LSU in the process of removing 3-6 assistants from their current staff.

It is looking more and more like their only option is to hire Kevin Steele.

There's just something odd about this coming out right before the game today.....The last game and senior day. Something smells.

I agree. If he is let go, the pool of coaches to replace him may be very shallow if it is determined his own department undermined their own coaches.

So do you think Pruitt is or is not the guy? His teams are not getting more impressive as he goes along. So you think what you posted is an viable excuse for the product on the field right now. He just got beat by a first year coach that had 18 walk-ons in key positions and inherited a bigger dumpster fire at Arky than Pruitt did at UT. How do put a gloss on that?

For me, the jury is still out regarding HC Pruitt. I think the Administration feels the same way and I don’t see them making a change after this unique season and current financial situation. We are on our 4th coach over the past 12 years.

I do see the roster being more talented than when HC Pruitt arrived in 2017. The deficit for his program is the QB position. #2 has started the majority of games for HC Pruitt during his tenure because unfortunately he probably did give us the best chance to win. Shrout and Maurer were never the answers in my opinion over the last 2 seasons.

That brings us to Bailey who is probably the highest rated QB we have signed in the past 10-15 years. Unfortunately, he has been impacted by no spring practice and two covid related quarantines during the fall. I think we will see what #15 can or can’t do over the next few games. The QB from Texas will be on campus next season and hopefully a transfer QB as well to make the competition for this position very interesting going into 2021. An effective, talented QB is like a high-tide for a football team that raises all “position boats”. You are seeing that at Arkansas.

AD Fulmer was hired on Dec2, less than 2 weeks before the very first early signing period started where the vast majority of recruits sign their name to the LOI. He hired HC Pruitt on Dec 7 giving him less than a week to maintain, salvage, and grow the class. For perspective, the following coaching searches were completed with the majority both started and finished before AD Fulmer hired HC Pruitt. From this list, a larger of can't miss coaches with a greater % of misses than hits.

Arizona State (Todd Graham out, Herm Edwards in)
Arkansas (Bret Bielema out, Chad Morris in. And the Hogs carried out an entire athletic director search in this span, with an interim AD handling most of the Morris hiring process, despite having their own wild booster culture.)
Florida State (Fisher out, Willie Taggart in)
Mississippi State (Dan Mullen out, Joe Moorhead in)
Nebraska (Mike Riley out, Scott Frost in)
Rice (David Baliff out, Mike Bloomgren in)
Texas A&M (Kevin Sumlin out, Fisher in)
UCF (Scott Frost out, Josh Heupel in)
UCLA (Jim Mora out, Chip Kelly in)

https://twitter.com/danharralson/status/1328140802724417541?s=19

I don't think UT would be his landing spot but I could see Muschamp going to LSU to replace Pelini.

Things are suboptimal, but IMHO Pruitt has constructed the best roster we've had in >10 years. If, and that's a big if, he can let go of the offense and get enough help coaching defense, we can lurch toward mediocrity.

Add a decent QB, and we can be more. He's just got to work out the coaching balance. There's too much dead weight on the offensive staff, and not enough full time guys on defense.

If that issue completely his fault? Yes. Rocker didn't recruit, but he did develop.

I agree. With CJP being a defensive coach, the notion was the rise of team would come from the defense. Against SEC offenses in Butch's last season our defense averaged giving up over 440 yds/game. Last season, we gave up 361/game against SEC offenses and this year so far it is 408. So the base is there for the defense to move forward, it is the offense that is the anchor holding this team back. Specifically the QB. With decent QB play I think we would be 4-2. The defense would have been complimented in our games versus long stretches of 3 and outs that has become our M.O.

The talk of firing him this season generating buyouts of approximately $15M given the current financial situation in the Ath. Dept is not going to happen in my opinion. He does however need to make changes on his staff which i do think he will do because he probably knows this is his last chance to get the offense right which will in turn get the team right.

Vandy is averaging more yds/game on offense this year than UT.

So, if Chaney is moving on after this season then I would definitely call Brandon Streeter. He is the Passing Coordinator/QB coach at Clemson. He has worked with Lawrence, DJ, and all their other QB's since 2014. He is a terrific recruiter, had the role of Recruiting Coordinator, and he is their point person for recruiting Ty Simpson. He is making around $450K so we could double his salary and make him OC to transform the offense to what he wants to do.

https://clemsontigers.com/coaches/brandon-streeter/

Something tells me Pruitt wants to postpone the rest of season

Me too. Basketball starts in a couple of weeks.

Bailey had the longest completed pass of 24 yards.

We should not. You learn nothing from the second kick off a mule. We have let the mule stomp the sh&&& out of us.

 

Exactly what I've been attempting to get people to acknowledge (the situation he stepped into)....ten years of losing more than winning!!! Plus a dearth of SEC talent. He needs 2 more years at minimum to get close to seeing his capability.          

I agree. When he was hired, I considered this to be a 5 year process to get us back on track. That is still my thought today.

I have always heard "next man up". I don't see why this approach should not be used in this scenario.

Hopefully it allows Pruitt to go after Tosh Lupoi at the end of the season. He is an excellent recruiter, worked with him at Alabama, and currently maybe in a no win situation with the Atlanta Falcons as their DL coach.

I understand that as fans we don't have access to all of the information, but knowing only the finite facts that we do know who would be your likely strategy at QB next week?

