2017-2018 Season Discussion- All opinions welcome.

[photovol]

Looking fwd to LSU game, have not seen them in Neyland in awhile.

This game may not be pretty

 

[photovol]

5-7 but Jones still gets another year?

 

[governmentmule]

I do realize there has been several posting's on this very topic. However, I am not sure on how many registered volunteer fans there is on this site..


GBO! :yahoo:

I'm registered on Volnation.com does that count ?

i'm looking forward to this coming year of Football as all ways,the main thing will to be stay healthy

 

[governmentmule]

We're talking about two different things. I'm talking overall and you're talking strictly SEC play. The reality is that our schedule consists of conference AND non-conference teams and all of them matter at the end of the year. Don't get me wrong though I'm not ecstatic about our SEC average but I do think it's headed in the right direction.

not sure about the numbers,but isn't it around 8 wins per year and that includes bama as far as the best in the SEC ?

 

[IknoxvolsI]

I'm thinking '17 will be more like '10/'11 or shoot, maybe even 2012!

 

[TheBigOne10]

I'm excited about the lack of high expectations for this team. Hopefully that will translate into a team that plays a little more loose, and hopefully Butch will not be the same ole Butch. That being said, I see us at 8-4, no better or no worse.

 

[BeardedVol]

I'm excited about the lack of high expectations for this team. Hopefully that will translate into a team that plays a little more loose, and hopefully Butch will not be the same ole Butch. That being said, I see us at 8-4, no better or no worse.

So we end up in a paradoxical loop...

Lower Expectations->More Wins->Higher Expectations->More losses->Lower Expectations...and so on and so forth.

If we end up at 8-4 overall, what's conference record 4-4 or 5-3?

 

[jakez4ut]

So we end up in a paradoxical loop...

Lower Expectations->More Wins->Higher Expectations->More losses->Lower Expectations...and so on and so forth.

If we end up at 8-4 overall, what's conference record 4-4 or 5-3?

hm. college football is cyclical, so your 1st point, yes, that's kind of how it works. eventually even Alabama will come back to Earth.

your 2nd point...i go back and forth with what game i think will be the most winnable. FL or GA? to go 5-3, i think we absolutely have to win one of those. if we lose both, then it looks like to get there we'd have to beat LSU....

but honestly i'm not prepared to say we will win any of the three. FL is so early, i'm not sure we'll be ready from a chemistry standpoint, so i look at GA maybe being far enough along to maybe have a few things figured out if healthy, and it's at home. so a very soft lean to GA, but i think they'll be better than they were last year. i don't think FL will be great though, so we may catch them in a similar position we're in, still trying to figure things out....so i'm conflicted on those two games.

and who knows what LSU will be. they have talent, but it's late in the season, at home, and they will have been thru the majority of their SEC W gauntlet by then....so maybe they're beat up and out of contention?

long story short, i think for us to wind up 8-4, our best chance is to beat GT in the 1st game. we do that, and i think 8-4 becomes legit expectation. we beat GA or FL, and more than that becomes a legit expectation.

of course, we could also be 2-3 coming out of September, and the pucker factor would be on warp factor 10 at that point.

so hard to get a gauge right now. lot's of ?'s that need to be answered...

 

[Behr]

hm. college football is cyclical, so your 1st point, yes, that's kind of how it works. eventually even Alabama will come back to Earth.

your 2nd point...i go back and forth with what game i think will be the most winnable. FL or GA? to go 5-3, i think we absolutely have to win one of those. if we lose both, then it looks like to get there we'd have to beat LSU....

but honestly i'm not prepared to say we will win any of the three. FL is so early, i'm not sure we'll be ready from a chemistry standpoint, so i look at GA maybe being far enough along to maybe have a few things figured out if healthy, and it's at home. so a very soft lean to GA, but i think they'll be better than they were last year. i don't think FL will be great though, so we may catch them in a similar position we're in, still trying to figure things out....so i'm conflicted on those two games.

and who knows what LSU will be. they have talent, but it's late in the season, at home, and they will have been thru the majority of their SEC W gauntlet by then....so maybe they're beat up and out of contention?

long story short, i think for us to wind up 8-4, our best chance is to beat GT in the 1st game. we do that, and i think 8-4 becomes legit expectation. we beat GA or FL, and more than that becomes a legit expectation.

of course, we could also be 2-3 coming out of September, and the pucker factor would be on warp factor 10 at that point.

so hard to get a gauge right now. lot's of ?'s that need to be answered...

Yea, this whole post says it all. Who freakin knows what to expect. QB, whoever it is, could be the next Heisman trophy winner or stink up the NCAA. Rock? Hoke?........

