Stephen Gray
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However it works out, cfp or sugar/cotton bowl, this season has been amazing. Actually, last season too. Heck, we could lose to South Carolina (which I don’t see happening unless we really underperform and have a bunch of breaks go against us) and that would still be true. 11-1 most likely with a good chance for playing for the NC and a good bowl regardless, or even 10-2 and a good bowl were beyond any real expectation I had this year.
I saw 10-2 as possible but probably our ceiling with 9-3 being great progress, 8-4 most likely and good progress, and 7-5 as acceptable but a little worrying about if we were really on the right track this time. Well, I’m glad we didn’t have to struggle with those questions.
Let me rephrase that: I thought we could do better than 10-2 but 10-2 to 7-5 would cover almost all season outcomes, so not an absolute ceiling, but reasonably likely results.
It’s not even just the total wins and losses, but also how we have played even in the games we lost last year, and the one this year, and how we bounced back after those losses. It seemed like under prior coaches every time we had some momentum and something went wrong it was hard to put it behind us. Eventually teams wrote their coaches off.
Even if a team isn’t winning games, they should be doing things consistently better each week. If that’s not won games yet, it should at least be better technique, better identification of what the opponent is doing, or better clock management, or any number of things you know need to be better. Identifying those things, prioritizing them, and then effectively making improvements is the staff’s job, and if it is being done, things should be measurably improving.
Maybe they are little improvements that don’t add up to wins yet, but improvements nonetheless. You can’t be perfect but you can improve. Eventually that should translate to wins. Games will still be lost, mistakes still made, but you get good results more often when you control the things you can consistently.
I put that mostly on coaching. Part of it being just motivating people and getting them to buy in long term, not just with good sales pitches, but with actually teaching them to be better individually and cohesively, and then having the results of that show up in time to be be positive reinforcement.
When setbacks inevitably occur, the coaches should be able to get the players focused on the right things in a timely manner. Same thing when we had positive results: important to recognize and celebrate, but also important to get back to work and be real about what to work on.
Part of it was also owning up to mistakes in scheme and game planning and just being honest about where mistakes occurred. If that’s players and technique that’s fine, but if it’s coaches, those things have to be acknowledged and worked on too. I fully believe that to get better at anything you have to be real about what was done well and what wasn’t. For coaches that includes every coaching decision in a game, in the period leading up to it, and more.
Another part of it is identifying mistakes that were the result of bad technique or decision making making and fixing them. That happened at times for some players and some position groups but never as a whole were things moving in the right direction. When we had great offense, we had bad defense, or vice versa. When some position groups were getting better others were not.
Sometimes things like injuries absolutely played a factor and some things are not controllable, but many things are. Your first string is going to get the bulk of the reps but the backups need attention too. Even if they aren’t getting as much practice they should still be invested in what’s going on. There is plenty they can and should learn.
The players have to want it for themselves, but coaches play a big role here too, as do their teammates. Creating that atmosphere of expectations from one another starts at the top. I have really been impressed with this staff with how our backups have been able to come in and do their jobs competently, and actually get better at them noticeably game to game.
You maybe can’t coach people to be substantially faster or change their bodies radically during the season, and individuals have different genetics and such, but some things can be improved at the technique level that were not at times. I’d argue we had some very talented athletes many of those years who were done a disservice by not being developed effectively.
I will always support the guys who suit up in orange, but if coaches aren’t getting it done I no longer believe in giving them more than a few years. I do believe that like anything else, coaching is something that people can get better at, but the University of Tennessee is not where they should be spending years figuring it out while being paid millions.
Even if next year is a slight drop off I’m sold that we finally have a staff that can scheme and teach with the best of them. I have to think recruits will see that too. Players want to become the best versions of themselves. That should as a whole translate to good seasons more often than not. Nothing is certain in life, but I feel better about the state of the program than in a long time.
I saw 10-2 as possible but probably our ceiling with 9-3 being great progress, 8-4 most likely and good progress, and 7-5 as acceptable but a little worrying about if we were really on the right track this time. Well, I’m glad we didn’t have to struggle with those questions.
Let me rephrase that: I thought we could do better than 10-2 but 10-2 to 7-5 would cover almost all season outcomes, so not an absolute ceiling, but reasonably likely results.
It’s not even just the total wins and losses, but also how we have played even in the games we lost last year, and the one this year, and how we bounced back after those losses. It seemed like under prior coaches every time we had some momentum and something went wrong it was hard to put it behind us. Eventually teams wrote their coaches off.
Even if a team isn’t winning games, they should be doing things consistently better each week. If that’s not won games yet, it should at least be better technique, better identification of what the opponent is doing, or better clock management, or any number of things you know need to be better. Identifying those things, prioritizing them, and then effectively making improvements is the staff’s job, and if it is being done, things should be measurably improving.
Maybe they are little improvements that don’t add up to wins yet, but improvements nonetheless. You can’t be perfect but you can improve. Eventually that should translate to wins. Games will still be lost, mistakes still made, but you get good results more often when you control the things you can consistently.
I put that mostly on coaching. Part of it being just motivating people and getting them to buy in long term, not just with good sales pitches, but with actually teaching them to be better individually and cohesively, and then having the results of that show up in time to be be positive reinforcement.
When setbacks inevitably occur, the coaches should be able to get the players focused on the right things in a timely manner. Same thing when we had positive results: important to recognize and celebrate, but also important to get back to work and be real about what to work on.
Part of it was also owning up to mistakes in scheme and game planning and just being honest about where mistakes occurred. If that’s players and technique that’s fine, but if it’s coaches, those things have to be acknowledged and worked on too. I fully believe that to get better at anything you have to be real about what was done well and what wasn’t. For coaches that includes every coaching decision in a game, in the period leading up to it, and more.
Another part of it is identifying mistakes that were the result of bad technique or decision making making and fixing them. That happened at times for some players and some position groups but never as a whole were things moving in the right direction. When we had great offense, we had bad defense, or vice versa. When some position groups were getting better others were not.
Sometimes things like injuries absolutely played a factor and some things are not controllable, but many things are. Your first string is going to get the bulk of the reps but the backups need attention too. Even if they aren’t getting as much practice they should still be invested in what’s going on. There is plenty they can and should learn.
The players have to want it for themselves, but coaches play a big role here too, as do their teammates. Creating that atmosphere of expectations from one another starts at the top. I have really been impressed with this staff with how our backups have been able to come in and do their jobs competently, and actually get better at them noticeably game to game.
You maybe can’t coach people to be substantially faster or change their bodies radically during the season, and individuals have different genetics and such, but some things can be improved at the technique level that were not at times. I’d argue we had some very talented athletes many of those years who were done a disservice by not being developed effectively.
I will always support the guys who suit up in orange, but if coaches aren’t getting it done I no longer believe in giving them more than a few years. I do believe that like anything else, coaching is something that people can get better at, but the University of Tennessee is not where they should be spending years figuring it out while being paid millions.
Even if next year is a slight drop off I’m sold that we finally have a staff that can scheme and teach with the best of them. I have to think recruits will see that too. Players want to become the best versions of themselves. That should as a whole translate to good seasons more often than not. Nothing is certain in life, but I feel better about the state of the program than in a long time.
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