Last Year's Talent

[BeattieFeathers]

Name those 7 wins. Because IMO it was a 5 win roster, we simply switched Candy and USCjr.

He's delusional, he wants his wins and he want them now!:dance2:

 

[BeattieFeathers]

Last year was the most difficult schedule in school history. That's saying a lot. Now if we have only had a football program for the last 40 or 50 years then last years schedule would not be as relevant. When last season ended we easily played a much stronger schedule than Purdue.

I don't think so. We still had three unlovable games. There was a time when memphis and vandy were the worst two teams we played. Look at our schedules in the 70s and 80s.

 

[titansvolsfaninga]

Yeah, I guess if you never expected your new coach to do any better than the worst record of the worst coach in your program's history, then you got what you deserved. Congratulations.

That would be true if Worley would've played the entire season, and if we didn't have to play a true freshman. Those things matter, whether you want to admit it or not.

 

[sjt18]

Name those 7 wins. Because IMO it was a 5 win roster, we simply switched Candy and USCjr.

UF was a winnable game. With Worley, Mizzou was probably a winnable game but obviously they didn't have his back ups ready to play. I said LONG before the season that UT matched up well with USCe. That was really no surprise to anyone who really looked at both rosters. Vandy should have been a win.

Vandy alone gets you to 6 which would have been par considering the loss of Worley and the staff's inability to effectively replace him in week 8 or 9 of the season.

 

[BeattieFeathers]

UF was a winnable game. With Worley, Mizzou was probably a winnable game but obviously they didn't have his back ups ready to play. I said LONG before the season that UT matched up well with USCe. That was really no surprise to anyone who really looked at both rosters. Vandy should have been a win.

Vandy alone gets you to 6 which would have been par considering the loss of Worley and the staff's inability to effectively replace him in week 8 or 9 of the season.

So in your opinion, the bowls should win all winnable games? Got it!:hi:

 

[sjt18]

So the way I figure it, all of these alleged four star recruits were better than 2 star recruit Jordan Mathews? And our cline was better than vandys because of star ratings? Learning entirely different systems on both offense and defense, new strength guy had nothing to do with development or lack thereof? It's all about the infallible rivals ratings? Got it!lol:

Their OL and WR were as good as they were because they were very well coached.... by a guy who took over a program that had avg'd 4 wins per year in the previous 4 years. He took them bowling the first year with 6 wins and avg'd 8 wins over his 3 years there.

It did NOT take him years and years and years to overcome their "loser psyche" or any of that non-sense. He resolved that in year one. It didn't take a whole recruiting cycle to find and develop enough talent to win or to install his system. He did that by year 2. It didn't take him years to start competing and winning against teams with equal or less talent. He did that in year 1 too. It didn't even take his teams' fans (both of them) years of patience to see him competing with and beating teams with superior talent. They saw that when VU beat UGA and UF for the first time in over 100 years of football. For good measure, he beat UT twice during that stretch too.

You might be willing to accept a lower coaching performance from UT's HC than Vandy got from Franklin. I'm not.

 

[sjt18]

So in your opinion, the bowls should win all winnable games? Got it!:hi:

Who are the "bowls"?

 

[sjt18]

Elite coaches should almost NEVER lose to teams with less talent. UT faces six such opponents this fall and according to Daj as many as 8. Elite coaches should win most of the matchups against teams with roughly equal talent. Elite coaches should routinely compete with and even beat teams with more talent.

Elite coaches make teams better than the sum of their talent.

Now am I confused about whether you expect an elite coach or excellence from the HC? No. You have well established that you are fine with mediocrity now and into the future. That makes all of our other arguments pretty much moot. I expect greatness. You are fine with far less.

 

[checkerboards09]

Their OL and WR were as good as they were because they were very well coached.... by a guy who took over a program that had avg'd 4 wins per year in the previous 4 years. He took them bowling the first year with 6 wins and avg'd 8 wins over his 3 years there.

It did NOT take him years and years and years to overcome their "loser psyche" or any of that non-sense. He resolved that in year one. It didn't take a whole recruiting cycle to find and develop enough talent to win or to install his system. He did that by year 2. It didn't take him years to start competing and winning against teams with equal or less talent. He did that in year 1 too. It didn't even take his teams' fans (both of them) years of patience to see him competing with and beating teams with superior talent. They saw that when VU beat UGA and UF for the first time in over 100 years of football. For good measure, he beat UT twice during that stretch too.

