wdhalgren

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You claimed that looking at points per possession somehow takes “out the element of scheme”. Scheme/coaching plus talent equals total offensive output. Looking at points per possession doesn’t magically eliminate the element of scheme

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There's no magic here. It just seems like magic to you because you don't understand the data. An offense that scores more points on average when it has the ball is a more efficient, aka better, offense. The statistics are a combination of Brian Fremeau's FBS data (look at his offensive efficiency ratings) and my data which is based solely on SEC vs SEC games. Either way, in the 2025 regular season Georgia's offense has been better than Tennessee at scoring points when they have the football. And, like I said Georgia's offense has had injuries too. Every team has injuries.

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But he did. He took lesser talent and produced the sixth best offensive output in the country. He also took that talent and produced more ppg than UGA against tougher defenses.

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I haven't included this weekend's games yet, but Tennessee's offense wasn't 6th best in the nation. Fremeau's data has Tennessee's offense at #12, based on non-garbage drives and opponent adjusted. My opponent adjusted data only looks at SEC numbers and I have Tennessee at #4 in the SEC, behind UGA, Vandy, and Ole Miss (Vandy will move ahead of UGA after I include the latest numbers), ahead of Arkansas and TAMU. And Tennessee didn't face better defenses than Georgia, just the opposite.There's nothing bad about Tennessee's offensive numbers, they're just not as good as you believe them to be. You've chosen to look at statistics that don't give an accurate picture of offensive efficiency. And that's part of the reason fans often overestimate their team's prospects; the expectations were based on misleading data. (You may think I'm talking about Tennessee fans here, but Georgia fans do it too.)

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Finally, you’ve shifted to saying that Heupel’s offense doesn’t work because it hurts the defense.

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That's not a "shift", it's a statement of how football works. You may have noticed in football when one team scores, the other team gets the ball back. More offensive possessions equals more defensive possessions. I'm saying that Tennessee's defensive numbers under Heupel have been negatively affected by some of the same factors that made the offensive numbers looked good; more possessions. Possessions, i.e. scoring opportunities, tend to equal out between a team and their opponents. Also, teams that run an atypical offensive scheme generally don't replicate more typical offenses as well in practice.

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Explain why UT’s defense was significantly better the past two years than this year? The only logical explanation is defensive injuries this year

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Every team has injuries every year. Some years more, some less. That's not an analysis, it's an excuse. I don't have last year's data, but you played some very weak offenses with backup or first year quarterbacks. Your defense was likely to look worse in 2025 because the opposing offenses got better. Your defense may have actually been worse in 2025, but that doesn't mean that Heupel's offense has no effect on his defense; it does. That's why Tennessee has so many "injuries" on extra point attempts.

The point is that a "scheme' does not confer long lasting advantage. It only works until the other teams adapt. Teams are adapting to Heupel and will continue to do so. To the extent that Golesh runs a similar scheme, more SEC teams will face it every year.

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The problem isn’t UT’s offense or Heupel’s scheme

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IF you're capable of reading with comprehension, you'll realize I didn't insult your coach. What I said was his offensive scheme has a shelf life, and the more successful it is, the more teams will devote extra time to stopping it. If he reaches the playoffs he'll be facing a steady diet of very good coaches and analysts.

Scheme can put up good numbers against inferior programs, but it won't win a championship. That has nothing to do with attrition and every team has plenty of attrition every year.

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UT is sixth in total offense for 2025.

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But lowly UGA had more points per offensive drive vs SEC opponents than Tennessee, straight up and adjusted for opponent averages. That takes out the element of scheme.

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These other schools must be exhausted

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That's one reason Georgia football attracts so many rival trolls. They know Kirby can't be hired away, so they pose as disgruntled (and stupid) Georgia fans to try and make him feel unappreciated in hopes he'll retire. Even better if they can bitch enough to recruit a bunch of weak minded Georgia fans onto their gripefest bandwagon.

This season may have been Kirby and staff's best coaching job at UGA. They have been and still are teaching fundamentals on the fly, trying to get a bunch of immature, inexperienced, big ego athletes to play as a team. People think Clark Lea at Vandy did a fabulous job (and I agree), but they don't realize that 40% of his roster was seniors and graduates. That kind of experience is worth as much and sometimes more than the top levels of team talent. Kirby was at the opposite end of the spectrum with 12% seniors and graduates. When I studied this roster in preseason, I did not anticipate that they'd end up with 11 wins and another shot at the SEC title.

