The lead story on GoVolsXtra this morning has this interesting tidbit:

View Up Top: Fulmer anticipates quarterbacks coach Randy Sanders staying in the press box the rest of the season.

“I thought it went fine (at Notre Dame),” Fulmer said. “David, uh, Randy was really on top of the game and knew exactly what was going on.”

David?

David Cutcliffe was quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator from 1993-98 and is considered a leading candidate to replace Sanders, who resigned as offensive coordinator last week.

Was Cutcliffe up there calling plays? Quick! Someone break out the tape!

Even if Coach Cut wasn’t up there, is it evidence of who Coach Fulmer wants as his new Offensive Coordinator?

In his Tennnessee Volunteer-Notre Dame Fighting Irish post-game blog, John Pennington says that even having Notre Dame quarterback and Heisman candidate Brady Quinn wouldn’t help the Volunteer offense:

Let’s put Brady Quinn in Vol orange for a second. Would he turn this team around?

On Saturday, he got passes NEAR his receivers. They took it from there. A one-handed catch by Jeff Samardzija. A catch (barely out of bounds) by Samardzija where he jumped up and took a pass away from a Vol DB. A 5-yard reception that Samardzija took 73-yards to set up the go-ahead score. A juggling catch by a tight end. WR Maurice Stovall jumping out of his skin to bring down a finger-tip touchdown catch.

If Brady Quinn were a Vol… he would get NONE OF THAT. In this game he would have led the Vols to about the same number of points as they scored without him. His RECEIVERS made plays for him… and drove up his TD and yardage numbers even though, for most of the day, he just got the ball in their vicinity. He was far from laser-perfect.

Pennington points out that even Tennessee quarterback Erik Ainge’s first interception was the result of a receiver running the wrong route.

Doing his best to kill the “those-guys-are-talented” meme, Pennington says this:

Sometimes, Vol fans focus so much on their own team, that they feel any and all problems must be traced back to coaching.

But if you watch enough football, you’ll soon realize that Tennessee ISN’T as talented as they were believed to be (by coaches, media, fans, me, probably you, etc). They don’t have players that can turn a broken play into a touchdown. Heck they don’t have many players who can even catch a ball, much less run with it.

As I watched Stovall leap into the air and yank down Notre Dame’s second touchdown of the game… someone said to me, “now THAT’S talent.” He was right. UT’s highly-recruited wide outs couldn’t match up with Notre Dame’s not-so-highly-recruited wide outs.

Sometimes, it’s not JUST coaching. Look around. It becomes pretty obvious that UT doesn’t have the skill players that many other teams do. (Trace the recruiting and development issues back to coaches… sure. But don’t talk to me about talent anymore. If talent is never show, then talent is not there.)

Taking away the receivers’ green jerseys was a good first step, but was it too little, too late?

This seems to me to indicate that even the coaches fell prey to the “these-guys-are-talented” meme. As Pennington says, it’s not talent unless you see it on the field. Being able to do it doesn’t mean that you will.

The fact that the receivers wore green jerseys in practice up until a couple of weeks ago seems to me to indicate that the coaches were more concerned about perfecting their ability than practicing their performance. What exactly were they practicing? Running fast? Running routes? Being tall and strong?

Were they practicing going up for a ball with aggressive defenders in their faces?

Or did the green jerseys tell the defenders to take it easy on them?

Torching the green jerseys may not have been too little, but it certainly was too late.

Voluminous was the first to pipe up, saying at least the Vols are consistent.

Shots Across the Bow has a message for those still sounding the “it’s the players” meme:

And for all you radio pundts who claim that it isn’t coaching, because it;s the players themselves that fumble, drop balls, miss blocking assignments whatever; let me remind you of two well known sayings in football.

You play like you practice.

You practice like you’re coached.

It IS the coaches you dunderheads! They’re job, they’re only job, is to get these players ready for game day. Can anyone seriously make the argument that, defense excepted, UT has been ready for any game this season?

Countertop Chronicles should expect another spike in traffic this week from people Googling “Fire Phil Fulmer.”

And check out my post-Notre Dame update to the question Is There Life After Death Valley for Erik Ainge?

Well, it seems that the answer to this question is . . . maybe . . . no.

After the Tennessee Volunteers’ dramatic Rally in the Valley against the LSU Tigers (on the heels of quarterback Erik Ainge’s horrendous first half), I posted my Is There Life After Death Valley for Erik Ainge post. My conclusion was, “Sure, if he and his coaches can identify the challenges ahead,” and then I listed three things I thought were key to making that happen:

1. Improve decision-making;
2. Forget last-year’s injury; and
3. Develop chemistry with the team.

Ainge has really not had the opportunity to develop chemistry with the team, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt there. But it looks like he’s got a ways to go on the other two, which I’ve come to believe are closely related.

Last year against Notre Dame, Ainge tried to make a big play out of nothing when instead of falling on a loose ball (a result of a bad snap), he tried to scoop it up and make something happen. Instead, he was sacked and landed awkwardly on his throwing shoulder, sidelining him for the rest of the season.

I thought that this might have influenced his terrible decision in the LSU game to throw an underhanded pass in his own end zone toward the line of scrimmage when he was in the grasp of a defender. Instead of taking the safety, he threw an interception for a touchdown.

Lesson learned?

Apparently not.

