Recruiting Forum Football Talk III

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#3,726
#3,726
JMO, but I'm starting to get on board with the Tom Herman talk. I'm doubting Texas fires him this year because I don't think they can land their white whale(Meyer), but if they part ways with him next year, I could see him as a coach we might pursue. We're not a blue blood program anymore, which is hard to accept, so it's not like people are knocking down our door wanting to coach here. It's hard to succeed with Florida, Georgia, and Bama on your schedule every year.
 
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#3,727
#3,727
MoCo_Vol said:
I'm sure Fulmer & company are also talking to the SEC, seeing what the feel is on Freeze. Because why wouldn't you? Hugh is making it very obvious he wants the UT gig and even if not this season the job could be open next, the biggest hurdle would be the SEC in that hire imo. I'm sure some higher ups are fond of it, but I think most would settle for it if it meant winning.
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I think it's more than the SEC. I think there are some sour relationships there to go along with the baggage he obviously carries.
 
#3,729
#3,729
RiotVol said:
That team is still my favorite Tennessee team. I still remember being a kid and just being elated when Tennessee was up on Florida, and then being completely demoralized when the rain hit and everything just went off the rails.
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That "upset" of Ohio State is still my favorite bowl game victory. Of course FSU is big too, but it lost some luster with them not having Weinke
 
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#3,730
#3,730
Weezer said:
This goes along the line of thinking I've been having today. Lack of a truly attractive candidate plays a part in keeping Pruitt. Everyone screams "Hugh Freeze" but that's not happening for a number of reasons. There's not another candidate, IMO, that the powers-that-be feels would take this job and be a sure fire game changer and turn things around. So why spend the money? Of course the other side of the coin is that if Pruitt fails next year, they'll be forced into a change, and the market to find a new coach will probably be tougher as a lot more teams will look to make a move next year, assuming we have a season without COVID restrictions.
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I think most reasonable people can see both sides, while aligning their perspective on one side of it. It's safe to say UT will be in a position to be more nimble next year and will have had time to vet a shortlist, gauge interest and be prepared to backchannel the hiring process. Nobody anticipated the perfect storm of 2020, which hasn't been much fun for anyone.
 
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#3,732
#3,732
Kingston Vol said:
I'd like to open this up to folks who are older than me: what was it that made Fulmer successful here as head coach? I was four years old in 1998, my first real memories are the 2001 season, so I've really only seen this program come down.

Is it as simple as David Cutcliffe was just that good? I think that doesn't give Fulmer his due.

Is what he did here replicable in 2020?
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A lot of these points have been covered, but I would say recruiting, organizational skills, and continuity, both in the coaching staff and the administration above him. Fulmer was a great CEO of the program, and was a generational recruiter as a head coach. People forget, but he was also a pretty good OC in his own right, Tennessee's offenses seemed a lot more dynamic when he took over as Johnny's OC. Doug Dickey was a huge part of our success being AD for the vast majority of Fulmer's tenure. He kept the same coordinators during their best years, and many position coaches like Dan Brooks, who went on to have another great run at Clemson after Fulmer was fired, can't be forgotten. The league was definitely down during that time, however, only Florida was consistently great for all of Fulmer's tenure and our record against them showed. Bama was strong under Stallings then fell apart and Fulmer totally exploited that with a long run against them. He completely owned UGA until Richt got there. Nobody else in the West was a consistent threat.

We can definitely do better, and some long term stability in the coaching staff and administration would help. Recruiting is not going to be the issue. With 4 OOC games a year (3 of them usually wins), and being in a division with UK, Vandy, SCar, and Mizzou, there is no reason we shouldn't be winning 8 games a year, and challenging for the SEC East title every 2-3 years, making it to Atlanta at least 1 in 5 tries. We can do better than we have been, even if we shouldn't expect to be a perennial top 10 fixture.
 
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#3,733
#3,733
Weezer said:
JMO, but I'm starting to get on board with the Tom Herman talk. I'm doubting Texas fires him this year because I don't think they can land their white whale(Meyer), but if they part ways with him next year, I could see him as a coach we might pursue. We're not a blue blood program anymore, which is hard to accept, so it's not like people are knocking down our door wanting to coach here. It's hard to succeed with Florida, Georgia, and Bama on your schedule every year.
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Tom Herman will be available, even if Texas doesn't get Urban Meyer. Search my posts if you want my long takes on Herman.
 
#3,734
#3,734
LA Vol said:
I think most reasonable people can see both sides, while aligning their perspective on one side of it. It's safe to say UT will be in a position to be more nimble next year and will have had time to vet a shortlist, gauge interest and be prepared to backchannel the hiring process. Nobody anticipated the perfect storm of 2020, which hasn't been much fun for anyone.
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I'm of the opinion you don't make a move unless someone you really believe to be a program changer becomes available and you have an arrangement in place. Sure, some people believe that guy is already there, but it's not about what the fans want or believe. We're not the decision makers.
 
