The Crompton Mess: My Take on UCLA-UT
Monday, September 14, 2009
Here goes with the column.
As night fell in Knoxville, a father dropped back to pass to his son.
"Go out five yards," he said.
The son, a portly 9 or 10 years old in an orange Eric Berry No. 14 jersey, ran a wobbly five yards and turned to receive his daddy's pass. The football whizzed in his direction, slammed into the pavement three yards short of its target and bounced high into the night air.
"I'm Jonathan Crompton," the dad said. Fellow tailgaters erupted in guffaws as the son tracked down the ball in the fading light.
It's come to this in Knoxville. One week after offering a tantalizing glimpse that something might be different, Crompton turned in the worst full-game performance by a Tennessee quarterback in a quarter century. In the wake of the resulting loss to UCLA, fans sputtered to explain how Crompton could be so bad.
Late that night as I stood at the urinal of a Cumberland Avenue bar, a fellow fan recognized me. "Clay," he said, "Todd Helton could have won us this game. Hell, A.J. Suggs would have beaten them by three touchdowns."
And he's right.
I don't even think we need Todd Helton back in his quarterbacking days at UT. I think if we'd just pulled the 36 year old from his Saturday game against the San Diego Padres, plugged him under center and given him five pass plays to run, Helton could have won the game for the Vols. Certainly he couldn't have done worse than Crompton, who finished 13 of 26 for 93 yards, three interceptions, one interception called back because of penalty, and another interception narrowly avoided after replay review. He also fumbled a quarterback-center exchange that led to UCLA's only touchdown. But supposedly he isn't to blame for that one.
In the end, UCLA won the game 19-15 on Saturday evening, but Jonathan Crompton lost it. He was so awful that his performance transcended the merely bad and ascended to the ranks of the astonishing. How bad did it get? Crompton's three interceptions came on three consecutive series, the final two of the first half and the first series of the second. After the second interception, the crowd booed. On the third? The crowd merely sat in stunned silence. Crompton pulled off a true rarity in the sport, back-to-back interceptions on consecutive pass attempts and three picks in five passes, a 60 percent interception percentage. Think about how hard that is to manage for a fifth-year starting college quarterback.
Then consider that all three interceptions were entirely self-inflicted wounds. On every interception, Crompton had plenty of time and no pressure. For someone who witnessed the game in person, it truly boggles the mind how badly Crompton played.
Especially with all that was at stake. I've been saying for months that the UCLA game was the most important on the schedule because of where it lay. Win and Tennessee can withstand the loss at Florida, return home with three home games in a row, and likely finish the first half of the season, at worst, at 4-2.
Lose and the bad karma of 2008 returns, the infighting between offense and defense reemerges, all of it is there to break the will of a fragile team. And now we're there. Go ahead and write off all possibility of 2009 being a good season.
Read the rest here, it's an epic. Labels: ut ucla jonathan crompton
Posted by Clay Travis at 8:01 PM
 
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