Snarkastic

Breathe. Again. Again.

I don't have the genetic building blocks necessary to accept a rebuilding season for my team. I don't have the serenity and temperance of dear Longhorn Book Deal. This is nature and nurture talking; it's the SEC, and this is how we're built. There is no expectations game; three losses and talk radio shrieks for the coach's head. It's far from sane, but it's home.

This isn't like 2005. Ten plays swing the other direction and the 2005 squad is a nine-win team. In years past, when Livia clapped her hands and shrieked that we'd be Atlanta-bound before we knew it, and I crossed my arms and muttered that we'd be lucky to see any play in January...that's what I was talking about. Things wouldn't swing our way. I'm not blaming any of this team's misfortunes on luck; it's just that when, say, Bad Erik was Bad Erik, he was Bad Erik at the most singularly inopportune of moments. I was always counting on the clouds to open up just when they shouldn't, but now? The sky is falling, and there's no end in sight.

Except...

Enter Nick Stephens.

Crompton holding a clipboard can't do anything but help this football team, but on his own merits, I like Nick Stephens. Not many of you got to see him thanks to the blackout, so know the following things: He's as fresh as we have. He threw two passes against UAB with the game in the bag, so might as well call this his first game, period. The competition was markedly inferior. But I liked what I saw. He looks calm in the pocket. He's stepping into his throws. And in the third quarter, when Denarius Moore told him, "If you can see me, just throw it out there, and I'll go get it,"...he didn't have to go anywhere. Stephens hit him in the hands at a dead run for a 52-yard score. Hope is kindled.

But...13-9 against Northern Illinois? We may not have bigger problems than the quarterback position, but it's far, far from a magic bullet that'll save the balance of our conference schedule. How can Knoxville reconcile itself to looking towards 2009 when there's not another iota of movement to the better in 2008? Why are Hardesty and Creer empty-handed when all available evidence points to them being the best rushing options for success? Whither, special teams competence? And in a storyline that by bizarro index belongs in 2005, what in the blue hell ate Daniel Lincoln, and can we convince the creature wearing his skin as a suit to spit him back out?

I recognize that I'm writing this the day after a win, but this season's fixing to get a lot worse before it gets better, so dig in now while the ground's unfrozen. This will be neither pretty nor brief.

[ETA: Joel went and wrote the exact same thing at the exact same time, plus bonus What The Eff Is With Our Punt Formation coverage. Rocky Top's collective despair has fused us all into a transcontinental hive mind.]

Posted by Nastinchka at October 5, 2008 05:06 PM