Another Tuesday, another round of Dooleyisms. Let’s get to it:
On New Starters:
From a personnel standpoint, we are going to keep tinkering around in the secondary because we just aren’t playing as good as we need to be. Prentiss (Waggner) and Izauea (Lanier) will still be out there at corner starting out with (Brian) Randolph and (Brent) Brewer, but we are going to play (Justin) Coleman and (Byron) Moore a little bit more. Justin showed up and it was good to see him going out there and competing. He had a couple of pass breakups, which we haven’t had many of this year. We might play Rod Wilksa little bit more to see if he can help us some and take some snaps off of Brewer.
“We are going to start Marcus Jackson at left guard. He’s doing some good things. He’s a little more developed physically than James (Stone).
“We are going to start Justin (Worley) at quarterback. I know that will be the big storyline. I just feel like it’s something we need to do. I think we have to be very cautious to say it’s like last year because I know that’s what everybody thinks. But we had a lot more data on Tyler (Bray) going into last season when I made the move than I do right now on Justin. We played Tyler in the first game. We played him at Georgia. We played him against Alabama. We played him at South Carolina, and he was the number two the whole time he got here. This one is a little different and I don’t know what it is going to look like on Saturday.
The red shirt has officially been tossed for Justin Worley, and we’ll see what happens, clearly not even Dooley knows. It’s been said for weeks, that Marcus Jackson is the strongest, most powerful, offensive lineman, hard to keep a guy like that on the bench. Generally guards like that are great run blockers.
Since the day he stepped on campus, Marcus Jackson has been the strongest Vol
On Justin Worley
I know what I want to do and we made the decision. I can sit there and try and hide it from you guys and hide it from Ellis, but Ellis is going to be licking his chops either way, so what is the point? Get it all out and go play. Who cares?
We have seen a big difference in him since Tyler (Bray) got hurt. Before Tyler got hurt, we were really pushing him to invest more. Pushing him to be more focused week to week. It’s human nature when you are the three, it’s hard to do. You aren’t going to play. That is why I said Tyler came in as the two. We had our foot up his tail from day one because he was one snap away. (With) Justin, we massaged him a little bit more because he wasn’t one snap away. The last couple of weeks, we have pushed him pretty hard and he has responded well. He has a lot of good qualities and you will see them on Saturday.
He was a gun guy, but you are getting that a lot now-a-days. These offenses in high school, they just spread it out and gun snap. We are a pro-style offense, but that is what Justin wanted. He could have just as easily picked a team that was a spread team, but I think it just shows you the kind of guy that he is. He believed in our program, but he also wanted to play in that kind of offense because I’m sure he has dreams one day. He wants to get in there, learn it and do it. He has done well
No offense to Matt Simms, but we need a guy who can hit an open man. He wasn’t getting it done.
On the reshuffled O-line
Alex is in a new position, but he is not far from where he has been. I’m not worried. We need Dallas (Thomas) to help him a little bit more. Dallas doesn’t like to talk. I don’t know if you all have noticed that. Sometimes it’s great. I wish more guys on our team didn’t like to talk, but every now and then you want them to talk when they are out there playing with each other. He is going to have to help him and Alex is going to have to help him a little bit. There are going to be some screw-ups.
One of my favorite things about Dooley is his candor. Is Tennessee’s O line gonna be perfect next week? Nope, he just told you it wasn’t. But, would Lane Kiffin or Phil Fulmer have admitted as much? Doubtful. Kiffin would’ve ignored the question, and Fulmer would’ve said “They’ll fight like heck”.
"We'll fight like heck!"
On Adjustments, halftime and Boxers
Most teams make adjustments after every possession. We do and I know the teams that we’ve played do, so the halftime is a little more about big picture items that you adjust. You start thinking about your opening calls, anything different that may have been part of your plan that you didn’t run in the first half and then what are they doing differently that we need to adjust to. Is it easier to do things with a veteran team? Of course it is because you can run things that you don’t practice all week. You see this, hey let’s do this. We are not doing that, we can’t. We’re not there yet, but I don’t think it’s plays is what I’m getting at. We always want to say it’s a play that’s the difference…Alabama did the same thing the whole game. They threw it more on offense and ran some play action, but they were open in the first half, they just didn’t complete them. Everybody does a few things differently. They come out in unbalanced in the second half and you have to adjust to it so they hit you on a play or two, but it’s really no different than the first drive and the first two drives. Every team has something different that they do schematically, so our issues aren’t necessarily a play or a scheme. It’s a lot of things and I mentioned that in my opening statement. It’s who you are playing, their execution, is it better or worse, our execution, which goes to the stamina that you need to play the same way. You say just play the same way you did on play five, well on play five you haven’t been hit 58 times. It’s like that boxer. When you are boxing with a big guy and a little guy, the little guy comes out swinging. He’s popping and he’s swinging, well about the fourth round those hits start taking a toll and his right arm drops that much. All of a sudden, boom. That’s a part of it too. Then there is a part of it where we are losing our focus because of the result. There is a part of that and then there is a part where we have to score points, which we haven’t done. We sustained four quarters in Georgia and Florida. We didn’t win the game, but I think they outscored us (30-23) in the second half. We outscored the other three opponents (42-21), so I’m wondering if they are worried about their halftime adjustments. Look at the teams, it kind of flows. We outscored these three a bunch, we played these other two and they outscored us by about a touchdown but we were able to sustain it, and then we played these other two and they took it to us. That’s how I view it. Now, what we have to do is say why and work on all those things, mature as competitors and grow. I don’t know what else to do. You play your way out of it and you learn to handle it each week, but it’s not one thing that’s doing it.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. For the armchair quartebacks, I have a question for you. What would you have done (or what would Urban Meyer have done) differently?
