From Butch's press conference

[Memphisvolunteer]

Forgive me, but I stole this from another site but I thought this was too good and for everyone to read.  Here are some facts about our team.  For people to be all over our players and coaching staff, I just don't get it.  Everyone knew going in that this was going to be a tough year.  We all second guess and all get frustuated, but we all need to support them and our coaches.

"Good afternoon, thanks for coming out. To start off where we are at program-wise, a little bit about last week and then moving on this week against Georgia. I think everyone needs to understand, I think we do, but when you are building a culture, when you are building an environment, when you are working on changing habits, it takes time.

"We talk about playing disciplined football, we talk about learning how to play winning football. I think before we really get started there is an inordinate amount of positive things that are going on in our football program right now. I think in the world that we live in today everyone wants to focus on negativity, but let's focus on the positives, I call it `Positive Monday.' First of all Rajion Neal had the most yards rushing by a running back at Tennessee since 2009, he had 169 yards. This football team, Team 117 has had three 200-plus yard rushing games. We had three combined from the span 2010-2012. We currently lead the SEC and we are eighth in the country in fewest penalties, a little over three penalties per game. We lead the SEC and we are fourth in the country in fewest penalty yardage. We are tied for number one in the country for interceptions with 11. We lead the SEC and we are third in the country with 15 forced turnovers. We lead the SEC and we are tenth in the country with points off of turnovers. Our first two touchdowns on this past weeks game were scored by two true freshman, both making their first career touchdown receptions. Right now we have played a total of 14 true freshman and 22 freshman overall.


"As we continue to progress, the evolution of this football team is understanding what it is to compete for 60 minutes. It is a 60-minute game. I spoke to our team about this, there is a different between playing the game and competing. We are searching for competitive greatness. High achievement takes place in the framework of high expectations. We have extremely high expectations for every member within our football family and our football program, from the coaches to the players to the support staff. It is our players understanding that every play has a life of its own, you have to play that play to the best of your ability and then snap and clear. But you must have that mindset that every play has its own life. That is part of that mental conditioning, that snap and clear mentality that we talk about all the time. We talk about playing winning football. I understand that that is a very broad term, a lot of things go into it. Our players are responsible for getting themselves ready to play, week in and week out. We live in a society where everything is based on productivity but everyone in our program and everyone in our football organization is going to be held to the highest standard. It is that high level of accountability that we talk about.


"Right now we have some major depth issues and I think it is starting to be revealed, I think it is starting to show itself. We had two individuals who had monumental games for us, A.J. Johnson took 83 snaps at linebacker, Dontavis Snap took 82 snaps at linebacker plus 12 snaps on special teams. Every single rep you take accumulates over time throughout the course of the grind of along season. That is where we are at and we have to continue to recruit and develop depth upon our football team. We have two many individuals playing way to many reps. Both our starting corners were in the high 70s in the terms of repetitions on Saturday. And again throughout the course of a long season that can't happen.


"I thought we had some tough circumstances Saturday, a lot we created for ourselves. At the end of the day our players made the plays that they needed to to win the football game. We had a game winning stop defensively. We had some red zone stops prior to that. We had to run the clock out running the ball, we were able to do that. I thought we had some individuals really give tremendous effort, the first individual that comes to mind is Corey Miller. I thought he played his best, most complete game since we have been here, his effort was outstanding. We have to be high achievers, we have to be overachievers. We have to have '63' effort and strain. I thought the first half we had that. I thought we played pretty well in the first half and then I thought we got sloppy as the game wore on. That is illustrated by the way we played in the third and fourth quarter. We can't do that. Our players have to learn what it takes to play winning football for 60 minutes. I have said it, we are going to be a disciplined football team, I think those are illustrations on how far this football team has come.


"I liked the work ethic, I liked our mentality of our players, I like everything that we are doing but we just have to continue to progress. One of those areas is, we cannot turn the football over. It is inexcusable, that is making good choices and good decisions with the football. I think that has been the one area when you look to in terms of being a disciplined football team where we have to take great strides and continue to move forward. We have been careless with the football when we throw it and we can't continue to have those catastrophic mistakes as we move forward with this football team."

[Clockwork Orange]

I heard that live, and I'll say he sounded a little irritated about the negativity. He really wants the fanbase to get behind this effort and, in my view, we're hurting more than helping right now.

Butch is building the program for the long haul. When we think about "progress" it's not all going to be evident on the field from week to week. The rebuilding job is still in its infancy. It's tough to keep that in mind when we tune in on Saturdays because we badly want to win, and I'm sure Butch understands that . . . but I think he's right to take a moment to note all the progress so far.

And as fans, we need to relax a little with the negativity. There's nothing wrong with critiquing the play or the coaching choices-- if we didn't do that we probably wouldn't really be fans. We just ought to keep the big picture in focus.

