Um, at no point? He was forced to play guys out of position and two true freshmen. Blair didn't live up to his ranking. The OL is not his fault.
Oklahoma's pass rush annihilated our inexperienced OL in their first ever road game. A few busted plays go our way and the game is closer, but we had no chance winning that. Ole Miss was even worse. One of the best DLs in the nation, possibly THE best, against one of the worst OLs. No coach can scheme around that. Add in the fact that Worley was already banged up and that's the kind of score you get.
And are you seriously holding Cooper's performance against Jones? Cooper was likely THE best player in college football last year and Bama had a talent advantage at almost every individual matchup.
The UF loss was bad, no way around it. I hated the playcalling in that game and I'll give you that one all day. I'm sure Jones would admit that game was a failure on all counts.
Vandy always plays hard against UT and even the powerhouse teams of the 90s would often beat them by only a touchdown.
And the Vandy loss in 2013 wasn't "awful." They won 9 games and beat UGA. That was a good team. Dobbs wasn't ready to be QB at that point and we had no weapons at WR with North injured. Despite all that, Jones put the team in position to win but the players failed twice.
And having an NFL OL means nothing when you have crappy QB play.
I've seen plenty. He's outcoached Mark Richt and Steve Spurrier twice.
You really can't hold blowout losses against Oregon, Auburn, Mizzou, and Bama in 2013 against him, either. Those were all top 10 teams whereas UT was probably in the 50-60th range in terms of talent. Oregon, Auburn, and Bama had massive speed/talent advantages and Mizzou was a solid team all around in 2013. Plus, Jones was playing his 4th string QB in 3 out of 4 of those games.
It really seems like you're failing to take into account the fact that Jones has coached two teams at UT with massive deficiencies: QB/WR/team speed in year one and OL/QB in year two. The only P5 teams he has faced with the same types of issues are UK in 2013/2014, Vandy in 2014, and USC in 2014 (defense). He won all 4 of those matchups.
Like I said before, I'll be right there with you if he fails to produce this year. The schedule and roster are set up for 8-9 wins, and if we don't get there, then yeah, it's fair to call his coaching acumen into question.
Listen, I understand the shortcomings in personnel he had in 2013 and I fully understand how bad the OL was last year and that we had guys playing out of position. A center can't be expected to play tackle in football effectively, just like a power forward can't play point guard in basketball. But at what point does some accountability come in to play? Do we just accept 31 and 24 point losses and 27-0 first half deficits or at some point, do we ask, can our headcoach/coaching staff put together a gameplan so that we're in/have a chance to win every game we play....like it used to be?
At what point does a young talented team get "coached up" so they can stay in a game or even pull off a win vs a team they shouldn't? I'll give you the 2013 SCar game and I'll certainly say I was impressed with the in-game job he did vs Georgia in 2013....but after those 2 games, were there any others where you thought you had a coaching advantage? I'm even willing to give you last year vs Georgia....(although it almost looks like Georgia may have a similar-type mental block to play us as we have vs Florida, even though they always win the game).I didn't.
For balance, I would counter those two very good performances with embarrassing blowout losses to Oregon, Bama, Auburn and Mizzou. And I guess we'll just dusagree about Vandy in 2013.... that was a very bad loss to a highly overrated Vandy team to what was essentially a 1-man offense running the same play that we never adjusted to. We were also at home with our pride and a bowl game at stake, and we still couldn't beat a mediocre Vandy team. Still say it was a bad loss.
As far as Cooper in the Bama game, who else am I supposed to put the blame on, other than the guy in charge who talked all week prior to the game about how they would have to develop a defensive gameplan to deal with Bama's best player to have a chance to win? Cooper was a great, dynamic player, but there were some other teams, with less tape to watch on him, who figured out how to keep him from being a one-man wrecking crew. For example, Arkansaa held him to 2 catches for 22 yds, and lost by 1 point, 14-13....we fell behind 27-0 because he had 2 yds and nearly 200 yds receiving in the 1st half. Point is, Cooper didn't torch everybody he played, he had 5-6 games with less than 100 yds receiving ....but he hurt us more than anybody else he played. Again, he averaged 110 yds per game, but got 224 vs us.
Let me give another example. Year 1, 2013, we go out to play Oregon. No one expected to win that game, didn't even necessarily expect to keep it close. I certainly didn't, and there was no shame in losing to a very good Oregon team....but 59-14 (couldve been 80-14 had they not called off the dogs in the 3rd quarter). But what was the 1 advantage we did have? Offensive line. Did we ever even remotely find a way to control the line of scrimmage and run the ball? Answer is no. We had both a size and experience advantage with our OL vs their DL, yet not only were we not effective at trying to control the pace of the game with our running game, we couldn't convert any third downs after the first drive, which contributed heavily to a 59-0 run by Oregon....FIFTY-NINE TO NOTHING. And before anybody says "well, nobody could stop that Oregon offense that year, they were impossible to deal with", I refer to the Stanford game.....where Stanford lined up and puched Oregon in the mouth with their running game for 4qtrs, and not only did they not give up anything like a 59 point run, they actually won the game outright.....and I haven't looked, but I seriously doubt their entire OL found their way to NFL rosters like ours did.
Let me say this again. I love Butch, I think overall he's doing a great job rebuilding the absolute mess left to him and is the right guy to get us back to SEC and national relevance to whatever degree. But at this point, from what I believe the evidence shows us, if we do get back to 10+ win seasons and top 10 rankings, it'll be mainly because we out-talent teams, not out-scheme or out-gameplan them.