AP Weekly Appearance Streaks: Top 25 / *Active only, through Nov 30 2025. (Congrats to Vandy, all time record)

Rank _______ Team ______________ Polls ________ First-Last
1 _________ Alabama _____________ 293 __________ 2008-2025
2 _________ Georgia ______________ 146 __________ 2017-2025
3 _________ Ohio State ____________ 94 ___________ 2020-2025
4 _________ Oregon ______________ 62 ___________ 2022-2025
5 _________ Notre Dame __________ 54 ___________ 2022-2025
6 _________ Mississippi ___________ 48 ___________ 2023-2025
7 _________ Miami (FL) ____________ 32 __________ 2024-2025
8 _________ Indiana _______________ 27 __________ 2024-2025
9 _________ Oklahoma ____________ 15 ___________ 2025
__________ Texas A&M ____________ 15 ___________ 2025
__________ Texas Tech ____________ 15 ___________ 2025
12 ________ Georgia Tech __________ 12 ___________ 2025
___________ Vanderbilt ____________ 12 ___________ 2025
14 _________ BYU ________________ 11 ___________ 2025
15 _________ Virginia ______________ 10 ___________ 2025
16 _________ Texas _______________ 8 ____________ 2025
17 _________ Michigan _____________ 7 ____________ 2025



LINK

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This makes 22 out of the last 25 to the good guys.

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It's been a historic/incredible/fun 25 year run for Georgia football, at least for people who like Georgia football. Of course, the haters are busy bees, nitpicking and bellyaching. They're full of suggestions on how the program "should" be run. :lol:

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Plan was working until Drew Bobo went out and Frazier came up gimpy.

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I hope we don't make the SECCG. Get healthy and study future oppponents.

As for Gunner, I'd bet that Tech has analyzed every snap he's taken. They know his weaknesses, and as a first year starter he still has plenty of those.

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No he didn't. He needed to beat Pitt and either UVA or SMU to guarantee himself a playoff spot.

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Maybe my statement was amibiguous. They needed to win both Pitt and then ACC. I said;

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He couldn't win the ACC with that team and he had no chance of beating Georgia unless he disregarded Pitt. He needed to win both to make the playoffs , and even then he couldn't win a playoff game. So, he made a choice

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Playoffs weren't gonna happen unless they neglected their UGA obsession, and even then not likely. Even if they got lucky, beat Pitt, lost to Georgia and won the ACC, the playoff game would've been a disaster. So Key focused on Georgia.

Georgia tech grads always brag about the rigor of their calculus requirement. This is is the football calculus that Brent Key understands; Beat UGA. You'll never hear the phrase "bigger fish to fry" cross his lips.

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I think Frazier + Bowens would have made it more than a 1 score game, too.

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Georgia played a crap game and Tech pulled out all the things they'd kept in their back pocket since last January. This was predictable, just like last year's tech game was predictable, and an extra player or two wouldn't have changed much. We disregard them out of necessity. They focus like a laser on UGA. Being a tech man means Brent Key will do that every season.

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Yep, they shut down the playbook and said let’s get this game over with. I’d rather just drop them from the schedule if this is how it’s going be every year.

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Welcome to the club. Absolutely correct, because this is how it's going to be every year. Despite the protests from some posters, Georgia Tech plays a one game season until such time that they actually think they can win it all, which is likely never. So their goal (singular) every season is to beat Georgia. That's it. They will sacrifice every other game to beat Georgia. They'll hold players out and game plan for Georgia when they still have ACC teams left to play. They'll play better, smarter, more inspired against Georgia than the rest of the entire season, because they don't care about the rest of their schedule.

Meanwhile, Georgia has higher aspirations and that means they can't focus on Georgia Tech like Tech focuses on Georgia. We'll lose some games to an inferior Tech team because of it. And that's in addition to loss of scheduling flexibility, loss of a home game, loss of income and recruiting opportunities. That's a big price that we pay for "tradition". But that's the way we want it, because we'd like to have our cake and eat it too. Not logical, but that's how we do it.

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90% of that is absolute BS.

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I've long suspected that you're either a Tech fan or, at the very least, soft on Tech. This is why; you're offended when someone acknowledges the reality of a being a Georgia Tech fan is, first and foremost, being a little brother to UGA. That's the primary definition of a GT football fan; Georgia hater. On every Saturday from September to January, they'd rather see a Georgia loss than a GT victory.