I won't be "shocked" if we go 10-2. I also won't be shocked if it's 5-7. It sucks to be this way. I made up my mind that Butch has to get us to Atlanta, or I'll be ready to bite the bullet and campaign for a coaching search, which I dread. But even then, I get a headache with "what ifs"

I know it's so unlikely that's it ridiculous to think about, but I have to look at every scenario to satisfy my decision.

If we don't make it to Atlanta, I want Butch replaced.

What if we lose early to GT and Fl and somehow everything else goes our way. Hurts gets injured on a rainy day in Tuscaloosa and the backup can't hold on to the ball and we get enough turnovers to win by 1? Meanwhile, Flordia wins out and goes to Atlanta. Do I still want Butch fired? Again, I don't expect that to happen, I just go to the extreme mathematical possibilities to test my opinion/decision.

In reality, I'm afraid 8-4 or, depending on GT 7-5 is probably what we're looking at. Even tho some will disagree, I'm just not considering Vandy and SC losses. Just not. I don't bring it up often, but that SC loss hurt me as bad as it did most everyone else. Right or wrong, I chalk them both up as "fluke" losses. That doesn't make them acceptable, whatever that means, but I'm not gonna constantly gripe about it. It's done.

I guess my point is, agreeing with your post with a bit of an example of my thoughts on it.

 

[BeardedVol]

hm. college football is cyclical, so your 1st point, yes, that's kind of how it works. eventually even Alabama will come back to Earth.

your 2nd point...i go back and forth with what game i think will be the most winnable. FL or GA? to go 5-3, i think we absolutely have to win one of those. if we lose both, then it looks like to get there we'd have to beat LSU....

but honestly i'm not prepared to say we will win any of the three. FL is so early, i'm not sure we'll be ready from a chemistry standpoint, so i look at GA maybe being far enough along to maybe have a few things figured out if healthy, and it's at home. so a very soft lean to GA, but i think they'll be better than they were last year. i don't think FL will be great though, so we may catch them in a similar position we're in, still trying to figure things out....so i'm conflicted on those two games.

and who knows what LSU will be. they have talent, but it's late in the season, at home, and they will have been thru the majority of their SEC W gauntlet by then....so maybe they're beat up and out of contention?

long story short, i think for us to wind up 8-4, our best chance is to beat GT in the 1st game. we do that, and i think 8-4 becomes legit expectation. we beat GA or FL, and more than that becomes a legit expectation.

of course, we could also be 2-3 coming out of September, and the pucker factor would be on warp factor 10 at that point.

so hard to get a gauge right now. lot's of ?'s that need to be answered...

I agree, for most teams not Alabama, college football is cyclical in a sense, but I don't think there are any winning programs stuck in a loop like the one that I described above. For the top teams, winning begets higher expectations, which still seam to beget winning.

2017 FL and GA are both winnable games, but IMO GA will field the overall better team, but we have the advantage of having them at home and later in the season, but FL will probably be not as good as GA, we play them earlier in the season and it's in the swamp. I'd say right now, on paper our chances are better against GA than FL.

As for LSU, I think their defense is going to be better than our offense, and even if their offense isn't that great, they won't have to score that many points if they stop us from doing so.

 

[jakez4ut]

I agree, for most teams not Alabama, college football is cyclical in a sense, but I don't think there are any winning programs stuck in a loop like the one that I described above. For the top teams, winning begets higher expectations, which still seam to beget winning.

2017 FL and GA are both winnable games, but IMO GA will field the overall better team, but we have the advantage of having them at home and later in the season, but FL will probably be not as good as GA, we play them earlier in the season and it's in the swamp. I'd say right now, on paper our chances are better against GA than FL.

As for LSU, I think their defense is going to be better than our offense, and even if their offense isn't that great, they won't have to score that many points if they stop us from doing so.

the lengthy of the cycle may be different, but it all runs in cycles.

Michigan has compared favorable to TN over the last 10 years.

OSU when thru a long stretch with John Cooper where they were always 2nd fiddle to Michigan. Now Michigan has been 2nd fiddle to OSU.

FL has had little cycles...Spurrier, on the up, Zook, the down, but right back up with Meyer, then back down with Muschamp, now kinda on the up again, sort of.

hell, Alabama wen thru the Mike's, and was definitely in a down cycle...they were basically bad for several years in between Stallings and Saban.

USC has been way up, then down, and now may be back on the up tick.

bottom line, there's really not a program that hasn't experienced it.

now, how old you are, may impact what your perception may be of those cycles. if you're 15, you've never not really known anything but Alabama is great, and that we suck. you have no frame of reference showing that Michigan dominated Ohio St for a decade, and that Alabama lost to some directional school from Louisiana one time.

