Which coach walked into the worst situation

Which coach walked into the worst situation?

  • Majors

  • Kiffin

  • Dooley

  • Jones

  • Pruitt

  • Heupel

Results are only viewable after voting.
#101
#101
Jax_Vol said:
Been a long time, so my memories are admittedly fuzzy. However, I do know that Condredge did not play for Johnny.

Thinking that a very young Streater might have been forced into action during Major's first year. Unsure if the original starter was injured or what...? Or, we just had to go young.

Interesting era in that Pat Ryan was a quarterback on some of those teams. He went on to last over a decade in NFL. However, he was a pro-style arm with no legs. That skill set didn't translate to the college game in that era.

Willis has a better memory than me and can correct as need be.
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You're correct. 77 QBs were Hough, Ryan, Rudder, Streater and Jones. Injuries moved Hough to defense, Ryan and Streater split time until Streater finally won the job.

I became a fan with Dickey, he called a very different game. Battle basically called the same sort of game to which he recruited for. Johnny was a three yards and a cloud of dust type of coach, at the time none of those QBs fit his scheme. He became more flexible as the season worn on.

Ryan did become a better QB but boy in 77 he made some major miscues that cost us. Should have beaten Cal, Florida and the Barn that year. I particularly remember the Barn game. Went into the 4th with the ball on their 1 and fumbled on a bad C/QB snap exchange. Messed that chance, got the ball back only for Gaylor to miss a 34 yard FG attempt. Florida game tied 17 all after Finch's 99 yard scoring had another chance to take the lead but Gaylor once again missed a 34 yarder
 
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#102
#102
WillisWG said:
You're correct. 77 QBs were Hough, Ryan, Rudder, Streater and Jones. Injuries moved Hough to defense, Ryan and Streater split time until Streater finally won the job.

I became a fan with Dickey, he called a very different game. Battle basically called the same sort of game to which he recruited for. Johnny was a three yards and a cloud of dust type of coach, at the time none of those QBs fit his scheme. He became more flexible as the season worn on.

Ryan did become a better QB but boy in 77 he made some major miscues that cost us. Should have beaten Cal, Florida and the Barn that year. I particularly remember the Barn game. Went into the 4th with the ball on their 1 and fumbled on a bad C/QB snap exchange. Messed that chance, got the ball back only for Gaylor to miss a 34 yard FG attempt. Florida game tied 17 all after Finch's 99 yard scoring had another chance to take the lead but Gaylor once again missed a 34 yarder
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Willis - who were the QB’s in 76?
 
#103
#103
WoodsmanVol said:
Kiffin, but he was better at dealing with it. Fulmer left the cupboard almost bare, headed by a QB whose confidence was even below sewer level. If Kiffin hadn't forked up and stayed, I believe we would have stormed back. He did a lot of things wrong in his rush to succeed, the bolted for USC. I detest what he did, but the fact is, he was/is one heil of a coach.
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Kiffin had to deal with an OL problem with the sullins starting, but he also had a top notch defense to work with, Montario hardesty and a good bit of talent at WR.. heupel had less imo.
 
#104
#104
OldandStillaVol said:
Willis - who were the QB’s in 76?
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Randy Wallace started, Gary Roach who was backup in 1975, injured his knee during spring. Pat Ryan, he had missed 75 with a shoulder injury. Joe Hough up from the JV ranks.

Hough & Ryan were on the 77 roster. Ryan was projected starter but he had
missed most of the spring. Streater, David Rudder and Wilbert Jones rounded out the 77 room.
 
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#109
#109
Yes when Heupel took the job it was a bad situation..but I went with Dooley, dude had zero chance at succeeding here...hired late..wasn't in no way shape or form ready for a job like what he walked into here...for some reason didn't recruit o lineman which in turn royally screwed us and Butch for that matter but that's a whole different story, with how everything went my opinion at the time was give Kippy Brown the interm head coach label, see how the season went and if need be you have a bigger pool of candidates that may be willing to take the job at this timing..but just my 2 cents
 
#111
#111
Heupel, and it’s honestly not close.

Kiffin, he had talent, Phil lost his edge but still had decent enough talent for the next guy. Kiffin was and is a lot of things but a bad football coach is not one of them, especially with a solid talent base.

Dooley squandered talent but also made bad coaching decisions and hires. You put up 35 points a game damn near it, you should win a lot more than you lose. Sal Sunseri was awful.

