds" 40 times a game, how many times does it work? 20 or 30? Why don't we just do that?

Jermaine Eleumenor is literally the only person who blocked anyone on this play. The rest either whiffed or got run over. This is the same work distribution pattern that TXDOT road crews use, I'm starting to wonder if our OL unionized over the summer.

Donovan Wilson expresses great joy in executing a safety blitz against a slow-developing play-action pass. About the only time someone tackled that slippery bastard on the first try, too.

Tennessee vs. Texas A&M fourth quarter

first quarter --- second quarter --- third quarter --- fourth quarter

Did some math here: Daylon Mack is listed at 320 pounds, Daeshon Hall at 270. Wikipedia has Josh Dobbs at 194. Since 310 kg of person falls 2 meters at a speed of 6.26 meters per second per second, they all three hit the ground with a force of 1,940 newtons, or enough to power all the rehab equipment Dobbs will need when he gets back to Knoxville.

If the UT ball carriers went down as easily as the linesman does when Justin Evans hit them, they'd have gained way less yardage. That was a textbook Justin Evans tackle, though.

Is the screen pass the new wheel route? I remember a time when the words "wheel route" sent me into a panic attack. I'm just getting over the period from 2003-2011 when every time the announcer said "He's going deep, he's got a man!" I started hyperventilating.

Throwing a pass in the flat to a small, frail white guy is the closest thing you get to a hanging curveball in football. 

I'm afraid that "you know, Daeshon Hall used to play basketball" is going to become the new "You know, Antonio Gates was a college basketball player."

One of Trevor's main advantages as a big, lumpy white dude is that safeties don't think he's as fast as he is. So they take horrific angles and get shredded. Trevor Knight is John Cleese running toward the wedding in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

"Trevor Knight lined up in the shotgun, this drive brought to you by Normangee Tractor and Equipment Company, come in today and ask about exclusive deals on the Cub Cadet mowers he hands it off to that guy and he will advance the ball for three yards and he will be caught and dropped and ... he got away, he may score, Dave! He's at the 20, the 10, touchdown!!! That's Trayveon Williams!! [20 seconds of silence] And ... did he fumble? ... the ref is indicating a touchback. It will be Tennessee ball at the 20, Dave."

~ Dave South on this play (probably)

Serious question: did anyone NOT see this coming? I guess if you're going to miss wide left, do it flamboyantly. It did give us a good shot of all the Corps fish waiting to rush the field, their eyes wide with hope and enthusiasm until decades of consistent mediocrity crush them down to the bitter husk of a football fan who writes these captions.

I get that you want to go all Leroy Jenkins and plunge ahead for a first down while the other team is lining up. But discretion is the better part of valor and they still outnumber you up front.

Forcing pressure with a bull rush is the best, manliest way of rushing the passer. Tackling someone with their own dude is like ripping off someone's arm and beating them to death with it.

Josh Dobbs is a superhuman, but he's not a "complete a pass into triple coverage while getting a forced lap dance from your own left tackle" superhuman.