Would 6-6 be an improvement?

#26
#26
Not necessarily, no.
IMHO...the only way to measure the program's improvement is by how the Vols play against those top tier SEC teams we aren't "supposed" to beat. The metric there isn't "wins"...but rather how well we played, and were the Vols in the game for 4 quarters. When we're challenging Bama and Georgia ( as examples) for FOUR quarters of football and keeping the final score in doubt for the entire game..we'll KNOW the program is on it's way back. Until that happens, "number of wins" has very little meaning.
Want more wins...schedule more weak programs, ezy-peezy. Then everyone can do hi-fives when the Vols blow out the LaSallette Academy for Crippled Girls...!!
GBO. !!!!!!!!!
 
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#27
#27
BlinghamptonVol said:
I’m not sure it would be.

I know that 6 wins is more than 3 wins, but let’s dive into this more.

If last year’s team had played their original schedule, they would have been 6-6. So with that, 6 wins this season with 4 MAJOR cupcakes doesn’t seem like an improvement.

Let’s look at the changes from last year to this year and see where the advantage goes:
  1. Despite posters saying that HT and EG suck, we lost a lot of talent from last year’s roster. Advantage 2020.
  2. But, this year’s team had a full Spring and should have a full Fall camp before the season begins. Huge Advantage 2021.
  3. More than likely we will have a DLine coach for the whole season. And his name is Rodney Gardener. Advantage 2021.
  4. We will have a different qb than JG and Chaney was not the Chaney of years ago. Heupel has a much better scheme. Advantage 2021.
  5. This year’s D is a step down from last year’s D, and they kinda sucked. Advantage 2020.
So, overall I have 2021 with a 3-2 advantage over 2020. I think JG and Pruitt could go 6-6 with this team and schedule. I think Heupel could win 7 or 8 if he is gonna be the man to lead us out of this valley. 6-6 means we’re roughly at the same spot that we’ve been the last few coaches. 4 or 5 wins means we’ve regressed.

The good news is I think Heupel gets us to 7 or 8 wins this season, and could possibly luck into 9. I think Uf or Uga could be a magical upset too.
Click to expand...
We can recruit off a 6-6 season with more competitive losses. We cannot recruit off 3-7 and getting trucked by Kentucky. We couldn’t even recruit our own players to stay.
 
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#29
#29
BlinghamptonVol said:
I’m not sure it would be.

I know that 6 wins is more than 3 wins, but let’s dive into this more.

If last year’s team had played their original schedule, they would have been 6-6. So with that, 6 wins this season with 4 MAJOR cupcakes doesn’t seem like an improvement.

Let’s look at the changes from last year to this year and see where the advantage goes:
  1. Despite posters saying that HT and EG suck, we lost a lot of talent from last year’s roster. Advantage 2020.
  2. But, this year’s team had a full Spring and should have a full Fall camp before the season begins. Huge Advantage 2021.
  3. More than likely we will have a DLine coach for the whole season. And his name is Rodney Gardener. Advantage 2021.
  4. We will have a different qb than JG and Chaney was not the Chaney of years ago. Heupel has a much better scheme. Advantage 2021.
  5. This year’s D is a step down from last year’s D, and they kinda sucked. Advantage 2020.
So, overall I have 2021 with a 3-2 advantage over 2020. I think JG and Pruitt could go 6-6 with this team and schedule. I think Heupel could win 7 or 8 if he is gonna be the man to lead us out of this valley. 6-6 means we’re roughly at the same spot that we’ve been the last few coaches. 4 or 5 wins means we’ve regressed.

The good news is I think Heupel gets us to 7 or 8 wins this season, and could possibly luck into 9. I think Uf or Uga could be a magical upset too.
Click to expand...

If we start 3-0, which is a good possibility, then 7-8 wins will happen. Playing Florida the week after we play Tech and they play Bama should work in our favor as well.
 
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#31
#31
LWSVOL said:
SMH.... fans really set themselves up for disappointment
Click to expand...
We get disappointed anyway so what difference does it make? I mean if you're expecting us to suck and we do in fact suck, then you've spent all off season in a constant state of disappointed suck.

That's no way to live in my opinion. But hey, enjoy the suck. At least you ain't lonely.
 
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#33
#33
guido4198 said:
Not necessarily, no.
IMHO...the only way to measure the program's improvement is by how the Vols play against those top tier SEC teams we aren't "supposed" to beat. The metric there isn't "wins"...but rather how well we played, and were the Vols in the game for 4 quarters. When we're challenging Bama and Georgia ( as examples) for FOUR quarters of football and keeping the final score in doubt for the entire game..we'll KNOW the program is on it's way back. Until that happens, "number of wins" has very little meaning.
Want more wins...schedule more weak programs, ezy-peezy. Then everyone can do hi-fives when the Vols blow out the LaSallette Academy for Crippled Girls...!!
GBO. !!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...
We don't have but maybe 5 players, 10 at most that Bama or Georgia would probably take. If consistently hanging with them for 4 quarters is your measure of success, it may be best to sit the next 3-5 years out.
 