Bujo had a decent enough situation and progressed until he didn’t. Signed decent to good recruiting classes. But could not develop them. The last season lead to the worst coach we’ve had.

Pruitt could have been handed the keys to a Ferrari and he would have sucked hind tit. He cheated to get good talent here and sucked. Made a bad situation even worse for Heupel.

Heupel may not win a ton of natties he may not win one. But he walked into a pile an absolute pile of crap and came out smelling like a rose. He gets my vote.
 
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#112
#112
Volfan76 said:
I'm not going waste my time reading that, but feel free to keep on arguing. I'll throw you a disagreement every once in a while if it helps you keep the passion.
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That’s what I thought from you. Someone brings actual facts to a debate and you cower away. Typical.
 
#113
#113
Majors had the toughest rebuilding job to do in Tennessee football history with Heupel coming in a close second on this list.
 
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#114
#114
BigOrangeTrain said:
let’s look at it then shall we? You talk about it took Majors 7 years to get to 9 wins? Maybe that was more on him? You probably don’t want to think that huh? Since you want to act like Majors walked into a program in complete free fall let’s look at the two previous coaches and 13 years worth.

Doug Dickey- (64-69)- 46-15, won 9 games in year 4 finished with a .738 winning %.

Bill Battle- (70-76)- 59-22, finished with a .723 winnijg %.

While Battle did get worse in his tenure, his last year he went 6-5, a winning record. Bowls? So many have said bowls don’t matter so why mention them? If you actually looked at Battles last year, the 5 losses were extremely close. He didn’t suffer any real embarrassing blow outs. So what did Majors walk into really? Well he walked into a program that went 105-37 over the previous 13 seasons.

Now let’s look at the 13 years previous to Heupel. That’s 2008-2020.

Fulmer- (2008), 5-7, 41% winning %

Lame- (2009), 7-6, .538 winning %

Dooley- (2010-2012), 15-21, .417 winning %

Butch- (2013-2017), 34-27, .557 winning %

Pruitt- (2018-2020), 5-19, .208 winning %

I shouldn’t have to go on but you need educating so here we go. Now it’s widely accepted that the last 15 years or so have been the worst stretch in modern TN history. Data proves that and it’s not close. Now Pruitts record has been adjusted to reflect the absolute crap show he let Heupel. Heupel walked into a program that had a less than .500 winning % the previous 13 years.

So what does this tell us? Well Butch was the first coach to ever go winless in conference play. Then like I said let’s consider what Heupel had to deal with. The worst investigation into the football program in its history. Which led to scholarship reductions, negative recruiting and the overall national perception that we were cheaters and in the gutter. Then Pruitt lost over 30 players, had to play walk ons at positions they have never played and inherited a team that went 3-7 the year before.

Majors walked into a winning program and it took him 7 years to win 9. Even Butch won 9 games in less time. And please don’t try and act like Butch was a better coach. Seems like Majors just wasn’t that good early on. Because he took a winner and made it worse the first few years.

By all means, let’s see your expert analysis with actual data that says Majors walked into a much worse situation.
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Majors was good at ISU and Pitt. He was good here too. All three were major rebuilding jobs.
You keep repeating that he walked into a winning program. With the roster and facilities he inherited, nobody was going to immediately win consistently.
 
#115
#115
EasternVol said:
Majors was good at ISU and Pitt. He was good here too. All three were major rebuilding jobs.
You keep repeating that he walked into a winning program. With the roster and facilities he inherited, nobody was going to immediately win consistently.
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Irrelevant. The fact is he walked into a program that had seen much more success prior to his arrival. The data proves that. And stop using conjecture saying nobody was going to win immediately. You don’t know that.

Simple fact is the actual data clearly shows Heupel walked into the worst situation any TN head coach has ever walked into.
 
#116
#116
VolBricks said:
I voted for Heupel because of all of the players that left right before he was hired. I started to vote for Jones because Fooley left the cupboards bare when he was fired.
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This^^^^

I voted Heupel because he lost something like 40 players when he was hired and had the NCAA breathing down his neck. That being said, Jones walked into a terrible situation in his first year.
 
#117
#117
BigOrangeTrain said:
Irrelevant. The fact is he walked into a program that had seen much more success prior to his arrival. The data proves that. And stop using conjecture saying nobody was going to win immediately. You don’t know that.

