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If we overlooked Georgia State and BYU to focus on UF, what does our performance last Saturday say?

Were the plans good, but the team dispirited, or what? I dunno.

I'll go with my first thought I posted Saturday afternoon:  We fizzleing SUCK!

The talent level isn't much different. You could see it at times. Think about it this way: If the ball doesn't go through Jauan Jennings' hands in the end zone for an INT, if JG doesn't overthrow a wide-open DWA, if Florida is stopped about six inches shorter on the final play of the half (I actually thought his knee was down but it's hard to tell conclusively from the replay), Tennessee could've very easily been ahead at halftime. After that, who knows what happens.

I'll chalk up a lot of it to inexperience, and I'll allow that culture is part of it. But I think an undeniable part of it is that we're just not a very well coached football team right now. No one will convince me otherwise. I don't think Pruitt is the answer, and I think it's only a matter of time before we're playing the same stupid coaching-search game once again. Bottom line is we just got blown out, our rear ends absolutely whipped, by a Florida team that is not very good. The final win-loss results will prove that UF is overrated. It's about to get very, very ugly. I fully expect UGA to pick up its largest margin of victory in the history of this series next week.

I just don't understand how we can be this much worse than we were a year ago.  More expensive coaches...  coordinators/assistants we were all giddy about getting.  All of our offensive weapons returned, and two 5 stars to add to the OL.  It seems like some of the veterans have regressed that, though may not be the ultimate answer, the coaches hoped would bridge the gap and buy time for the youngsters to get up to speed.. JG and Warrior are who come to mind. 

Things are just too hard on offense and that starts with JG obviously.  Our D has no chance with an offense like this.

While not entirely JGs fault it is primarily his fault. I hate to see such a good young man fail like this. Sad.

I would say JG is part of the problem...a significant part. But it's not primarily his fault. Have you seen our defense play? There's plenty of blame to go around.

There is a vast area of the field known as the middle that the first time a Tennessee defender defends it, will be the first time this year
Part of it is our LBs are biting continuously on play action and not getting into their drops.  Part of it seems like the safeties are lining up in  Siberia.  Part of it seems to be scheme (see my game report Saturday)

Bottom line is that since the beginning of the 2nd half against GaSt that has been exploited by 3 of the teams we have played (the other was just too bad to exploit it).
One would think that the two (2) defensive geniuses on staff would figure out a way to counter that ...

As for JG, need to go back and spoon feed him the plays, take most of his decision making at the LOS away and make it as simple as possible

Though Pirate's original succinct summation is accurate, Vinnie states my thoughrs well. After being in the program two years, why have upperclassmen regressed?

I'm encouraged young guys seem to be playing relatively well, but the dearth of junior and senior contribution is odd. Perhaps new coordinators brought unique terminology that has hindered communication.

And as for the defense, it would seem to me that the lack of any kind of pass rush has forced us to play more zone that Pruitt would like to do... and maybe something we didn't practice as much in fall camp? 

What it has done a lot is force a lot of corner blitzes, which leaves the slow safeties exposed as well as the youthful corners

A lot of moving parts but till we get a couple of elite pass rushing ends or OLBs we are screwed in this defense

There must still be some internal trouble/infighting amongst the team... about all I can figure.

I like to think our problems are fixable. Doug Mathews said man teams don't play zone well, and vice versa.

It seems FS and QB are the root of many ills.

I don't think there was any overlooking for Florida.  I don't think there was an overlooking vs BYU at all.   I do think Georgia State was criminally overlooked, though a better word might be underestimated, or taken for granted.  And for that there is no excuse, and no forgiveness.  Pruitt's leash is now considerably shorter as a result.

I am on record as saying Pruitt gets a mulligan for Georgia State.  That doesn't mean I excuse or accept the loss, it does mean I personally choose to overlook it as an error an early second year coach might make, and provided he learns from it, can ultimately be written off as part of the learning process and returning our team to winning.  It's a hard one to swallow for sure, but my view in this case is the half full one.