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#34
#34
Behr said:
We get disappointed anyway so what difference does it make? I mean if you're expecting us to suck and we do in fact suck, then you've spent all off season in a constant state of disappointed suck.

That's no way to live in my opinion. But hey, enjoy the suck. At least you ain't lonely.
Click to expand...

Lots of wisdom in this post..........and truth.
 
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#36
#36
Wins and losses be damned! If this team can score and play just a little defense ALL THE TIME, then we will have an improved team AND coaching staff..
 
#37
#37
I actually think 6-6 would be disappointing considering the favorable schedule. There are already 6 games on schedule that are legitimately winnable and we'll probably be favored in. There are 3 games that are tossups and could go either way. And there 3 are games that are extremely unlikely that we will win. So if our realistic range of wins falls somewhere between 6-6 being the floor and 9-3 being the ceiling, I'd say if we finish 6-6 that's really not saying much.

Games we should win:

Bowling Green
Pitt
Tennessee Tech
South Carolina
South Alabama
Vanderbilt

Games that are tossups:

Ole Miss
Missouri
Kentucky

Games that we are unlikely to win:

Florida
Georgia
Alabama
 
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#39
#39
BlinghamptonVol said:
I’m not sure it would be.

I know that 6 wins is more than 3 wins, but let’s dive into this more.

If last year’s team had played their original schedule, they would have been 6-6. So with that, 6 wins this season with 4 MAJOR cupcakes doesn’t seem like an improvement.

Let’s look at the changes from last year to this year and see where the advantage goes:
  1. Despite posters saying that HT and EG suck, we lost a lot of talent from last year’s roster. Advantage 2020.
  2. But, this year’s team had a full Spring and should have a full Fall camp before the season begins. Huge Advantage 2021.
  3. More than likely we will have a DLine coach for the whole season. And his name is Rodney Gardener. Advantage 2021.
  4. We will have a different qb than JG and Chaney was not the Chaney of years ago. Heupel has a much better scheme. Advantage 2021.
  5. This year’s D is a step down from last year’s D, and they kinda sucked. Advantage 2020.
So, overall I have 2021 with a 3-2 advantage over 2020. I think JG and Pruitt could go 6-6 with this team and schedule. I think Heupel could win 7 or 8 if he is gonna be the man to lead us out of this valley. 6-6 means we’re roughly at the same spot that we’ve been the last few coaches. 4 or 5 wins means we’ve regressed.

The good news is I think Heupel gets us to 7 or 8 wins this season, and could possibly luck into 9. I think Uf or Uga could be a magical upset too.
Click to expand...
Don't assume we would have gone 3-1 in our OOC games....
 
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#40
#40
Brave Volunteer said:
I actually think 6-6 would be disappointing considering the favorable schedule. There are already 6 games on schedule that are legitimately winnable and we'll probably be favored in. There are 3 games that are tossups and could go either way. And there 3 are games that are extremely unlikely that we will win. So if our realistic range of wins falls somewhere between 6-6 being the floor and 9-3 being the ceiling, I'd say if we finish 6-6 that's really not saying much.

Games we should win:

Bowling Green
Pitt
Tennessee Tech
South Carolina
South Alabama
Vanderbilt

Games that are tossups:

Ole Miss
Missouri
Kentucky

Games that we are unlikely to win:

Florida
Georgia
Alabama
Click to expand...

This is the "logic" I'm using. 6-6 would be a disappointment. If our new coach is "the guy," 7-8 wins is a must.
 
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#42
#42
BlinghamptonVol said:
I’m not sure it would be.

I know that 6 wins is more than 3 wins, but let’s dive into this more.

If last year’s team had played their original schedule, they would have been 6-6. So with that, 6 wins this season with 4 MAJOR cupcakes doesn’t seem like an improvement.

Let’s look at the changes from last year to this year and see where the advantage goes:
  1. Despite posters saying that HT and EG suck, we lost a lot of talent from last year’s roster. Advantage 2020.
  2. But, this year’s team had a full Spring and should have a full Fall camp before the season begins. Huge Advantage 2021.
  3. More than likely we will have a DLine coach for the whole season. And his name is Rodney Gardener. Advantage 2021.
  4. We will have a different qb than JG and Chaney was not the Chaney of years ago. Heupel has a much better scheme. Advantage 2021.
  5. This year’s D is a step down from last year’s D, and they kinda sucked. Advantage 2020.
So, overall I have 2021 with a 3-2 advantage over 2020. I think JG and Pruitt could go 6-6 with this team and schedule. I think Heupel could win 7 or 8 if he is gonna be the man to lead us out of this valley. 6-6 means we’re roughly at the same spot that we’ve been the last few coaches. 4 or 5 wins means we’ve regressed.

The good news is I think Heupel gets us to 7 or 8 wins this season, and could possibly luck into 9. I think Uf or Uga could be a magical upset too.
Click to expand...
Who is the Gardener fella? Is he an adjunct Ag professor?
 
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#43
#43
I don't think you can fine-tune it so much that 5-7 is really much different from 7-5.