Simple fact is the actual data clearly shows Heupel walked into the worst situation any TN head coach has ever walked into.
Click to expand...
Not at all irrelevant. Majors was a proven program builder and winner. He didn't suddenly get bad the first few years he was back.
If you think anyone could have won with the roster he inherited then go ahead and think it.
 
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#118
#118
EasternVol said:
Not at all irrelevant. Majors was a proven program builder and winner. He didn't suddenly get bad the first few years he was back.
If you think anyone could have won with the roster he inherited then go ahead and think it.
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Don't waste your time. Bot would argue with a fence post. Heupel himself could tell bot that Majors walked into a more difficult situation and he still wouldn't admit he was wrong. Maybe he will get a career soon or a gf and not have all this time to police vn for anything he disagrees with. In the mean time, just put him on ignore or antagonize him for fun....observe.
 
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#120
#120
A lot of recency bias. Dooley easily.

Despite Dooley not recruiting offensive linemen his last year, Butch had the benefit of ridiculously talented oline his first 2 seasons.
 
#121
#121
My opinion is that Jones should have been winning big time by 2015. We had the talent beginning that year. After how he called the Oklahoma, Florida and then the Arkansas games, I, for one, knew he was not a major college coach. The moral victory against Bama really did nothing. To me, it’s almost as if Jones didn’t want to reach that level that soon; almost as if he sabotaged the program himself to keep from advancing too early.

Saying that, for CJH to have record success in only his second year says something. It either says he was awesome at pulling players from the portal or his high octane offense was just that good or, just maybe, Pruitt did leave something behind after all of those transfers.

Still though, just the thought of how far down the program was in all facets when Jones took over from Dooley makes me think he had the toughest rebuilding job.
 
#123
#123
Majors. John told me that many on the roster were no where near SEC caliber players. He never named a single name but observing the situation left little doubt. Bill had let opposing coaches run roughshod over him in recruiting. He was and is a fine man but was a horrible recruiter. The team declined every year as Dicky’s players moved on. New recruiting limits had just been implemented when Majors took over as well, making it even harder to rebuild the roster.
 
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#124
#124
Tennessee has gone into the football head coaching market and swung big one time - when they hired John Terrell Majors in 1977. Majors had just taken Pitt from a winless season to a national championship in 4 years. Majors was the hottest coaching hire in the market at that time and he was coming back to his alma mater. Yes the Vols had a "winning" record preceding Majors. HOWEVER. If Bob Woodfuff had an ounce of brains and much less ego in 1969 he would have turned the keys to the Tennessee program over to Majors - the head coach at Iowa State - then and not elevated Billy Battle the 28 year old tight ends coach to head coach. Woodruff deserves credit for hiring Dickey who was a virtual unknown and was superb at Tennessee. He tried to duplicate that feat by hiring a lesser known kid who was not remotely ready for that job after Doug Dickey lost to Florida in a bowl game and following the game leaves Tennessee for Florida. Battle was a lazy indifferent recruiter and left a world class mess for Majors to clean up. Some of you guys are missing a key point. Look at what happens to a program after a coach leaves and not always at what preceded that coach. Majors left Iowa State, Pitt and UT loaded and competing at a historically high level. Battle destroyed the Tennessee powerhouse and none of that was necessary if the idiot AD had hired Majors to follow Dickey. Josh Heupel and Majors both walked into a mess - however the Jeremy Pruitt talent level was considerably higher for Josh than the dreadful bottom of the SEC roster Majors inherited.

This is a fun discussion but the old timers have to explain stuff that happened in your ancestors' lifetimes that looks odd today like why Battle was fired without having a losing season. Well the losing seasons were on the way - and Battle never coached another game after leaving Tennessee at age 34. Yep not another day. You can badmouth Kiffin, Jones and Dooley and Pruitt but they were professional football coaches and still are. The hiring of Bill Battle is one of the most illogical decisions in SEC football history especially when Johnny Majors would have crawled from Ames, Iowa to Knoxville to take the job.
 
#125
#125
Excluding the Majors addition (which has been awesome) and the Battle question in the other thread has anyone other than myself notice how Jones is revered less than the other coaches? Pruitt has been gone four years now but, after Dooley was gone for four years, he was hardly mentioned much less posted about. But, dog gone, Jones has been gone for what; six years, now and, he gets more hate than Pruitt (it seems) and Pruitt destroyed the program! LOL
 
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