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#3,737
#3,737
Bassmaster_Vol said:
Our recruiting class is really disappointing
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I'm willing to wait and see where we stand after the ESP before making that statement. I was really disappointed to lose Lewis, but if he really has been hitting women, then we don't need him. I don't want those kind of players.
 
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#3,738
#3,738
05_never_again said:
When would y'all say that Tennessee stopped being an elite program? 2001? I know that 2001 team is romanticized and potentially overrated in some regard, but it was obscenely talented and finished #4. I still look at it as a continuation of the elite period that began in 1995. I know that we won the East again in 2004 and 2007, but we were underdogs both times and pretty clearly the weaker team on paper. I didn't expect to win either of those games.

It's absolutely unfathomable to me that a program with our resources hasn't had a top 10 finish in nearly 20 years. It's almost like in order to pull that off, you'd have to do it intentionally. It seems like we at least should have been able to fall over ourselves into a top 10 finish once.
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Weren't we ranked in the top 5 pre-season in 2005?
 
#3,741
#3,741
Bassmaster_Vol said:
Our recruiting class is really disappointing
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Yeah, I'm not sure I see enough on the defensive front seven to say any of these guys contribute right away.

Nothing on the offensive line, either, although there are a lot of guys we signed last year who are redshirting.
 
#3,742
#3,742
While I do enjoy a good coaching search and all of the hope it brings. I am fine with giving Pruitt another year, even though his decisions drive me crazy. No one in their right minds can’t believe that the lack of practices doesn’t have an impact. Sadly, we get to see the results of those impacts every weekend. I am really interested in seeing what a normal season with a new QB can do.
 
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#3,747
#3,747
Dudley Smith said:
Tom Herman will be available, even if Texas doesn't get Urban Meyer. Search my posts if you want my long takes on Herman.
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Just read it and can't argue there. Herman does look like an upgrade over Pruitt but we will be clamoring to fire him in 3-4 years as well. I don't even know what the answer is. 95% of coaches out there will be on the hot seat here within 5 years minimum.

It sucks that we can't just find a guy who goes 8-4/9-4 consistently. We get there and then immediately regress.
 
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#3,748
#3,748
We better hope this staff finally figures out how to start truly developing the talent we currently have, because I see very few instant assets in this year's signing class... most look to be 1-2yr projects... there are a few that could make some noise next season, but mostly we will need to hope our existing roster steps up and improves.
Gotta hope we get some transfers on D...
 
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#3,749
#3,749
Kingston Vol said:
Yeah, I'm not sure I see enough on the defensive front seven to say any of these guys contribute right away.

Nothing on the offensive line, either, although there are a lot of guys we signed last year who are redshirting.
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When I look at it I'm going to throw out the NC guys. They haven't played a senior season so we don't know what they have, and, quite frankly, the competition for them wasn't that great either if we're being honest.

But going down the class, we do have some nice pieces in the RB class, Salter has a chance to be really good with development (please hire a QB coach!), and of course Brooks is the best player in this class. But after them, what are we looking at? The OL class is poor and we desperately needed an elite tackle. The DL class is average with Katron Evans being the biggest piece and, again, who was our comp for him? Not that he isn't good, I'm just not sure he's an elite player there. He is ranked inside the top 200 though on the composite so we'll see.

We desperately need LB's, I like willis, but he's undersized and wouldn't surprise me to see him playing star or something. The rest of the class? :confused: The WR class is very poor, with Roc Taylor being the best piece, and he's still a 3 star. It does help to see that AU pushed for him, but outside of that, our receiver class is very poor imo. I do like the TE's, but Wolfe is coming off of a season ending injury so will he be the same again? Who know's. Campbell is good I think.

After them you've got a whole bunch of "trust the coaches" on their evaluation in Rucker, Charles, Wright, Howard, White, Jones, and Bell.

In other words, we needed to nail this class, and barring some last minute additions which, at least at this point don't seem to be happening, this class is very, very underwhelming and is not helping us close the gap with the top schools that we want to compete against. We struck out on the top targets of Mims, Green, Mondon, and TID that would have made this class much better, and now we have lost Lewis and McGhee. This isn't good.
 
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#3,750
#3,750
Aesius said:
Just read it and can't argue there. Herman does look like an upgrade over Pruitt but we will be clamoring to fire him in 3-4 years as well. I don't even know what the answer is. 95% of coaches out there will be on the hot seat here within 5 years minimum.

It sucks that we can't just find a guy who goes 8-4/9-4 consistently. We get there and then immediately regress.
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Hell, only 2 of the 4 guys we've hired post-Fulmer has actually gotten there. Butch and Pruitt. And Pruitt (in all likelihood) is going to do it in just one season.

I think Herman's ceiling here would be 9-3, with losses to the Big 3. Nobody will say this today since we're in the gutter, but that'd be fun for about 2 years, and then we'd want to run him off as you said. Especially if he was getting blown out by the Big 3 with any regularity.
 
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