Here's how I think it really goes:

Bottom Tier - peer competitor with G5 and FCS teams, usually lose to all Power 5 (yes, including the Vandys and Rutgers of the world)
Lower Tier - reliably beats G5 and FCS, competitive with bottom-half Power 5 (Vandy, Ky, USCe, Arky), lose to upper-half P5 (Bama, UGa, FL)
Upper Tier - competitive with upper-half P5 (Bama, UGa, FL, etc), regularly beats everyone else on schedule
Boss Tier - usually beats everyone, but no team is perfect so loses one or two games most years
Dynastic - maintains Boss Tier for several years in a row

Okay, so right now we're at Lower Tier. We have been for a decade. One might argue we even dipped down into Bottom Tier one season (Butch's 4-8 campaign). But mostly Lower Tier throughout our Dark Ages.

The Vols' normal place to live is Upper Tier. If you judge all 130 or however many of our seasons, more will grade out at Upper Tier than anything else. This is what we're trying to get back to.

We've only been Dynastic during one period of our history: the Neyland Era. Where Bama and Clemson and Ohio State and Oklahoma have been for the past decade? That was us most of the time from shortly after the General's arrival in 1926 until he retired from coaching in 1952.

But not since. Not even in the Fulmer years. We were strong Upper Tier with Phillip in the lead, maybe even Boss Tier four years from1995-1998, but not good enough to establish our second dynasty. Steve Spurrier's Florida kept us from that.

...

All that said, here's the answer: No, 6-6 would not be an improvement, because that's a Lower Tier result. Which is where we already are.

Real improvement will be us back in the Upper Tier. That's where we're all hoping Josh Heupel can take us.

Go Vols!
 
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#44
#44
It is difficult to get excited about 6-6. Unfortunately, that is where the program is at this point with a first-year head coach again. The only positive about 6-6 is that it will be a slight improvement from last year with a lower tier bowl appearance if UT is eligible. When I look at our upcoming opponents on the schedule, I see 3 games with UF, UGA, and Bama where the odds of us winning are highly unlikely. I know we are at a talent disadvantage but there is no reason we should not beat TN TECH, Bowling Green, SCAR, S alabama and Vandy. The rest of the games are toss ups. I believe in JH’s first year he should be judged on how we compete against the teams in those toss up matches because our talent level is comparable with those squads IMO. If we get blown out, compete for 4 quarters with a loss, or hopefully win a couple of those toss ups then we should be able to gauge just how big a rebuild this is going to be. The W/L record in those games will be telling. GBO!!!
 
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#46
#46
p.s. Last year was 3-7, sure, but that's without cupcakes or our regular slate of opponents. An all-SEC 3-7 result translates as (roughly) a 6-6 outcome with a regular schedule (3 cupcakes, 2 fewer SEC opponents, etc).

So not only is 6-6 not an improvement, it's not really any change at all from last year. Once you put the Covid season into perspective.
 
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#48
#48
Since 2005? we're about a 6-6 team, on average. A good many 5-7s, offset by some 8-4 or better years, but mathematically...... about 6-6.

Ask yourself: can a rookie SEC coach with 20+ kids leaving via transfer somehow turn us into a 7 or 8 win team when we've been about a 6-6 team for over 15 years?

6-6 is average for us now. I don't like it but crunch the numbers for yourself, spin it up however you want, pump all the sunshine you can...... and 6-6 is still pretty much what you'll honestly get.

Is 6-6 in 2021 an improvement? No. It's average and realistic. 7 wins would be a great debut for a first year SEC coach facing what Heupel is facing, 8 wins would raise eyebrows in the SEC. 9 wins? Heupel should never need to buy another beer in Knoxville.
 
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#49
#49
SayUWantAreVOLution said:
Since 2005? we're about a 6-6 team, on average. A good many 5-7s, offset by some 8-4 or better years, but mathematically...... about 6-6.

Ask yourself: can a rookie SEC coach with 20+ kids leaving via transfer somehow turn us into a 7 or 8 win team when we've been about a 6-6 team for over 15 years?

6-6 is average for us now. I don't like it but crunch the numbers for yourself, spin it up however you want, pump all the sunshine you can...... and 6-6 is still pretty much what you'll honestly get.

Is 6-6 in 2021 an improvement? No. It's average and realistic. 7 wins would be a great debut for a first year SEC coach facing what Heupel is facing, 8 wins would raise eyebrows in the SEC. 9 wins? Heupel should never need to buy another beer in Knoxville.
Click to expand...
We're 7-5, on average, from 2005-2019 (I would include 2020 as a 6-6 equivalent result, but it would be misleading to include it as a 3-7 outcome given the SEC-only format).

Now, 7-5 isn't much better than 6-6, granted. But if you want to be accurate, 7-5 is more accurate.

I personally think you over-reached by drawing the line all the way back at 2005. Doing that brings in the "upper tier" 2006 and 2007 results, and means you have to account for four 9- or 10-win seasons ('06, '07, '15, and '16). You'd have made a better case starting the clock where most folks do when we're talking about our Dark Ages: 2008.

From 2008 to 2019, we were in fact precisely a 6-6 team.
 
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