Very good posts here and agree. I have seen nothing in 1 year and 4 games that makes me believe Pruitt is qualified to be a head coach right now. Where our program was and what Butch had done to it...no way...no how did we need a Pruitt type hire who's learning on the job to be a HC. Pruitt might be a good HC down the road but will be shocked if that happens here. We aren't a well coached team right now and haven't been for most of the 16 games he's been the HC. You can take a bad talented team and have that team look well coached...How many times over many years has teams come into Neyland undermanned to the hilt but said afterwards that was a well coached team?!! I've seen and said it many times....No way and no how should we be 1-3 right now and not sure that Dooley or Butch wouldn't have us 3-1 or at least 2-2 right now.

The defense concerns me as much as the offense....When you don't have at least a average SEC QB you are in trouble. Gitmo would have to improve a lot to get to average. But the defense is just a mystery. We have DB's and safeties that aren't within 10-15 yards of the WR's when they catch a ball time after time and game after game? As Pirate said we have linebackers biting on play fakes on 3rd and 12-15 yards leaving the middle more open than you'll ever see. It just blows my mind that the mistakes we make and continue to make are high school level mistakes. No way we should lose to Ga State....one stop to beat BYU and no way should we have been throttled by 31 to FL. It's mind numbing.

We are in a bad place right now and I don't see a way out of it at the moment and I don't think Pruitt has a answer because he's never been in this spot...He's been places where a 4-5 star isn't getting the job done you just plug in another 4-5 star...Prutt has never built a program and is failing so far at attempting to build one. Our only hope is the staff can hold on to some recruits and recruit better than the bottom half of the SEC because that's not going to cut it short or long range.

No way, no how. We got left in the dust. Pitiful. A comedy of errors. There is no quick fix. We need a hot shot alum coach to come along. We don't even have that.

I will just say that part of Fulmers charge at the time was to get that mess wrapped up quickly. I honestly don't know what all happened with the Currie debacle, and doubt many do. It's just a shame. I lived in KY for many years, and they always claimed their boosters would step in and pay whatever for buyouts, etc. I find that hard to believe. They got lucky in that Tubby jumped ship. No buyout. And I doubt they paid much of anything when Gillespie left. Calipari was available. They got lucky. The time to strike was when Kiffin left. Sad state of affairs.

Probably similar with Bama. Stallings retired. Fifthchoicionne split, or got fired with cause. Dubose probably didn't make a whole bunch, nor Shula.... but our administrative ineptitude is quite obvious. Many an executive has crashed their company. No different.

Fifthchoicioni split, no buyout.  Price was fired for cause, no buyout.  Big buyout with DuBose, but was over when saban was hired.  Huge buyout for Shula, but a big group of boosters got together to both buyout Shula and hire saban for the then-unheard of sum of, I think around $4 million.  They called it the "war chest", an alum told me about it at the time, and then stated that there was even money left over after buying out Shula and paying for saban, some of which went into improving facilities.  No word on where the balance went, but I think I know.   :naughty:

5 championships in 10 years.  Seems the money was well spent, no matter how the Gumps spent the balance. Look at all the money we have wasted. Life is just not fair. You'd think we would accidentally have one of these last 4 coaches be successful.

Well Kiffin was a bad choice, period, but had he stayed, who knows.  Maybe we would have had some measure of success but ended up on probation.  Dooley was a criminally bad hire.  Had a losing record at La Tech, and the season we hired him was 4-8! 4-8!!! Why in the HELL did Hamilton hire him?  Butch Jones did corect some of the damage Doolley did, but unfortunatley he underachieved, did not permanently fix the damage, and was definitely not the long term solution.  Pruitt so far is looking worse than Jones. I am not ready to say worse than Dooley yet, because that would be epically bad, but am worried that he might be.

Bottom line, we made 2 awful hires (Kiffin and Dooley), one sub-optimal one (Jones), and one that so far is not looking good at all. But there is time to salvage Pruitt.  Odds may be against it, but there is time.

Dooley was a pretty dang good coach....couldn't recruit worth a crap but was a decent coach. He was odd bird.

Wonder if he ever found Rommel  :confused: :dunno: :loco:

I agree to some degree with Phil. Dooley's first year was pretty solid, due largely to a quality staff.