 

[volfannbama]

I agree, for most teams not Alabama, college football is cyclical in a sense, but I don't think there are any winning programs stuck in a loop like the one that I described above. For the top teams, winning begets higher expectations, which still seam to beget winning.

2017 FL and GA are both winnable games, but IMO GA will field the overall better team, but we have the advantage of having them at home and later in the season, but FL will probably be not as good as GA, we play them earlier in the season and it's in the swamp. I'd say right now, on paper our chances are better against GA than FL.

As for LSU, I think their defense is going to be better than our offense, and even if their offense isn't that great, they won't have to score that many points if they stop us from doing so.

It cyclical for Alabama as well. It wasn't long ago that they were not very good.

 

[Coug]

Didn't really mean to single you out with respect to the first part of my post, apologies. I'm just a bit amazed at the incredibly long leash so many are willing to give Jones as our coach here. He's done a great job righting the ship with pretty much everything he's touched off the field....I and many others have catalogued those things and have given him great credit for having done so.

But after watching what he has done with all the talent he accumulated after 4 years, all the failings on the field in terms of falling short of reasonable expectations, I just don't quite understand all the kicking the can down the road in terms of when we hold Butch accountable for the results he's giving us on the field.

At first it was he's gotta show he can get it done by year 3, which is pretty much the standard for all P5 coaches.......next was year 4, "2016 is the year and was always the year", and we know what happened last year, it was no bueno......now we're pushing it to year 6 or even beyond. So yes, my response was a bit "emotional", but it was far from "completely ludicrous" since so many keep kicking the can further down the road in terms of when we should fairly evaluate Jones. And I'm 100% convinced that there are some/plenty on this board that will still be defending Butch Jones after year 10 even if he's still without so much as an SECe title. At some point, "he's not Derek Dooley" just can't be enough for our program and it shouldn't be after he's collected $40mm and no titles of any kind imo.

2016 should have been the year in my opinion. We had record breaking talent on our team, we even beat Florida, I'll take it in a heartbeat. Sadly 2016 fell much shorter than most people's expectations including mine. If I felt like all the issues we ran into this year were strictly on Butch's head I might be leaning more towards your mindset right now. Between injuries, defensive woes, Hurd drama, and Vanderbilt having a freakishly better than average season(they knocked off Georgia too), it unfortunately didn't work out. In 2015 we had a 9-4 team(5-3 in SEC), in 2016 9-4 team (4-4 in the SEC). 2 consecutive 9 win seasons. The last time we were that good was literally 10 years ago where in 2006 we had 9 wins, and in 2007 10 wins. There is absolutely room for improvement all around, especially on the defensive side of the ball. We're nowhere near the "fire Butch!" rhetoric though. As for the ludicrous description that was in response to your comment that Butch is only interested in bowl wins. Of course he wants more than that.

 

[KBVol]

2016 should have been the year in my opinion. We had record breaking talent on our team, we even beat Florida, I'll take it in a heartbeat. Sadly 2016 fell much shorter than most people's expectations including mine. If I felt like all the issues we ran into this year were strictly on Butch's head I might be leaning more towards your mindset right now. Between injuries, defensive woes, Hurd drama, and Vanderbilt having a freakishly better than average season(they knocked off Georgia too), it unfortunately didn't work out. In 2015 we had a 9-4 team(5-3 in SEC), in 2016 9-4 team (4-4 in the SEC). 2 consecutive 9 win seasons. The last time we were that good was literally 10 years ago where in 2006 we had 9 wins, and in 2007 10 wins. There is absolutely room for improvement all around, especially on the defensive side of the ball. We're nowhere near the "fire Butch!" rhetoric though. As for the ludicrous description that was in response to your comment that Butch is only interested in bowl wins. Of course he wants more than that.

As far as Butch wanting more than Bowl wins, his own statements say otherwise. When asked about the disappointment of not reaching the goal of winning the division, he said "we've never talked about that, you haven't heard me or my players ever discuss it".....all while doing nothing but giving statistics about how many bowl games we've gone to lately and how we haven't done it since the early 2000s.

So while you and I can assume he wants to win more than some meaningless bowl games, he gives no indication that's the case and seems to be ticked off that anyone dare demand anything more than a bowl win vs a sorry, mid to low level Big 10 team

 

[HuntlandVolinColo]

With Johnny Majors being an exception both Phillip Fulmer and Derek Dooley were not fired until they posted a 5-7 season. I don't expect that trend to change with CBJ. If CBJ posts a 7-5 season which would get us to a bowl game he won't be fired. The next season I believe would be his true test.



