I want to f***ing vomit that we've stooped to this level.
We've been at this level for six years running. And my guess is that we will have at least one more year of it before better days come.
Tonight actually gave me much hope, and brought me back from the ledge I was on after the Vandy game. The team didn't quit on Butch. There's something going on behind the scenes that is special, and that didn't exist under Dooley.
This year's team played the toughest schedule in school history, which included picking up the two best teams from the SEC West. We had a two deep littered with true freshmen and (former) walk-ons. The roster was so bad our starters on defense had to take an inordinate amount of snaps and were clearly wearing down. We lost our two best defensive tackles, lost two quarterbacks, our best wide receiver and had many players fighting injuries.
This year could have been much, much worse. Florida started with a bunch more talent, faced a raft of injuries and finished worse than we did.
In fact, an argument could be made that we had no truly bad losses and one really good win. (We all utterly despise losing to Vandy, but an objective third party observer might note that Vandy is an eight win team with a third year coach who has had time to build his roster, such as it is- as to Florida, they were a much better team when we played them).
Cal, NC State, Arkansas, Kentucky and probably others had terrible experiences with their first year coaches. Ours wasn't great but it was better.
As a point of reference, Clemson is 10-2. They played two teams that we did, beating UGA at home by 3 (we only lost by 3) and losing to USCe by two TDs (we won). My guess is Clemson has a much better two deep than we do.
The future is bright and Butch will win a lot of ball games for us. I'm very much back on the Butch train.
Sorry for the long post. Go Vols!