The year we went 6-6?  What are y'all smoking?  Did you forget how he blew the game at LSU?  LSU was ranked 12th, down in red stick, we had them on the ropes down to one play, he decided to replace the entire DL on a goal line stand, LSU fumbled the snap and time ran out.  Except...we got flagged for too many players.  And to make it worse, there were THIRTEEN!  Then there was bammer.  Trailing by seven early in the second half, five minutes into it to be exact, we got a bad spot at our own thirty-two on third and one.  Dooley got mad, decided to go for it, got stuffed, bammer threw a TD on the next play and we ended up getting stomped 41-10.  And how could anyone forget the epic choke job in the Music City Bowl against UNC? 

I don't see anything good about any of that.  However, if you are saying we may have showed flashes at times, for instance, nearly beating LSU and hanging with bammer for half the game, etc., well there is a simple explanation for that.  Dooley still had a lot of leftover Fulmer/Kiffin players who had both talent and coaching.  By his last year, that was all gone.

Still and yet, our offense did do very well in his third year.  Had he hired someone other than Sunseri, maybe we go 8-4.  But had we done so, the SOB would have survived, so I guess it's for the best.  But to get to my point, he did pretty well with the offense.  I'd say it was mostly Chaney, but he seems to be doing okay at Mizzou, so maybe he's a good OC/bad HC.

If Justin Wilcox hadn't left, Derek Dooley would still be the head coach at Tennessee. The more time passes, the clearer hindsight becomes: Dooley wasn't as bad as we all thought he was. IMO, he was a better coach than Butch hands down. Not even close. He just wasn't a very good recruiter.

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You...can't....be serious.  Butch Jones was not the long term answer, but he did beat Uga and Florida in the same year, won three consecutive bowl games, two 9 win seasons, and had a nice 11-game win streak from 2016 to 2017.  Dooley never even sniffed and of that.  Had three consecutive losing seasons, and when he got here in 2010 the talent was better than it has been since, though Butch's 2016 and 2017 team may have come close, but only because there was attrition in both 2009 and 2010.

Did you forget the Kentucky loss, breaking a 27 year win streak, with them playing their third string QB.  I'm not sure Butch lost that badly even in his last year. 

What about the fact that he was 4-8 the year he got hired at Tennessee?  Worst hire in the history of our program, hands down. 

Admit it, you're trolling me,right?   :laugh:  You have to be.  :dielaughing:

There's a reason Dooley is an OC -- and a damn good one -- while Butch is fetching Nick Saban's coffee.

If Dooley had been the coach with the 2016 roster, Tennessee is likely in the SEC Championship Game that year.

No way.  He might be a good OC, was a total failure as an HC.  You truly hate Butch and it's blinding you.  Dooley spent years in exile as a WR coach before making it on to the Mizzou staff, and he has been blessed with two very good QBs.  Let's see how he fares the rest of the year against better defenses, and more importantly, how well he does when Bryant is gone after this season, assuming he sticks around.  If he has any sense, he'll move on.

As for Butch, IMO he is only making token efforts to find a job and happy to sponge off of UT for a while longer, and no, I donl't like that any more than anyone else.  But I could see him landing a job at a mid-major for sure.  We will see.

Well and I will grant you that Dooley - or most anyone with a pulse - would have done a better job in November of 2016. That is when Butch lost it for sure.  But would Dooley have gotten to that point to begin with?  I doubt it.

Honestly, who cares? We’re comparing a Yugo to a Pontiac Aztec here. They both suck.

This has nothing to do with Butch. Was firing Dooley the right move? Yes. Attendance was dropping like a rock and apathy was skyrocketing -- the same two factors that will do Pruitt in. I'm just telling you that Dooley's single biggest mistake, besides not working hard enough on the recruiting trail, was allowing his old boss to talk him into hiring Sal Sunseri. If it makes you feel any better, Dooley was a better coach than Pruitt, too (but, then, so was Butch).