Having thrown one interception against Notre Dame with the team down by a touchdown (he gets some slack for that, too), he was a mess the next series. The Vols opened the drive deep in their own territory with a delay of game penalty. After a kickoff. On third and long, Ainge dropped back, and looked down field and found all receivers covered. The defensive end broke free of a block and wrapped his arms around Ainge. As Ainge was taken to the ground, he flipped a pass toward the scrimmage line.

The play was not only remniscent of the LSU Decision, but it was the second intentional grounding call against Ainge. Luckily, this time, it was not intercepted.

On the first play of the next series, with Tennessee down two touchdowns with under 4:00 minutes to play, Ainge again found no receivers open (maybe not his fault) and scrambled out of the pocket toward the sideline. But instead of running out of bounds to stop the clock, he slid down just in bounds. Like he was trying to do just that. The clock kept ticking.

On the very next play, Ainge threw an interception directly to a defender, who ran it in for a touchdown.

Ainge played a great game until that point. But for him to recover from the Death Valley nightmare, and the 2005 season in general, he’s going to need to improve his decision-making under duress.

The Vol Report from GoVolsXtra today includes a must-see cartoon drawn by Daniel Proctor. If you don’t have a subscription, you might not be able to see it, so here’s a description.

Two UT players are in the front seat of a an old timey car with a Power T painted on the side and the words “Big Orange Bandwagon” painted on the side of a wooden truck bed. A tattered car flag is waving in the wind, the jalopy has no wheels, and the license plate reads “3-4 Vols.”

An exit sign overhead reads “South Bend exit,” and you can see the Golden Dome in the foreground. One Volunteer is saying, “Hey, Coach! Is this our exit?” And then, turning around to see the empty truck bed, the tailgate swinging open, he says, “Coach?”

That about sums it up. The wheels have fallen off, the offensive coordinator has been chucked (or has bailed), and the Tennessee Volunteers are clunking toward the mystical Notre Dame.

It’s a great cartoon that really captures this particular moment in time for the Volunteer Nation.

Go Vols!

Uh-oh.

As of 10/3/05, the Fighting Irish had accumulated seven takeaways in the red zone.

The Volunteers have lost their last two games primarily due to two fumbles in the red zone (actually, three, but we “got lucky” on one and recovered it ourselves). Come to think of it, we also threw an interception into the end zone on another loss just before that.

We have a tendency to turn it over in the red zone. Notre Dame has a knack for taking it away in the red zone.

As I said, uh-oh.

Scout.com’s Jeffrey Stewart draws Notre Dame in the site’s weekly Devil’s Advocate feature. For those unfamiliar with the column, Stewart and Randy Moore, both excellent sports writers, take sides, each making the case for a win by the team they draw. For his part, Stewart starts out with a bang:

Making a case for Notre Dame beating Tennessee in South Bend on Saturday is a little like vouching for Bill Gates’ credit. In other words, the only real obstacle to overcome is — where to begin?

These are two teams headed in opposite directions at the speed of light. The Fighting Irish are reborn under first year head coach Charlie Weis, the mastermind behind a potent offensive attack that is putting points on the scoreboard in bunches. With a 5-2 record that includes victories over Pittsburgh, Michigan, Washington, Purdue and Brigham Young, Notre Dame is best known for its instant classic cliffhanger last month against defending national champion and undefeated USC. That near victory propelled the Irish back into the top ten where they remain today at No. 9.

Conversely, Tennessee is in the depths of a spiraling free fall from a preseason ranking of No. 3 through a 3-4 start, until it was finally spit out of the bottom of national polls last week, following a 16-15 defeat to that other USC. The one with the roosters on its helmet and no national championships under its belt.

The Vols dramatic demise is the result of an offense that rarely has a pulse and produces points at the pace of the Tunisian national ice hockey team. If you say it’s not fair to compare Tennessee’s offense to a team that doesn’t exist. Well, I rest my case.

Pretty much nails it, doesn’t it?

On the other side, Moore is hanging his hat on this week’s offensive shake-up.

Moore does an admirable job, but you’ve got to go with Stewart and Notre Dame this week.

Notre Dame blogger Blue Gray Sky wonders whether this Saturday’s game against the Tennessee Volunteers might be a “trap game” for the Irish. He (or she) links to a transcript of Head Coach Charlie Weis’ press conference and quotes Weis’ comments on the subject:

Q. How would you define a trap game?

COACH WEIS: This certainly isn’t one. All you have to do is watch the tape. When I sit there and give these facts and figures right there, it isn’t just trying to make myself look good to make it look like we know what we’re doing here. This is the scariest 3 4 team that you’re ever going to go against because they’re capable of beating everybody every week and they know it. Our guys know it, too.

All you got to do is put on the tape. They see it. They see these things that I just talked about because I’ve shown them these same things I’m telling you about. They’ve seen it. There’s no trap. You don’t have to worry about a trap in a Tennessee game.

Still, says Blue Gray Sky, it must be tough to maintain perspective. BGS’ concluding thought:

“I’ll be disappointed if we give up more than a couple of touchdowns. Final score: ND 24, Tennessee 9.

Dave Hooker’s podcast preview of the Tennessee-Notre Dame game this Saturday is up.

Instructions and URL here.

In preparation for this Saturday’s match up between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, check out these Notre Dame football blogs:

• The Blue-Gray Sky
• Brendan Loy
• Irish Today
• Kanka Sports
• Kelly Green

Have a look at the Official Notre Dame Athletics Site, too.