You might be willing to accept a lower coaching performance from UT's HC than Vandy got from Franklin. I'm not.

Well said. Coaching turnover is not as bad as most make it out to be. People preach stability and stability doesn't have a thing to do with having the right coach. "Dooley needed five years", "Our fans are impatient". With the talent this university brings in every year, there are no excuses to be hovering just under or around 6-6 year in and year out. The right coach will get us out of this mess quickly.

 

[LWSVOL]

Elite coaches should almost NEVER lose to teams with less talent. UT faces six such opponents this fall and according to Daj as many as 8. Elite coaches should win most of the matchups against teams with roughly equal talent. Elite coaches should routinely compete with and even beat teams with more talent.

Elite coaches make teams better than the sum of their talent.

Now am I confused about whether you expect an elite coach or excellence from the HC? No. You have well established that you are fine with mediocrity now and into the future. That makes all of our other arguments pretty much moot. I expect greatness. You are fine with far less.

I like Coach Jones and believe he has a chance to be very good coach in the future. I like a lot of the things he has tried to do in trying to rebuild this program. In no way am I under the impression the program I close to being rebuilt. Just removing the losing mentality takes time and generally that would be rotating players from the previous regime out of the program. Which BTW, he is doing. But still that one process takes time.

Having said that, in no way do I believe CBJ is a great or elite coach. That will be determined over time and he has not come close to doing the things necessary to be placed in that category. He has a long, long way to go to prove he belongs there.

 

[sjt18]

That would be true if Worley would've played the entire season, and if we didn't have to play a true freshman. Those things matter, whether you want to admit it or not.

Stewart then Manning took over as Fr after Colquitt and Helton went down to injury. Clausen started as a Fr. Ainge and Schaeffer were co-starters in 2004 as Fr. Bray took over from an ineffective Simms as a Fr. All of those teams won games with those Fr at QB.

Dobbs wasn't ready. Part of that is understandable since the WR's weren't mature or playing particularly well either. But unless you are saying these guys had no talent... it all falls under coaching.

 

[oregonvol]

Let's get this right:

1. If we were well coached we should have been able to pull off at a minimum 1 upset....

2. But if we are a well coached team we should never drop a game to a 9 win Vanderbilt team while playing our 3rd or 4th string qb...is that correct?

Sounds like a bit of a double standard to me.

Ummm...you may want to look up the term "double standard." I don't think it means what you think it means.

I don't really know what you are arguing here. Maybe you are assuming we were an underdog in the Vanderbilt game? I don't know. It is a fact that we were favored. It is a fact that both teams had injured starters. It is a fact that we had alot more 4 stars playing than they did. So yes, I believe it is perfectly reasonable to expect a well-coached team in that situation to win the game. Are you really trying to argue that a well-coached Tennessee team shouldn't be able to beat Vanderbilt?

 

[oregonvol]

Are you expecting me to link each players recruiting profile from each of the recruiting services? No thanks.

If you want to argue about a guy I left off, please let me know who that is. I specifically stated in the second post of this thread that if I missed someone to let me know.

So I have no clue what you an st18 are complaining about

I was expecting you to provide some factual basis for all the numbers you listed in the OP. Because it seems like you are just completely making them up.

I said that I got my numbers of 4 stars from rivals. You can check those pretty easily. You say that you got yours based on "consensus" but you don't provide any source for this "consensus". I want to know where it was documented that Josh Dobbs was a consensus 4 star recruit, but Raijon Neal (and many others you missed) weren't. It seems like, for you, "consensus" is just another word for "pretend".

*sigh*...this is why it's pretty much impossible to debate anything on this site. Everyone just states things as facts and whenever asked for a source, they just argue. Stop pretending facts are things you just get to make up.

 

[sjt18]

I like Coach Jones and believe he has a chance to be very good coach in the future. I like a lot of the things he has tried to do in trying to rebuild this program.

I agree.

In no way am I under the impression the program I close to being rebuilt.

Again, agree. It just doesn't take a completely rebuilt program to develop a habit of beating the teams you have a talent advantage over. Daj says there are 8 on UT's schedule this fall. Even accounting for the experience factor, there are six reasonably winnable games on the schedule this fall. I do not think it is asking too much of a coach to win 95% plus of the contests in which he has the better roster. Yes, injuries will occur... but they will happen to Vandy, Mizzou, USCe, and Ole Miss as well. None of those teams are in any better position to lose critical players than UT.

