Tennessee Offensive Grades Game 1: Chattanooga

Remember: Half a review is better than no review.

Sep 03, 2024

Here’s the play review and grades for the Chattanooga game, first half only. Some caveats:

I’m working from a copy of the TV film uploaded to YouTube, so sometimes numbers are hard to see, along with the camera angles making it tough to grade the whole play.
I don’t know the assignments on each play. I’m just giving my best assessment based on what I’m seeing.
As a result, there can be errors, if you catch one, keep the above in mind.
Players are given a +1 for noticeably good play (can be up to +2 for extraordinary play), and negative numbers for noticeably/extraordinarily poor play.
Most players will get no grade for a play for just quietly doing their job.
Total grades and comments down below.

Drive 1

Couple other things: an arrow (- ->) denotes motion into that formation, italics means the offense was running up tempo going into that play. Also, this is what I’m calling “2x1 Wing”, as it’s the base formation Tennessee operates out of:

Drive 2

Drive 3

Drive 4

Drive 5

Drive 6

Drive 7

Drive 8

Drive 9

Totals

Again, 1st half only.

I’m admittedly not 100% positive on my snap counts, it’s hard to tell from the TV angles who is in at WR on every play, and the OL isn’t always clear either.

Standouts

Nico, obviously. In fact, he played better than my grading shows—he makes the position look so effortless that the pluses are all “wow” plays and the minuses are probably pedestrian mistakes, but because he makes it all look easy, any mistake stands out. And this was just his second start y’all.
The OL played well. They probably get graded a little more harshly because 1) they’re always on the screen and 2) I don’t know their exact assignments on each play, so the mistakes stand out more than the good plays. Still, Cooper Mays played great, Andrej Karick played really well as did Lance Heard, who is simply an earth mover out there. I also can’t emphasize how far Dayne Davis has come in the last four years.
TEs had a good day. Kitselman is a weapon with his blocking in the ground game, just as Ethan Davis is in the pass game, and Holden Staes looks like the average between the two (that’s meant as a complement).
WRs looked like weapons. Again, it’s hard to grade this position—sometimes just lining up really, really wide is enough to fulfil their requirements for a play. Dont’e Thornton and Chris Brazzell both looked like they’re going to give defenses fits this year. And the return of Bru McCoy, including the play where he juked the DB into the shadow realm, is enormous for this offense.
Finally, I think we go the answer to can Dylan Sampson carry the load as the feature back? And yeah buddy, he can.

Agree or disagree with the grading? Let me know in the comments.