On Mushrooms
The smallest room in the world
What’s the smallest room in the world?’ Do you know? It’s a mushroom. Right? That’s what it is. The largest room in the world is the room for improvement. That’s where we are. We have to focus on the largest room in the world.
Heck yeah coach! In plain English.
On Freelancing
He’s struggling, not playing disciplined football and freelancing a little bit. That’s part of our issues on defense and it shows up in the second half. We start feeling like we have to make a play instead of playing the defense and the plays will come. It’s that old line, `There are a lot of great plays out there for you to make. Unfortunately you’re not ready when they are there to be made.’ Meaning you have to be where you are supposed to be. He has to play a little bit more disciplined within the defense, but he’s not giving us the consistency that we need. Then there have been times when he gets in there and he’s not a heavy guy
Code for: Nobody’s job is safe, even if they did host ESPN during All-Access Tennessee.
On young kids playing on the road:
A year ago he’s playing in front of 300 people or a thousand and he runs out this week and they are playing `Sweet Home, Alabama,’ the students are over there just reaming you and you are on national TV. You can’t deny the mental psyche part of it. Devrin (Young) had some big eyes out there. He didn’t look the same returning kicks. It was his first road game. He saw 32 players covering a kick. That’s what he saw. I told him there are only 11, the same number as last week. There were 32 out there. You just have to be patient. It’s coming. We hate patience in the season, that’s the thing
Dooley reminding us all about our own inner faults.
On redshirting
“My philosophy has always been play the best players who give you a chance to win – period. I think that’s my responsibility as the coach. To me, that’s a professional responsibility I have to the organization, to go out and try to do anything I can to win the next game. Not, `I’m going to just tank it here and we’ll see you next year.’ I don’t like losing, so I believe you are going to recruit every year and we are going to sign another quarterback – we’ve got one committed. What do you do? You’ve just got to keep signing players and play the best guys who give you a chance to win. I don’t know any other way to do it.
“Obviously, when you get to a point, we’re not stupid about it. I’m not going to throw (Kyler) Kerbyson in the game in mop-up duty in the ninth game of the year when we haven’t played him. So there’s a little balance. And quite frankly, we didn’t want to play Justin this year. I didn’t want to play him. But I believe that’s what we need to do to try and win the game. I may be wrong; and if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. And I do believe this: when you play as a freshman, it makes you a better sophomore. I do. Da’Rick really wasn’t to play last year, but it’s made him a better player this year because he’s been out there. You don’t get overwhelmed on the environment. You get all that over with, so there’s some value in that too. These days of fifth-year senior guys, there are just not that many anymore.
In my own humble opinion a lot of people are getting worked up over this. What are we so concerned about? Justin Worley only getting one year to be the starter? What if the next guy in (Nick Peterman) is way better than Worley? I don’t understand the anger.
On Free Gatorade
These guys have got it made. That’s what everybody talks about: `It’s not fair to the players.’ I think if you talked to one former player and I said, `If you could go back into time at any moment of your life, when would it be?’ They’d say, `College!’ And we talk about how bad it is for these guys. Man, are you kidding me? We’d all kill to be back in college playing college ball, going to school, sleeping, blaming the coach when it doesn’t work. They’ve got it made. There’s free Gatorade all through the complex.
I just feel like the rest of the SEC should be serving Powerade. Maybe they are, and Dooley misspoke.
If you play football for UT, you can get as much of this as you want
On “Ballers” and AJ Johnson specifically
He’s been great. He’s a guy – we talk about not getting affected, and it’s not always just youth, it really isn’t. A.J. and Curt (Maggitt), they haven’t been affected. We’re down 20-6, it doesn’t bother them. I think it’s a competitive character that some guys have, there’s a competitive character that some guys develop, and there’s a competitive character that some guys never have.
“So you’ve got three groups. You’ve got some who can never do it, meaning mentally competing when it gets tough. Some guys you can teach them how to do it and they start figuring it out the more battles they are in. Then you’ve got some guys who do it, and he’s one of those guys. That’s the baller. I already said that line: `He’s a baller, man.’ Those baller guys, I don’t have to lecture A.J. on not getting affected. Every play he tries to splatter the guy next to him. Curt’s the same way.
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