1. JG as usual
2. Shrout and Maurer depending on their play
3. Shrout and Maurer for Bama depending on the play of each - Bailey after the bye week
4. Bailey to build for the future
5. Other (want to explain?)

I like option 3

Option 3 for me as well. Our problem though is Shrout and Maurer and not SEC caliber QBs that we need. Hopefully, Bailey just needs snaps to get better. So the coaches need to pick one between Shrout and Maurer and give the back-up QB snaps to Bailey starting this week. They also need to simplify the offense - even having the entire unit stand-up and look to the sideline for the play based on the defensive alignment. No reads from the QB position for the rest of the year.

Why wouldn't they think "the same old Tennessee". We beat Carolina and Missouri. They are not UGa. UGa's defense killed Auburn and Bo Nix. We will see how good our OL really is in this game. If we can get any kind of running game going then we can stay with them. This is a big game for our team. Let's see what they got.

Did they not meet your self imposed standard against Missouri last week?

First off, I like this team and their attitude about the game. Having stability at the coaching staff is an intangible not mentioned very much and it is clear to me that we have our coach going forward.

This coming weekend will be a challenge no doubt. The schedule works in our favor with “lowly, weak and frail” UT coming up sandwiched between two Top10 matchups for Georgia.

Offensively, our WR’s will have to get separation and make plays against their DB’s. They will man up and be physical with one-on-one coverage allowing everyone else to stop the run and pressure #2. If they can’t get open, then their defense will strangle our offense just like they did to AU. Given this, I think Mays needs to play RT this weekend due to their speed and pressure from the edges. He and Wayna have to neutralize Ojulari and Anderson to give #2 time to throw.

Defensively, Pruitt and Smart are cut from the same Saban cloth and their approach is basically the same. So, even though he played a good game against AU, I would take my chances with their QB. Stop the run first and challenge our DB’s to do the same thing against their WR’s. The difference being is they have more talent and experience to pull it off.

Lastly, we can’t miss 39 yd FG’s. This should be a low scoring game with maybe a weather impact so every opportunity to put points on the board can’t be missed.

Watching the replay last night, he looks to be throwing off his back foot causing the pass to sail high. My guess is the years of getting pounded and under constant pressure are still in the back of his mind. I wish they would roll him out some to get him out of the pocket because he can hurt you with his legs. 

As I look at all the posters in this thread, except maybe Herb, I have to smh at you. Every one of you slobbered over Butch when he got here. You bought into the brick by brick bs. But I caught hell because I called it like I saw it from the start. Dobbs was better than Worley from day one. Yet you made excuses for Butch. But the biggest reason I knew Butch was not an SEC caliber coach was the first OU game. I knew x's and o's were not Butch's strong suit. However he was 9-4 two years in a row. OMG he is a great coach. Then he started one season 5-0 with the UGa miracle. How did that season end up? Now we have Pruitt. You are all slobbering over him because he beat the teams UT teams should beat. I like Pruitt. I didn't like Jones. However, I can't overlook the loss to Ga St. I still feel he is in over his head. He looks like the type of coach that needs to out talent his opponents instead of out coaching them. I am on board with him a lot more than I was with Jones. When he beats UGa, UF and Bammer in the same season, then I will say he is the man. This year is kind of a mulligan for everyone. He better recruit a top QB. If Bailey is that guy, he should be better than JG from day one. Okay let the excuses and whining begin in..1,2,3... Plus one more thing...let's wait and see how many of his current recruits end up in Knoxville before we call him Lombardi.

I don't know of anyone who "slobbered over Butch when he got here". In 2012, there were 4 SEC teams looking for HC's (Auburn, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee). Their AD's quietly went about their search and had landed their guys. Tennessee accomplishments were to have dealt with rumors of Gruden, followed by a rejection of our offer by Gundy to stay at OKST, followed by another rejection of our offer by Strong to stay our Louisville. Depending on who you talk to, there may have even been another rejection by Fedora to stay and NC.

The time was now the first week of December and the media was asking what was the issue with the Tennessee search, probably chuckling under their breath. Recruits were setting up January visits and assistant coaching vacancies were being filled.

So for me, Butch Jones was not my choice, but he looked to be the only one who wanted the job and given the time on the calendar we did not have much choice.

Fromm literally torched us every time we played them so I am happy to take any QB they trot out against us.

You can add Travis Etienne to the list as well.

I was expecting worse, but this is a pretty good schedule for us.

When the campus gets full of students it's going to be a cluster. I don't see anyway around it. Several schools around here have already closed down from teachers and students testing positive and they were only in school for a week when announced they were closing. The county were I live the school system was suppose to open in person classes Aug 24th...Last week during teacher in-service they had several teachers test positive...The school system announced Thursday they will not open in person classes it will go remote only for the foreseeable future. 

Agree. I think the majority if not all of the university presidents understand that students on campus will cause outbreaks and they will then need to revert to online learning. The interesting action will be what do the conference leaders do like Sankey if this happens. Will they have the guts to play football with fully quarantine student athletes while normal students are sent home? I don't see it.

10 game schedule release by the conference will be 7pm tomorrow.

The coaches want transparency in what was used to add the two additional opponents. If it was to maximize SEC revenue then say it. If it was to balance out the pain of playing a conference only slate then say that. If they pulled names out of a hat then let them know. They just want to know what was used and how it was applied. The SEC shares everything equally among the member schools and being secretive in their approach does not bode well in my opinion when future difficult decisions are required.

Like I mentioned previously, the timing of these games on the calendar will be the next interesting point of discussion.