CECIL HURT: An impressive showcase

For a long time, I wasn't that impressed with David Cutcliffe's offensive coaching.

My mistake.

There were probably all sorts of extraneous factors that affected my opinion of Cutcliffe, who is back at the University of Tennessee for his second successful stint as offfensive coordinator. For one thing, he was one of the few people in the college football world with a University of Alabama degree that I had never really gotten to know very well. For another, there were the off-the-field issues that affected the Alabama-Tennessee series in recent years and made it hard to see anyone (on either side) with complete objectivity.

Most of all, perhaps, it was easy to look at the consistently excellent numbers that Cutcliffe's offensive units accumulated, whether at UT or during his stint as the Ole Miss head coach, and give the credit to the quarterbacks - Heath Shuler, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning and the rest.

I still don't know Cutcliffe. My opinion of his work, though, is much higher than it once was. First, he continues to roll out strong ffensive teams. This 2007 Tennesssee team is no exception. The Vols score almost 35 points per game and amass all sorts of yardage. Andre Woodson is having a great season at Kentucky and probably deserves the All-SEC laurels at the end of the year, but it's awfully hard to argue with Erik Ainge's numbers,

or his value to his team, when it comes time to make that evaluation. (UT's two early-season losses at Cal and Florida have had the Vols flying under the radar ever since.)

There's something more than that, though. Watching a Cutcliffe offense has become sort of an annual rite of the football season, like eating etouffee in Baton Rouge or dodging Jim Beam bottles in Oxford (No, it's not right when it happens in Tuscaloosa either.) For even a relatively untrained eye, it's easy to recognize the Cutcliffe hallmarks: the wide receiver screens, the clever use of the tight end, the wink-of-an-eye release of the quarterback after a two- or three-step drop, the precise maneuvering designed to make a team pick its poison between covering fast wide receivers or giving up yardage to powerful running backs. In vintage years - seasons with Peyton Manning and Jamal Lewis and Donte Stallworth - UT could be darn near unstoppable. The talent isn't quite at that level, but it's still pretty scary with Ainge and running back Arrian Foster and wide receiver Lucas Taylor, who doesn't get a lot of publicity but leads the SEC in receiving yards per game.

That point was emphasized earlier this week by Nick Saban, when the

Crimson Tide coach was asked about facing the UT offense.

"Certain people do certain things depending on what they believe in," Saban said on Wednesday. "There are things about their offense that have the David Cutcliffe trademark, if you want to call it that. I have a lot of respect for what he has done at Tennessee and at Ole Miss. One thing that has done is that he does a good job of taking good players and making them successful. That's not as easy as it sounds."

If any more convincing evidence were necessary, consider this. After

Cutcliffe left Tennessee to take over at Ole Miss, the UT offense declined and the Ole Miss offense improved. He was fired in Oxford. Maybe that was merited, since there is more to being a head coach than just running the offense. But the Rebel offense declined when he left, and the Tennessee offense quickly got better when he returned.

Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer says the Vols aren't identical to what they were in Cutcliffe's first term. College football changes every season and offenses have to evolve.

"It seems like everybody, including us, (is) trying to use the field a lot more (in) different ways - the perimeter passing, the play-action, get the ball down the field. Maybe more than I can remember.

"I think that's kind of dictated … by all the man coverage and the

pressures. If you can protect long enough, you have an opportunity to have some big plays. Things are happening for offenses right now. There's a lot of pressure on the defenses."

Rest assured, there will be pressure on the Alabama defense on Saturday. And David Cutcliffe deserves his fair share of the credit for that.

Cecil Hurt is sports editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Reach him at

cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0225.