Historically TN is a 9 win team. Between 1991 and 2007 TN averaged 9.4 wins per season. I know people think we won the SEC and Natty's every year but that just didn't happen.

Just curious, how many of those 9.4 wins came during the 11 game seasons?

 

[tonybologna]

I think it's going to mostly come down to who CBJ decides or who wins out on the starting QB job. Will it be QD or JG? JG seems to have the most talent but QD seems to have more knowledge & experience.

We have plenty of RB's. We should have plenty of WR's too. Our OL play I'm kind of concerned about too. Defense should be solid with plenty of depth at all positions.

So, I'm more worried about the offense because of the unknown at QB. Maybe we go with a 2 QB system even though that's not CBJ's way of playing QB's.

We're good enough to win at least 9-10 games. We're also capable of losing 5-7 games. I'm going to kind of go in between & say 9-3 overall record. That still won't win the East though.

I say either UF or UGA wins the East but UGA more than likely. We should get a solid bowl game with a 9-3 record. We will win the bowl game & finish 10-3 & possibly a top 10 finish. Definitely a top 15 finish.

 

[volsncards]

This team could surprise some folks this year if they get back to playing the more disciplined style of football that we saw from Butch's first two teams. Remember the low penalty yardage and the third down effiency? If we get back to that, we have a more talented team than his first two, so a little better season than some hope for is possible. I just don't think that Butch is willing to do some unconventional things that sometimes win games though. He will have his team run three plays right into the heart of a defense with 3:00 on the clock and a 1 touchdown lead every time (see 2016 Georgia and 2015 Florida). Perhaps he should study how the New England Patriots finish games for a good reference. Ever notice how they get the ball late and the other team never sees it again?

 

[Coug]

5-7 but Jones still gets another year?

Not a chance, 5-7 at UT gets you fired.

 

[TNnative]

I do realize there has been several posting's on this very topic. However, I am not sure on how many registered volunteer fans there is on this site.. BUT.. 2017 football season is fast approaching.. Spring practice is about to resume for this season in full force.

Is there anyone out there who is as excited about TENNESSEE FOOTBALL for this upcoming season as I?? Granted, last season should have been THE YEAR.. Seems as if that has been the moniker for UT for a decade now (Literally). With that being said... Lets look at it from a different angle....



bUTch Jones has decided to get rid of the cancers within the program and has decided to upgrade his staff to compete with the rest of the SEC.. We have a world class Defense Backs coach.. A new QB coach, A new OC, A second term DC..and a possible Tennessee Alumni AD.

We have over 20 seniors coming back next year... A fresh QB.. a new S & C coach/coordinator. I am not saying we have a NC coming our way.. BUT.. This upcoming season.. we should do some really good things..


So many things are going our way for next year..If the good lord above shines down on this team and the stars align ever so perfectly... Next season should be a good one IMO..


Does anyone else have any input for the upcoming season?? Good bad or different.. sum all of it up on this page.

All Sunshine Pumpers and Negavols welcome.


GBO! :yahoo:

FWIW, Peyton's senior year was suppose to be "the year" as well.

The next year? Most around here figured we would need to spend developing new leaders. Turned out those leaders were very ready.

Thing I learned, Don't buy into hype, but always encourage the team. They can take it to a greater level when they feel the support.

 

[Cpatter4]

If Walt Wells can bring us that 2012 offensive line production then I would be one happy Vol

 

[volfannbama]

FWIW, Peyton's senior year was suppose to be "the year" as well.

The next year? Most around here figured we would need to spend developing new leaders. Turned out those leaders were very ready.

Thing I learned, Don't buy into hype, but always encourage the team. They can take it to a greater level when they feel the support.

In 98, nobody thought we would have to spend alot of time developing leaders. That team was stacked with top notch players / leaders all over the field. The d had one of the best "leaders" Tennessee had ever seen. The o had nfl ready players at wide out and running back and oline. Its nowhere near the same as this year.

 

[Power T-Rev]

Going for the back to back championship of life. I'm just joking, don't roast me

 

[DeusExMachina]

FWIW, Peyton's senior year was suppose to be "the year" as well.

The next year? Most around here figured we would need to spend developing new leaders. Turned out those leaders were very ready.

Thing I learned, Don't buy into hype, but always encourage the team. They can take it to a greater level when they feel the support.

Quoted because I feel like, in this "I want it NOW NOW NOW" world in which we live, a LOT OF Vol fans forget this little factoid.