Hm.  You gave up on Butch way early, I think second season.  You expressed strong doubts about Pruitt from Day 1, and really haven't changed that much from your initial position.  I think this is probably a reflection of how hard it is for Tennessee to hire a coach at the moment, and yes, IMO some of that, if not a lot, is on the fanbase (separate topic I know).  But the jury is not out on Pruitt yet, and my approach is always to reserve judgment until I have seen all the evidence.  Evidence is still being collected. I'm not going to make up my mind on Day 1 that a coach is bad. But that's just me.

I should probably be flattered that you're infatuated enough with me to know how I felt about Butch Jones five years ago.  :kiss2: Even I don't remember when I soured on Butch. But you know what? I was right. And I'll be right about Pruitt, too. I wasn't sold on him last year, but as I said many times, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But for 6 games over a 10-month period, we've seen one cluster-cluck after another. I've never seen a head coach at the P5 level look any more lost than Pruitt looks right now. Most of the Tennessee fans who are still enamored with Pruitt are on his bandwagon because he talks with a good ol' boy southern drawl, which makes them say things like, "Ya know what I like about Pruitt? He's a COACH." Do you know where they're coming from? He reminds them of their high school coach in Podunk, where student enrollment was about 550. And Pruitt might be a good catch at that level, where the kids are on the field because they want to be on the field and there are no outside distractions or transfer portals or deep-pocketed boosters looking over your shoulder. But at the major college level, where a coach is more of a corporate CEO than an Xs and Os teacher of the game, he's lost. This isn't going to end well. It just isn't. I hate it, because I don't want to go through another coaching search. I'll admit that the first couple of times, it was kinda exciting to read all the latest tweets and track the planes and speculate and all that, but now the prospect of a coaching search just makes me tired. That's inevitably what we're headed towards, though.

Blaming the fans (instead of inept administrative decisions) for Tennessee's troubles finding a coach is a tired, worn-out and unoriginal line of reasoning.  I don't think Mike Gundy looked at UT two years ago and said, "You know what? That Creek Walker guy on VolsToTheWall is just gonna put me down so I ain't going to Tennessee." But if it makes you feel better to trot that out, have at it.But if it makes you feel better to go there, have at it bro!  :naughty:

2015 is when I knew Botch could coach and he was all hat and no cattle and when he ran out of Botchisms he was clueless. I caught hell for it when in 2015 I posted he was clueless on other boards and his days were numbered...Those same posters that blasted me have called Botch everything but a white man since he was fired. :dielaughing:

Not there quite yet with Pruitt until next season.....But what I've seen through 16 games I'm very close to where I was with Botch in 2015.

Werd

A lot of Vol fans were out on Pruitt since day one, because he wasn't who they wanted... And as soon as we lost to Ga State here came the "TOLD YA"s.

It'll be the same way whoever we hire next.   :dunno:

Preach the gospel brother Vinnie, PREACH!!

Sounds like you may be referring to me?

I WAS out from day one, and I've been very upfront about that from the beginning. I said the day he was hired that I would give him a chance to win me over, but that I fully expected that he wouldn't.

From the moment it became evident that Butch was finished, we all started eyeing potential replacements. We all had our favorites, but a near unanimous requirement for all of us was that he had to have a track record of success as a Power Five head coach. And I knew that if they hired someone who didn't meet that qualification, I was going to be skeptical of them until they gave me reason not to. Why have so many forgotten this? If someone had told us in midseason 2017 that Jeremy Pruitt was our next HC, 99% of us would've been irate. But after Shiano Sunday, and I guess because of who was making the hire, everyone tried to put on a happy face. Well, not me. Sorry.

I try no to get into "I told you so" on here. I've looked through the archives before and seen past instances where I was exactly right and others where I was embarrassingly wrong. So I try not to rub anyone's nose in anything, because next time it may be me on the wrong end of things. But I'm not going to hide my disappointment in the way things have turned out, either. That's not a case of "I told you so", but just an honest assessment of our current situation.

Well...you are correct about the inept administration, but particularly Hamilton.  A lot of people hated Hart also, but he was at least a big step up from Hamilton and did okay.

