With all due respect you have no idea yet about the stability of the coaching staff or the culture of the team until things played out.
Wrong. It's a given that all or most of our coaching staff will be back next season, which is much more than could be said about the staff in 2017.
Until things start happening on the field you just don't know how they will react. Plus the team is still mostly Butch Jones players who came from that old toxic environment. Once you throw in a brand new coaching staff with brand new offensive and defensive schemes to learn you are going to have massive learning curves. You can't have that and expect to win in the SEC especially on the road.
I'm not expecting our team in 2018 to instantly improve across the board or to master the new schemes by week 1.
I am expecting them to have 100% less of the "f*** this, why should I listen to these coaches when they'll be gone two months from now" attitude. It's not unreasonable to expect that to have a positive impact on performance. How much will it have? No idea. But the impact will be there.
If this team has only 4 wins going into that Vandy game, with no bowl game to play for, the Vols will lose for sure. I'm pretty sure they lose no matter what. Derek Mason knows how to beat TN and until Pruitt has a chance to fully install his system and his players I don't think it will change
We'll see. This is a pretty contrived hypothetical. Going into that Vandy game in Neyland West IMO we're most likely going to be either battling for bowl eligibility or will have just locked it up the week prior.
I was politely pointing out the error in the logic that seeing an improvement in the toxic culture wasnt going to save this team from getting plowed.😁
Having a different opinion than you is not an "error in logic." That's a pretty shallow and narcissistic way to look at it.
I was also pointing out that we can't use that as a basis for prediction because we dont even know that the toxic culture is gone.
This is technically true, I guess. We don't know if it's gone from the lockerroom. We do know that our toxic leadership is gone, though. New coaches always get the benefit of the doubt for at least a season or two.
But my clearly superior prediction (cough cough) isn't reliant on things that we have to wait and see. It's based on the overwhelming set of circumstances already in place. New coach,new system,tough road opponents,crappy Butch Jones leftover players that weren't good enough to jump ship to the NFL with the exception of a precious few.a less than stellar recruiting class.The fact that playing on the road in the SEC is hard even for experienced teams.the fact that two years in a row we won tough non conference games only to lose to Vanderbily later.
And despite all that, the 2017 team was still a 4th quarter play away from beating USCe, UK, and UF.
With any good prediction you look at the things you already know are true and work off of that and not say things like "oh the old toxic culture is surely gone and because of that there's no way this team doesn't get better" or something like that/
You'll notice that my prediction doesn't even address Pruitts abilities, his skills or his promising future. Because I dont know any of that and also because even if all of those things are glowingly positive it will have little to no impact on the W-L record that comes out of 2018 because of the other things I already listed.
You're describing a "safe" prediction, not necessarily a good one. Good predictions entail looking at what you know as well as what can be inferred about a situation and putting the two together.
Also, claiming that Pruitt's abilities and skills will have "little to no impact on the W-L record" is the among most ignorant thing I've ever read on VN. You don't think a good coach can have an impact on his team's record? Seriously?
Sometimes I can come across as castigating I suppose. I mean no harm by it. But how do you politely tell someone their baby is ugly?
In a free and open discussion I'm allowed to tell you why your prediction is wrong and mine is right...lol
Either you don't understand what castigating means or you have little to no self awareness. Football coaches are castigating. Drill instructors are castigating. You just sound like you have a self inflated ego.
