OK--it's Sunday, and I get to sigh, sit back and enjoy the win that my heart (and gut) has only just a little while ago begun to settle in with, accept and set aside. As a whole, it's really a matter of getting used to the new-found (or, more accurately, "newly reacquired") target painted on our collective backs. Don't worry: Like the players, we get another day or so to enjoy yesterday's fulfillment of everything we've watched, worried and waited for the last few years--but know it or not, LIKE it or not, "the transition" has begun "out there", among the media (who will start hyping us--and our players read the papers, hear the talk), AND our future opponents (who will see and hear the same hype). NEXT Saturday is already on its way--all the MORE dangerous because it is against a team that "SHOULD be" a bit of a step down after LSU, the Vanderbilt Commodores.
Now, given the rest of our schedule this month, and the fact that Vandy seems to rise up and knock off an SEC foe at least once EVERY year, this would be a potential "trap game" for us regardless. However, though not quite on par with the Tigers or the Tide, the Commodores have managed some surprisingly decent recruiting the last couple of years and the results are beginning to manifest themselves: formerly a "dangerous defensive spoiler" from a basketball-school, some weeks they look more and more like a mid-level SEC-Football Team--and woe be to the opponent, ANY opponent, who takes them lightly. We better prepare for them--and better than we "prepared" for Kentucky, by the way--if we don't want to see ourselves in a scary, ultimately disastrous dogfight next Saturday afternoon. A team like ours, just coming into its own, still young, missing some parts and lacking some depth, is especially vulnerable to the "big let down" at just this point in the season. Like a larger, big-picture version of the kinds of mistakes and dumb penalties we're still taking at crucial points in games (yesterday, it happened SEVERAL times in the first half, again) we COULD make a giant "preparation mistake" here this week: no matter what we tell ourselves, no matter what the coaches SAY, it would be only human to feel that "we're over a hump" after yesterday's game. Like it or not, that LSU game was always "out there", from the moment we started practicing in ernest for game 1, week 1 at the end of August. The coaches AND the players did a great job of acknowledging it and then "putting it away", setting it aside until the past week, but now we have to set it aside ENTIRELY, and try to face Vandy in the same determined and composed way we have prepared for every game until now. It will not be easy for these players, harder than they think--but this staff so far has at least managed to have them ready to "adapt and overcome" as they entered into each of the games so far, and they are well aware of the particular dangers and subconscious elements here, I'm sure.
My only larger concern, then, is of course that we have NOT been more "prepared" to start well against ANY of our opponents in those games. Even Kentucky made us look sloppy the first qrtr or so. That it was in truth more likely OURSELVES making us look that way is hardly soothing. Sooner or later, this could cost us, find us bumbling too much for too long, too far into a game against a hungry opponent that begins to be driven forward by the very real sense that they CAN beat us that day.
Yes, it WAS kind of hilarious watching those arrogant loud-mouths from across-the-panhandle and their fans' bewildered "WTF-AGAIN?!!"-look at the end last night, but it should also serve as a warning to us. Granted, we tend to WIN close ones, and we have what is turning out to be a superb defense that can keep us in ANY game, as long as we can wake up before the end--but with our current offense, what if we got TOO far behind before that "wake up call"?
I'm not saying it's going to happen, only that it COULD, and in a season with a team and staff who are smart, disciplined and determined, but still young enough to run on emotion for whole stretches of games AND the days leading up to them, it's possible we might well sooner or later find ourselves down by 2 or 3 scores in the 2nd half, emotionally tired and facing a team themselves flying high on the possibility of a "huge signature win"--and THIS one has the best chance of being that game. Unless we somehow find a whole deep-passing game, and the WR-playmakers to make it and our return game finally work, these very missing pieces are going to put us in a bind, too late and once too often.
All of the above brings us to the hard part: What do we do to AVOID this danger, and a potential "shocking upset"? Well, of course the very fact that our coaches are aware of it is the first step--but it's not enough. Getting the players to buy into it, to take it seriously enough to understand that it is a kind of "enemy within them", that they have to take seriously, is difficult: It sounds like one of those "cliches" they've heard too many times before. This is where coaches earn their keep, all part of overseeing the growth and maturity of what was once just a collection of talented, competitive individuals and turning them into a TEAM, a mutually supportive group of young men who support and depend on each other, trust themselves and their coaches, and together don't stay too high or too low for too long. I'm just not convinced that, judging by our FIRST half performances thus far, we are all the way there yet--and if we don't get closer, and soon, it could cost us a game we actually go into expecting to win, and win easily.
