Tennessee vs The Maxims vs South Carolina

Tennessee vs The Maxims vs South Carolina

The Old Fox had bedeviled Lincoln for years. Time and again the men of the deeper and stronger Union Army of the Potomac would sally forth to finally put paid to Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia only to return with their collective tails between their legs after another licking from “Marse Robert” and his butternut-clad Confederates. The Army of the Potomac had seen “Little Mac” MacClellan, "Fightin' Joe” Hooker, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside and “that Damned Old Goggle-eyed Snapping Turtle” (George Meade) over the years. All had their chance and all had earned at best Pyrrhic victories and at worst overseen disasters of arms that are studied to this day as blazing examples of how NOT to run a military operation.

At one point, exasperated by a lack of action on the part of the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln acidly wrote to one of the above, “Sir, if you are not planning to use the Army, I should like to borrow it.”

Always there was Lee, the “Old Fox,” who would out-think, out scheme, and out-maneuver Lincoln's generals to the general embarrassment of the Army and the administration. Oh, there had been victories, few and far between, but victories nonetheless. Always, however, the Old Fox got away and lived to fight another day. Lincoln needed someone to bag the Old Fox and the available leadership just wasn't getting it done.

So Lincoln turned to an outsider, a westerner, little-known the chin-pulling pundits and what was known didn't seem too favorable. One particularly savage journalist described him as a “little, scared-looking man.” Scurrilous rumors abounded of mis-behavior in the field and pointed to a lack of accomplishment against “a REAL general” in his background. He was an interloper and surely the Old Fox would slap this upstart just as he had all this new man's be-ribboned and plumed predecessors.

Thirteen months later, in a parlor in Virginia, the Old Fox surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses Grant. The Old Fox was bagged, once and for all.

Steve Spurrier has been Tennessee's "Old Fox" since 1982. Have the Vols at last found a “Grant” to bag the Old Fox once and for all?

1.The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
Say what you will but the Vols played nearly error-free football in the first half and spent the second warming the fryer and laying in a supply of wing sauce. SoCalinky coughed up the ball three times in that half and really only managed one effective offensive series for the entire game.

2.Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way … SCORE!
Three turnovers by the chickens yielded three touchdowns before Bobby Denton finished saying “and please pay NO MORE!”

If at first the game – or the breaks – go against you, don’t let up … PUT ON MORE STEAM!
The Vol faithful experienced a collective intake of breath when the Old Fox put together a 3-play scoring drive in the middle of the third quarter. Fortunately, Tennessee's own “Old Fox” adjusted his defense on the fly and that, as they say, was that.

3.Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.
Indeed.

4.Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle … THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.
Tennessee's defense may have finally found a real personality Saturday and it is NASTY. I recall particularly one play where a Cock running back broke loose on a 23-yard scamper only to have his world rocked by Janzen Jackson who laid one of the hardest hits ever seen 'neath the Stately Walls.

5.Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
Kick coverage is improved but still suspect. Cunningham is passable as a field goal kicker, but …

6.Carry the fight to South Carolina and keep it there for sixty minutes.
Certainly the defense showed up for the entire game. I did detect a certain reversion to old habits (get a big lead and then do nothing) on the part of the offense in the second and third quarters. Coach Kiffin said as much on his way into the locker room at half.

One of the ESPN commentators noted that last night may have seen a changing of the guard and that Lane Kiffin seems to have replaced Steve Spurrier as the “Mouth of the South” in football. If Kiffin can crawl as far into the collective carapaces of the rest of the SEC as Steve Spurrier did in his heyday, the Tennessee faithful have much to look forward to.

MAXOMG

© 2009 One Man Gang