[Inspector Vol]

If this was not year 6 of this mess he would not be hearing so much. It isn't his fault, but it is his baby now and fans are sick and tired of losing and more than that it is the way we lose, or in the case of this past week the way we won. If fans have any passion at all they are going to be frustrated whether they voice that or not. For some fans they will just not even watch the games anyone to save themselves the aggravation of it. I think the fans are doing well to put that many butts in the seats considering everything they have had to watch over the last half decade, and knowing full well, if they are honest with themselves, that it will take at least 3 or 4 full classes to give us any semblance of top SEC talent and talented depth.

I think the UGA game is an early watershed moment for the program. The team won this past week but did it in bad way. The players are frustrated too I think. The question is will they take the coaching and dig deep and give a supreme effort or will they fall apart like they did in the 2nd half last week. That was especially true of the offense. I have seen more glaring issues with the offense than the defense, and talent plus experience will help all of it.

I will say this much, if year 2 in this offense has execution problems like this year, then I will seriously start to question the staff. As it is unless we magically start executing, which is not going to happen, we are looking at a 3-9 record this year. Defense has been better this year without a doubt, but the offense can't possess the ball or score so the defense wears completely out, which further exposes our lack of talent on defense.

We have no choice but to wait to get better, and I do pretty well at it for the most part but it is wearing thin since we have in reality been waiting since 2005 to start trending upwards instead of watching it whither down to where it is now. 06 and 07 were a reprieve but it was just the last gasp of dying program. So while it seems Butch is doing everything he can at the time, the past years are the demon he is really fighting, not what is going on this year.

[Stogie Vol]

Can you imagine if we had the positives Butch mentioned combined with depth of SEC talent? We are headed in the right direction. I believe we have made monumental strides in playing disciplined football.  We have got to come to grips with the reality of our depth, though.

[Screaming Eagle Dad]

Can anybody blame him for sounding a little irritated? Good grief, there are more than a fiar share of Tennessee fans that expect miracles from the very start. These are the fanes that have no idea how to suffer through tough times in order to get to good times. Fair weather fans is what they are.
Like I said in an earlier post, Butch knows what he's doing. GO VOLS!!! GO TEAM !!!

[Creek Walker]

I agree that Butch is sounding a little irritated, but I seriously doubt he is surprised by the criticism he has heard. It's a no-brainer that fans are going to critique his performance every week. Alabama fans critique Nick Saban, after all. How many times have Georgia fans been ready to run a coach out of town who has never had a losing season? That's just college football. It's what fans do.

The problem are the unreasonable fans who expected Butch to come in and turn shizzle into apple butter in a matter of months. When I hear someone saying that Butch should be fired, or that he should've never been hired in the first place, I just LOL. We're 3-2 right now, and that's exactly where everyone expected Tennessee to be at this point. The "win" over South Alabama was a major disappointment, but let's not lose sight of the fact that if the players didn't let their foot off the gas in the third quarter, the final would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 41-10 and everyone would be happy and talking about the chances of upsetting Georgia. Let's also not forget that Saban lost to Louisiana-Monroe in his first season . . . and that was with a pretty decent team that had beaten No. 16 Arkansas earlier in the season and would be ranked No. 1 the next season. Sometimes when new coaches are trying to teach players a new system and get them to buy in to new ideas, inexplicable things happen. If South Alabama was our Louisiana-Monroe, we'll be just fine.

But there's also nothing wrong with evaluating the product on the field and critiquing the coaching. Frankly, I've seen some things that make me nervous and makes me wonder about the quality of coaching, especially on the defensive side of the ball. If we aren't supposed to discuss those things, what would be the point of messageboards? (And how in the heck would Butch hear us and make the recommended changes?   )

[PirateVOL]

But there's also nothing wrong with evaluating the product on the field and critiquing the coaching. Frankly, I've seen some things that make me nervous and makes me wonder about the quality of coaching, especially on the defensive side of the ball. If we aren't supposed to discuss those things, what would be the point of messageboards? (And how in the heck would Butch hear us and make the recommended changes?   )

The defense against Oregon had some "unusual" formations and coverages.  I only covered one issue in the GR and another that I had, after I reviewed the tape.  I think I understand why he rotated the safeties the was he did but when you look at defense vs the O's formation it looked odd and IMO hurt us.  The interesting thing is he swapped safeties and did pretty much the same thing against UF, at least in the first half and was much, much more effective.

Saturday we ran more zone blitzes and at least twice that cost us, big.

One thing I like, say compared to the last few years, is pre-snap the actual coverages are more difficult to predict.  Conduct a simple exercise:  Whenever the O lines up 3 wide and observe our formation and predict who is covering whom.  If is much, much more variable this year.  Last year you could have made a LOT of $$ betting that the safety was covering the slot on any given play.

Overall I think the defesne is much improved and even given our youth far more disciplined.  Saturday we were much more aggresive with the defensive play calling and I'd like to see that continue.  I think the film study will help correct the issues we had in the 2nd half.

[BanditVol]

Good post...I think almost every one expected us to be 3-2 and we are, and that's the bottom line.  I'm not worried about the "style points", those only matter for the BCS, and it will be a while before we compete for that.  We have survived the first five games...let's see how it goes from here.