Now, given the rest of our schedule this month, and the fact that Vandy seems to rise up and knock off an SEC foe at least once EVERY year, this would be a potential "trap game" for us regardless. However, though not quite on par with the Tigers or the Tide, the Commodores have managed some surprisingly decent recruiting the last couple of years and the results are beginning to manifest themselves: formerly a "dangerous defensive spoiler" from a basketball-school, some weeks they look more and more like a mid-level SEC-Football Team--and woe be to the opponent, ANY opponent, who takes them lightly. We better prepare for them--and better than we "prepared" for Kentucky, by the way--if we don't want to see ourselves in a scary, ultimately disastrous dogfight next Saturday afternoon. A team like ours, just coming into its own, still young, missing some parts and lacking some depth, is especially vulnerable to the "big let down" at just this point in the season. Like a larger, big-picture version of the kinds of mistakes and dumb penalties we're still taking at crucial points in games (yesterday, it happened SEVERAL times in the first half, again) we COULD make a giant "preparation mistake" here this week: no matter what we tell ourselves, no matter what the coaches SAY, it would be only human to feel that "we're over a hump" after yesterday's game. Like it or not, that LSU game was always "out there", from the moment we started practicing in ernest for game 1, week 1 at the end of August. The coaches AND the players did a great job of acknowledging it and then "putting it away", setting it aside until the past week, but now we have to set it aside ENTIRELY, and try to face Vandy in the same determined and composed way we have prepared for every game until now. It will not be easy for these players, harder than they think--but this staff so far has at least managed to have them ready to "adapt and overcome" as they entered into each of the games so far, and they are well aware of the particular dangers and subconscious elements here, I'm sure.
My only larger concern, then, is of course that we have NOT been more "prepared" to start well against ANY of our opponents in those games. Even Kentucky made us look sloppy the first qrtr or so. That it was in truth more likely OURSELVES making us look that way is hardly soothing. Sooner or later, this could cost us, find us bumbling too much for too long, too far into a game against a hungry opponent that begins to be driven forward by the very real sense that they CAN beat us that day.
Yes, it WAS kind of hilarious watching those arrogant loud-mouths from across-the-panhandle and their fans' bewildered "WTF-AGAIN?!!"-look at the end last night, but it should also serve as a warning to us. Granted, we tend to WIN close ones, and we have what is turning out to be a superb defense that can keep us in ANY game, as long as we can wake up before the end--but with our current offense, what if we got TOO far behind before that "wake up call"?
I'm not saying it's going to happen, only that it COULD, and in a season with a team and staff who are smart, disciplined and determined, but still young enough to run on emotion for whole stretches of games AND the days leading up to them, it's possible we might well sooner or later find ourselves down by 2 or 3 scores in the 2nd half, emotionally tired and facing a team themselves flying high on the possibility of a "huge signature win"--and THIS one has the best chance of being that game. Unless we somehow find a whole deep-passing game, and the WR-playmakers to make it and our return game finally work, these very missing pieces are going to put us in a bind, too late and once too often.
All of the above brings us to the hard part: What do we do to AVOID this danger, and a potential "shocking upset"? Well, of course the very fact that our coaches are aware of it is the first step--but it's not enough. Getting the players to buy into it, to take it seriously enough to understand that it is a kind of "enemy within them", that they have to take seriously, is difficult: It sounds like one of those "cliches" they've heard too many times before. This is where coaches earn their keep, all part of overseeing the growth and maturity of what was once just a collection of talented, competitive individuals and turning them into a TEAM, a mutually supportive group of young men who support and depend on each other, trust themselves and their coaches, and together don't stay too high or too low for too long. I'm just not convinced that, judging by our FIRST half performances thus far, we are all the way there yet--and if we don't get closer, and soon, it could cost us a game we actually go into expecting to win, and win easily.