Just removing the losing mentality takes time and generally that would be rotating players from the previous regime out of the program. Which BTW, he is doing. But still that one process takes time.

No. It simply doesn't. It will likely happen within 2 years if you have the right guy. Just in the last few years Malzahn, Sumlin, Freeze, Kelly, USU's previous coach, and others have done it almost immediately. NONE of them needed to rotate players out.

Having said that, in no way do I believe CBJ is a great or elite coach. That will be determined over time and he has not come close to doing the things necessary to be placed in that category. He has a long, long way to go to prove he belongs there.

Again, I agree. But that isn't something you wait 5 years to evaluate. Like with any other improvement cycle in any type of activity, you look for him to achieve reasonable benchmarks along the way that point to the potential of becoming great. It is pure futility to "hope" you have a guy who will one day prove himself to be elite or great then accept that he only "meet" minimum expectations until some magical future moment.

By saying 5 wins is acceptable this fall, folks are saying that it is fine if he only beats teams he should beat while losing to one team that has less talent.

I am NOT saying he's hopeless or should be fired if he only gets 5 wins this fall. I AM saying that he needs to do something dramatically better in year 3 if he only wins 5 this fall or else there should be VERY serious doubts about whether he's the guy to resurrect the program.

If we are looking for a more smooth curve then 6-8 is what he needs this fall followed up by around 10 (possibly including a bowl) in '15. That expectation is a function both of expecting improvement and a somewhat lighter schedule.

 

[Burger]

A well-coached team should have been expected to pull at least one upset (which they did). A well coached team should have been able to beat Vanderbilt at home (which they did not do).

I don't get why people like you are so content to praise mediocrity. You should expect the team to overachieve. You should expect them, at the very least, to get better as the season moves on. If that never happens, then your team will never go from bad to good. You understand that, right?

Sometimes, I think the majority of people here aren't actually interested in becoming good again. I sometimes think that they just want to keep setting the bar as low as possible, so they can keep idolizing a coach at the expense of the program.

It takes a long time to make poorly coached players into well coached players. We're talking at least a year. Jones had to break every bad habit his players learned under Dooley. Our team last year was terribly coached for 2-3 years. You guys expect that to be undone in one year?

We may have had four star players, but they ended up three stars due to piss poor coaching before Jones arrives. Turn over is the best thing that can happen.

 

[sjt18]

It takes a long time to make poorly coached players into well coached players. We're talking at least a year. Jones had to break every bad habit his players learned under Dooley. Our team last year was terribly coached for 2-3 years. You guys expect that to be undone in one year?

No. It would not have had to be completely undone to win six games last fall. The players who will take the field this fall will have had two complete years of development under the current staff. The majority of them will have had more time under this staff than the last one.

If you are right then some of you should be very pleasantly surprised by this team's performance, no?

We may have had four star players, but they ended up three stars due to piss poor coaching before Jones arrives. Turn over is the best thing that can happen.

I can buy that on D. Wilcox was very good IMO but Sal was horrible.

But Chaney was not an incompetent.

 

[Burger]

No. It would not have had to be completely undone to win six games last fall. The players who will take the field this fall will have had two complete years of development under the current staff. The majority of them will have had more time under this staff than the last one.

If you are right then some of you should be very pleasantly surprised by this team's performance, no?


I can buy that on D. Wilcox was very good IMO but Sal was horrible.

But Chaney was not an incompetent.

Remember Chaneys first two years? They were terrible! If the OL knew how to run block, we would of beat Vandy.

 

[oregonvol]

It takes a long time to make poorly coached players into well coached players. We're talking at least a year. Jones had to break every bad habit his players learned under Dooley. Our team last year was terribly coached for 2-3 years. You guys expect that to be undone in one year?

We may have had four star players, but they ended up three stars due to piss poor coaching before Jones arrives. Turn over is the best thing that can happen.

Expecting it all to be undone in one year would have been expecting to finish first in the east. No one expected that. Expecting to beat Vanderbilt was not unreasonable and I will continue to dispute all the truly negative vol fans who feel that it was.

 

[Burger]

Expecting it all to be undone in one year would have been expecting to finish first in the east. No one expected that. Expecting to beat Vanderbilt was not unreasonable and I will continue to dispute all the truly negative vol fans who feel that it was.

We didn't execute. The coaches had the right calls, but our crap players did not execute when they needed to.
A coach can come up with the greatest gameplan in the world, but if his team doesn't execute, it will still stink.