What i mean about the fans is this.  There were a lot of, IMO, perhaps well meaning but also IMO folks that wanted Fulmer gone.  Not trying to rehash the Fulmer thing, but I am saying that a more discerning fan (ie me), while acknowleding that Fulmer had slid a bit, still didn't think an immediate coaching change was the solution.  For proof, I point to FSU, who tolerated  BB long after his peak and turned out much better, even winning an NC with Fisher.  IMO that was the way to go...ease Fulmer out the door while planning for a better future, and in the meantime hope he could get some of the fire back.

Instead what Hamilton did was cave to the fan pressure and completely botch the firing, and then made a really bad hire.  And yeah, I know, people like to say had Kiffin stayed it wudda been different, but there is a youtube of the ESPN talking heads reacting to the hire, and of the four on the panel, all made more or less right except Corso, who said he couldn't see any way in hell the hiring of Kiffin would end well (or words to that effect), and whatever he said, which I'm too lazy to look up right now, was spot on.

I've said this in the past.  Hamilton was a p*ssy. He can Fulmer a raise and a (mostly undeserved) long contract extension in March 2008 then turned around and fired him in November 2008. Spineless.  He was your guy in March, go down with the ship.  Say if Fulmer goes, you go with him. Nope. He was a complete p^ss, blowing with each change in the wind.  But I think the fans set the stage, he just was weak enough to act on it.

And here's another thing I mean by fans....I used to check the comments section of the KNS during that timeframe, when all the pressure was on to fire Fulmer.  A lot of "vols" on that site had IP addresses in Birmingham and other parts of bammer. And they were of course overwhelmingly negative.  We got trolled, big time. I often wonder what percentage of negativity on line towards Fulmer was actual bammers, I suspect it was quite a bit.  Makes me sick to think about it.  They hated Fulmer with a passion, he had their number big time, and the great majority of them gloated when he was let go.  They totally trolled us, and unfortunately a large segment of our fanbase helped them do it.  That's how I see it anyway.

Well you and Creek were the main ones... Of course I mean no disrespect, you know that.  We all see things from diff angles, that's what make message boards fun..  But speaking for me, after the absolute horror that was the GA State loss the last thing I wanted to see was the told ya's.  It's like when my wife tries to tell me where to turn on the highway and I ignore her because I think I know better.  Then she turns out to be right.  The last thing I want to hear from her is "TOLD ya!" and even though we didn't get where we wanted to go at the time we expected, she still must let the record show she was right.  And she was, it's true... But I don't enjoy hearing about that AND missing the turn.   :bowrofl:

Pruitt wasn't my first pick either...  But after the circus we endured, at the time it felt like we landed in a decent situation, all things considered.  What other proven power 5 coaches did we feel we could get by that point?  Leach?  I still have my doubts he could win his fair share of the shady SEC recruiting battles.  We'd get a kick out of his quirks for awhile until he didn't win and we'd all be annoyed by it.

Hang on now. I feel you on the gloating and rubbing it in. I told my dad all week that Tennessee would keep it close against Florida, maybe get beat by a TD or so. He kept saying he wasn't coming to our watch party because it would be a blowout. Saturday evening I stopped by his house and the first thing he said was, "Well, what did I tell —" and I cut him off and said, "One more word and I'm going home."  :laugh:

I don't think you'll see anywhere on here where I've been saying "I told you so," except on this thread where I told Bandit that I was right and that's just because it's Bandit and he loves to argue. Sorta like BDV, I've been skeptical about Pruitt since Day 1. I kept my mouth shut last year because he was a first-year head coach and he deserved time to turn it around. Most fans were still on his bandwagon. Really, I would've said (actually did say in the offseason) that he deserves a pass on year 2 as well. But this thing has spiraled out of control quicker than anyone ever imagined. If we aren't allowed to voice our disappointment here, just say so. I'll slink off and be quiet and no one will ever hear from me again.

And, for the record, my skepticism on Pruitt had nothing to do with my choice not getting the job. I didn't have a choice to start with, and I sure didn't have a choice by the time Pruitt was hired. We were way past the point of no return by then. And implying that the same thing will happen with the next hire is nonsense. I was all in on Dooley and I was all in on Butch, and neither of them were the coach of preference for any of us.

Everyone can voice their disappointment any way they wish!  We all just have different ways of doing so.  Love your posts, man...and BDV too.   :hi5: