Other Tennessee Football Awards

Rocky Top Talk, a fine UT football news site, missed a couple of post-UT/LSU game awards:

Best The-First-Time-Was-Just-to-Warn-You Award: Early in Jonathan Crompton's first series, he calls an shift that causes a Chinese Fire Drill in the Tennessee backfield. All the backs and receivers run around each other for a moment, then shift to a 3-wide set to the right. Crompton play-actions and gives to Arian Foster for a run off-tackle to the left. Stopped for no gain.

Later in the second half, Crompton calls a shift again. Everybody in the backfield dances a gavotte and a jig until three receivers line up wide - this time to the left. "Foster off-tackle to the right," I said. Crompton play-actions again, hands off to Foster who runs off-tackle to the right. LSU, appreciating the practice against that play in the first half, takes Foster down for a loss. Entire LSU Defense waves to David Cutcliffe in the press box to thank him for the rehearsal.

When I can actually tell what play is being run, you know we're being transparent.

Worst Waste of the God-Given Right to Play-Overturning Instant Replay: LSU's fumble during their final drive that, if noticed and called correctly, would have snuffed their advance at midfield and probably sealed the win. Unfortunately it wasn't reviewable due to...um, due to...something about the moon being full and a dark horse riding through the streets of town or something. I don't remember. Anyway, it wasn't a fumble, and more UT defensive hilarity ensued.

Best Rerun: A UT defense giving up key 4th-and-relatively-long conversions on game winning drives. How many times have we seen it? Remember the UT/Georgia game about 6 years ago: Travis Stephens had given UT the lead with a long screen pass reception for a TD with a minute to go. A short kickoff gave UGA the ball near midfield and they drove 60 yards in about 50 seconds to win the game. Plus there was the 1990 1993 Bama game where they drove to tie us in the last seconds on a David Palmer 2-pt conversion. Florida converted two 4th-and-long plays on a final game-winning drive several years ago. It's a recurring nightmare for Tennessee to protect a precarious lead late in the game, or even protect their 4th down chances.