 

[sjt18]

Remember Chaneys first two years? They were terrible! If the OL knew how to run block, we would of beat Vandy.

They weren't really terrible in 09. That year was somewhat comparable on the OL to last fall. I believe they had 2 guys drafted but also had to start the Sullins bros and a RS Fr at RT. Talent and experience dipped the next year. In his 3rd year, the OL was comprised pretty much of true sophs iirc... same guys who started as Srs last fall.

I do... and don't... blame the coaches for the run blocking issues last fall.

I do to the extent that if you have guys underperforming then you replace them with hungry players. I know to some this is heresy... but I would have loved to have seen either Bullard or Stone benched allowing Crowder to get some starting experience. He would have brought a mean streak that was just flat out missing from last year's OL. Big, athletic, "talented" guys who were just too nice.

I don't to the extent that Jones wanted to give those guys their best opportunity to play into the NFL while (maybe) molding their replacements into something more like what he wants from an OL. Dooley WAS trying to build a mini-Bama at UT with regard to schemes and styles so the OL didn't exactly match what Jones wants to do.

 

[sjt18]

We didn't execute. The coaches had the right calls, but our crap players did not execute when they needed to.
A coach can come up with the greatest gameplan in the world, but if his team doesn't execute, it will still stink.

So it is perfectly fine as a "Vol fan" to blame the players and even call them "crap"... but any criticism of the coaches is being negative or unreasonable?

 

[oregonvol]

We didn't execute. The coaches had the right calls, but our crap players did not execute when they needed to.
A coach can come up with the greatest gameplan in the world, but if his team doesn't execute, it will still stink.

Yeah, I've been reading that excuse for the past 14 years. Coaches have to coach players so that they can execute the plays. That's part of the job. Sorry. They had plenty of time to get their players ready to play in that game. They got paid handsomely. They deserve to share the blame.

I also love how the "real vol fans" on this board feel so free to call the players "crap", but if you even note a single failure of their beloved, idolized head coach, they have a hissy fit and attempt to bend all reality to find an excuse.

 

[Burger]

Yeah, I've been reading that excuse for the past 14 years. Coaches have to coach players so that they can execute the plays. That's part of the job. Sorry. They had plenty of time to get their players ready to play in that game. They got paid handsomely. They deserve to share the blame.

I also love how the "real vol fans" on this board feel so free to call the players "crap", but if you even note a single failure of their beloved, idolized head coach, they have a hissy fit and attempt to bend all reality to find an excuse.

You can't expect a guy to turn chicken poop into chicken salad. If you can't push up field on fourth and one, you suck! Jones could of done all the coaching in the world, but our team sucked last year. If you handed saban a bunch of guys who can't execute, he'd go 5-7 also.

I don't judge the guy until the end of year two. Jones is fair game after this year. You have to let a guy do his job for awhile.

 

[Burger]

They weren't really terrible in 09. That year was somewhat comparable on the OL to last fall. I believe they had 2 guys drafted but also had to start the Sullins bros and a RS Fr at RT. Talent and experience dipped the next year. In his 3rd year, the OL was comprised pretty much of true sophs iirc... same guys who started as Srs last fall.

I do... and don't... blame the coaches for the run blocking issues last fall.

I do to the extent that if you have guys underperforming then you replace them with hungry players. I know to some this is heresy... but I would have loved to have seen either Bullard or Stone benched allowing Crowder to get some starting experience. He would have brought a mean streak that was just flat out missing from last year's OL. Big, athletic, "talented" guys who were just too nice.

I don't to the extent that Jones wanted to give those guys their best opportunity to play into the NFL while (maybe) molding their replacements into something more like what he wants from an OL. Dooley WAS trying to build a mini-Bama at UT with regard to schemes and styles so the OL didn't exactly match what Jones wants to do.

There was a reason Kiffin didn't let Chaney call plays. Chaney was Creggs assistant for a reason also. Bullard was benched for Crowder through out the year...

 

[Burger]

So it is perfectly fine as a "Vol fan" to blame the players and even call them "crap"... but any criticism of the coaches is being negative or unreasonable?

I will support whoever wears the power T. Most of them are probably great people, but to think these guys were actually good football players were delusional. We played like diddly poo last year. Coach Jones can't play the game for them. I already know Butch is a great coach.
I said last year's squad was a five win team. Jones hit my baseline expectation.