Recruiting Forum Football Talk III

[Catbone]

Said this before already, but If we win 8 this year, Heupel is National Coach of the Year and we are in Atlanta by year 3 or 4.

Would absolutely love for it to happen. But seriously doubt it does. Just has too much ground to make up talent wise with the best teams in the league.

I wish Coach Heupel the best, I hope he succeeds and Is able to bring us out of the wilderness just like I wished with all our other previous coaches. I will support him until he gives me a reason not to, just like I did with others.

Switch the 8 to 7 and I'd still agree

 

[UTMVol76]

Fair take. I think we can make reasonable takes on what's gonna happen though based on our current situation. And I certainly hope Heupel takes gets us back to relevancy and beyond.

I don't think he's gonna win 8 or even come close to winning 8 in year 1. However If he only wins 4 or 5, I don't necessarily think he's not cut out for the job. I just think he's gotta long way to go and it's gonna take more than 1 season.

But if he wins 8, I'll be claiming 15-0 the next season because I think he will have done one heckuva job in year 1.

I’ve said for a while now that IMO the ONLY way we work our way out of this funk is that we luck into a great hire. No big names want to risk their reputation on this and I don’t blame them. It’s going to take a Meh hire that is a schematically Great hire who develops talent because we will not pull great recruits until we prove that we can win with what we have.

I choose hope for CJH until he proves he can’t. I will agree that leash will be short, but I do think he has the best resume of any coach we’ve hired in this last 12 years.

 

[tn88volfan]

Drew update:

Radiation and chemo is over...
Drew’s cancer has not shrunk. It remains inoperable. He’s pretty feeble but focused. Fluid on his brain. Possible the shunt has malfunctioned. They are moving back home. Deflated obviously. But have felt as if this was the expectation all along. My brother and SIL will introduce various palliative care and unorthodox treatments. There’s still some fight to be had. And he is willing.

Please pray for my sweet nephew. And keep your eyes fixed on Jesus as we approach Good Friday. One week. Hey, but it didn’t end there... did it?

Praying for your young warrior, my best friend has glioblastoma diagnosed March 2020..surgery then radiation and chemo.....and it showed back up on a MRI last month. *uck cancer and everything about it.

 

[BigOrangeTrain]

 

[SweetasSoda]

SIAP

 

[UpstateVol613]

#baseballschool

 

[UTMVol76]

@SweetasSoda

Hey! I was down in your neck of the woods for a few days last week with my son on his spring break backpacking Savage Gulf. Killer storm came ripping in last day when we were down in one of the valleys.

Good trip, loved it, but those last 4 miles were the toughest I ever did. I love your area down there.

 

[drvenner]

Anyone else tired of @drvenner’s virtue signaling?

.

Not the best of my posts.

 

[drvenner]

Racist imo

It shole is

 

[drvenner]

Anyone who thinks running some steps is going to fix whatever issue someone has that caused them to assault and rob a drug dealer is out of their mind.

Oh look. Another post with speculation and no facts.

 

[drvenner]

I know your mainly talking about me being the decent person. i just hope Invol and drevenner can learn from my example. lol Still praying for your nephew!

I thought we was cool. @InVOLuntary, you're right. He's a lost cause.

 

[SSVol]

So after all of the 'er' vs 'ow' discussion, I'm now forced to consider that @drvenner may actually be drvennow in real life.

 

[drvenner]

So after all of the 'er' vs 'ow' discussion, I'm now forced to consider that @drvenner may actually be drvennow in real life.

Whatevow.

 

[Tri-CitiesVol]

Anyone else tired of posters who pull stuff out of their ass that have no foundation in fact?

That crossed a line, man. You should really be ashamed of yourself.

 

[Orange Studs]

I thought we was cool. @InVOLuntary, you're right. He's a lost cause.

Hey Invol did one of those fix my post things. I would never put your name in there. Its invol that dirty rotten.....

 

[pismonque]

I once wallered in a holler.

...and I hollered as I wallered
then a feller come and bellered
so I follered up my holler
with a meller sort of waller
on a yeller-colored piller
with a swaller of tequiler
‘neath a willer up the holler

 

[tnvols72]

If Heupel can get these players to buy in and they are hungry and willing to go to war for him and the other coaches. It would not surprise me if this team overachieve and goes 8-4 or 7-5. If these coaches earn these kids respect, anything can happen.

 

[Devo182]

If Heupel can get these players to buy in and they are hungry and willing to go to war for him and the other coaches. It would not surprise me if this team overachieve and goes 8-4 or 7-5. If these coaches earn these kids respect, anything can happen.

 

[Devo182]

The new Harrah's Cherokee Sportsbook is a bit disappointing. Nice movie theater type setting though. Place to relax.

 

[Big Gucci Sosa]

The new Harrah's Cherokee Sportsbook is a bit disappointing. Nice movie theater type setting though. Place to relax.

did you #maskup?

 

[SweetasSoda]

@SweetasSoda

Hey! I was down in your neck of the woods for a few days last week with my son on his spring break backpacking Savage Gulf. Killer storm came ripping in last day when we were down in one of the valleys.

Good trip, loved it, but those last 4 miles were the toughest I ever did. I love your area down there.

So glad you enjoyed it!!! I'd say a storm down in a valley would be rough and memorable! Hope you got some good pics. Just spent the last hour scrapbooking my daughter's latest hike with her family.

 

[ChattaTNVol]

I continue to see comments suggesting that the guys on our roster were not developed by the previous staff and I continue to not buy that. I attribute part of those comments to ignorance and part of them to sour grapes. In some cases we may just disagree. I’d admit there were some areas at times where the coach in that position group might not have been the strongest but by and large over the past 3 years we had some good teachers on the staff. The results in 2020 didn’t show that but my argument is that was not due to lack of teaching but more so due to the program, and in particular the staff, being in disarray. jmo.

I’ve seen nothing that suggests to me that Pruitt isn’t an excellent defensive coach. I’ve seen a lot to proclaim that he isn’t cut out to be a head coach, but that’s not the same thing. jmo.

One of the areas that Pruitt helped us for the future while hurting us in that present was he played a lot of players, because, in his explanation, “they deserved to play”. In the early part of the 2019 season unable to contain my frustration I accused him of trying to run our football team like he’d run his elementary school PE classes. The thing is that even though that hurt us then it helps us now because playing football is more important to the development process than I think most people realize. We have a lot of guys who have played a lot of football. Pruitt was also correct in my opinion when he often repeated his claim that the more you do something, for most people, the better you get at it. jmo.

Right now it looks like we still have 31 composite blue chip players on our roster. LA has said he expects more transfers after the spring so we’ll have to see how that plays out. We have some guys where we don’t know what’s going on, Shamburger, plus Gibbs and Fils-Aime who both opted out of the 2020 season. None of these 3 guys are on our spring roster so I’m not counting them. I’m hopeful that the guys currently suspended will be back at least in time for fall camp. Not knowing the details of their situation I don’t really have any idea how it’s going to work out. jmo.

Some of our losses of players to transfer or other reasons I think will result in an immediate improvement to the team. I think our pass rush could be better on defense with guys like Roman Harrison etc. getting a lot more snaps. jmo.

I think our offensive line may improve simply by Cooper or Jackson taking over the center spot from Brandon. The failure of our offensive line I think based on Pruitt’s comments had a lot to do with Brandon’s inability to correctly identify the defense and make the right line calls. As with Guarantano he stuck with Brandon anyway and since Brandon was an Alabama kid I wasn’t surprised. jmo.

I don’t think anyone is going to argue that our losses at QB is an immediate improvement to the team. To be honest I’ve always had a tremendous amount of skepticism about Pruitt’s claim that Guarantano gave us the best chance to win. I hope and believe I and billions of other CFB fans around the world will be proven right this year. jmo.

I usually have an unhealthy level of disdain for our local sports media but this year I’m actually looking forward to their practice reports and hoping they will ask some of the other questions we may have. I want to see who is working out with the linebacker group and who in running with the 2’s on the offensive line. Another thing that Heupel has mentioned that I don’t know the details of is apparently we had some guys undergo offseason surgeries. I’d like to have a better understanding of the health of our players and especially anyone who may be thought of as critical to our success this year. I’ve gone through all the position groups and those are my biggest questions, depth with the inside linebackers being the biggest. jmo.

I’ve always thought over the past decade or so that we’ve had some good football players but we’ve not had enough to have a full team. Some areas would be strong, some okay, and some atrocious. We just couldn’t get enough guys in all of the position groups to give us a team that could compete with the best. We don’t need 85 guys; we need around 40. Even with our attrition we’re not that far away this year I don’t think. jmo.

Last point. In 2018 Mississippi State, playing in the SEC West, by reputation the toughest division in all of college football, had the No. 1 defense in the country. The strength of that defense was a couple guys on their defensive line and a couple guys in their secondary. Their linebackers weren’t that much of a factor. Of course the coordinator for that defense was Bob Shoop who I think due largely to injuries struggled here in 2016 and then in 2017 the team was in complete chaos as Butch tried to figure a way out of Knoxville. I think a lot of people often don’t look at what makes a good or bad team and so paint with a broad brush thinking it’s everything that’s wrong. I’ve never believed that was the case and still don’t. We’ve had what could have and should have been a good football team for the past 2 years and I think we still have most of the good parts of that in place. jmo.

Everything may not fall into place this year but I actually think it could. My post yesterday about going to Atlanta, in case anyone didn’t catch it, was an attempt to offer a subtle sarcastic or maybe facetious response to the poster who suggested everyone was going to blow us out this year. I just don’t see that at all but then I do have to admit I do have some questions that I’d like answered. jmo.

In addition to the “addition by subtraction” benefit our team may enjoy this year I agree with others who say a major improvement to the team this year could be the culture of the staff. In particular replacing Pruitt’s arrogance, stubbornness, narcissism, and overall lack of effective leadership with the positive and hopefully stabilizing and consistent leadership of the new staff. These two benefits to our team this year may yield immediate and dramatic improvement in performance. It’s obviously very early but I don’t see anything yet that suggests we’re not on the right track. jmo.

 

[rekinhavoc]

Ready for the Henry T saga to end.

 

[Revived2002]

I hear ya, but ...5-7 is still my baseline

Teams that are more talented their record aren’t blown out in 6 of their 7 losses. I think we had a talent issue in addition to a coaching/ chemistry issue last fall, and it will take a while to fix it.

 

[InVOLuntary]

Hey Invol really helped me by doing one of those fix my post things. I would never put your name in there. Its invol that is most likely the kindest, coolest person on Volnation. He's a treasure. We need not forget that......

Fyp