coffeevol
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It has been a busy last week or so with the Volunteer football program since the last Chalk Talk. December and early January are normally the months that assistant coaching changes occur for a variety of reasons and often the moves are good for both the school and the assistant. More often than not during my twenty years in the profession changes were made on the staffs I was part of, indeed I moved five times in the ten years prior to arriving at the University of Tennessee. Frankly I have found that the better teaching coaches move and work under different head coaches and coach on both sides of the ball at different positions as they grow in the profession. At every stop during my career I learned different ways of teaching and different systems both offensively and defensively. By the time I arrived at Tennessee I was thirty two years old and had coached the defensive back, running back and quarterback positions under five different head coaches. Additionally I had recruited from California to Virginia and Oregon to Florida.
It is interesting the approach the two most successful head coaches in the last forty years on the Hill, John Majors and Phillip Fulmer, took concerning assistant coaches tenure. Both spent sixteen years as head coach and I think I am safe in saying they were at opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to continuity on their coaching staff. Coach Majors had eight different defensive coordinators and six offensive coordinators, Coach Fulmer had two and three respectively. CPF chose to keep assistants and had very little turnover while CJM rarely had the same staff two years in a row and in at least two years had more than half his staff turnover. And you know what .both were highly successful. While I never had the chance to discuss with Coach Majors his approach to staff continuity I have had many discussions with Coach Fulmer on the topic. CPF talked with several of the longest tenured and most successful head coaches of his era and each told him keeping a staff together was foremost in their success. Additionally, much of the turnover on the staff while he was an assistant created unnecessary problems in his opinion.
The trade off in coaching changes is as simple as this new blood and new ideas hopefully brought in with new coaches from different coaching backgrounds vs. continuity in teaching, recruiting and staff familiarity by keeping a staff together. There can be a fine line between too much turnover and not enough changes from year to year. Paraphrasing Mother Goose .some wait too long to change a coach(s), some change too quickly and some (the successful ones) change at just the right time. My apologies to Mother Goose if I wrongly contribute this to her writings.
With offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian leaving Coach Butch Jones now has an opportunity to evaluate where his offense is after two years in the SEC and make any staff changes he deems necessary. There are a number of paths he can choose: promoting within the staff, bringing in someone he has worked with in the past or looking for new blood by hiring someone with a different background. The questions for Coach Jones ..does he believe the offensive system he is currently running gives the team the best chance to compete for championships? Does he need to tweak what he is currently doing offensively or are major changes needed? What will certainly complicate those evaluations is the woeful performance of our offensive line last season. A case can be made that any offensive system would have a hard time being effective with the offensive line we had last year. Tough questions to be answered for sure and future success will depend on his decision. Fortunately the influx of offensive talent in all areas of offense makes any system work better. As a wise (?) coach once said the Jimmys and Joes are much more important than the xs and os.
Since this is somewhat of an opinion newsletter let me share Chalk Talks thoughts on the change in offensive coordinator/play caller. Several things concerned me with last years offense and they had little to do with the style of offense we are running. While I do believe we are somewhat limited in short yardage and goal line situations in this offense overall it has been highly productive at other programs. Certainly Coach Jones has had success employing it. Also as alluded to above our offensive talent deficit would make any offense difficult to be consistently effective these last two years. My main criticism would be in the area of game planning and play calling. I dont think we got the ball nearly enough to our playmakers and I believe we played way to many different combinations in the skilled areas. It has been my experience as player, coach and observer of this conference the past forty or so years that the best teams keep their best players on the field and find ways to get the ball to them .often, very often. I know that has been the case with the best Tennessee teams. Even in the best of years the margin between winning and losing in this league is extremely small and not playing your best players is a big mistake. If you truly believe as a coach that any one play can win or lose a ball game, then you better keep you best on the field as much as you can. We, IMO, did not do that on offense last season.
One other issue concerning last season the decision to keep Joshua Dobbs on the bench until injuries forced him to play was puzzling. I have heard a lot of reasons why he did not play but frankly find most of them to be excuses. In the offense we are currently running a quarterback who can run the ball is not only preferred it is essential. It is hard to imagine that watching the two quarterbacks in practice every day would lead one to think #14 gave us a better chance to win offensively than #11. It also begs the question .what would have happened if #14 did not get hurt and #11 was not forced to play? Player evaluation is high on the list for a coordinator and in this case it proved to be evaluated poorly.
Whoever CBJ chooses to lead this offense into 2015 will have a lot more experienced players than the previous OC. He will however have the challenge of creating a power running game in short yardage and goal line and finding ways to get the ball to our playmakers at wide receiver.
One final thought . I have heard some talk about how losing our OC will negatively affect recruiting. During my ten years on the Hill there were many assistant coaching changes either by choice or by encouragement to look for another job. I cant recall a single time that we lost a recruit because of the change. On most occasions we gained players brought in by the new coach.
And finally there were three occasions where defensive coordinators were changed: 1985 - Ken Donohue replaced Larry Marmie, 1989 Doug Mathews replaced Ken Donohue and 1990 Larry Lacewell replaced Doug Mathews on each occasion the Vols won the SEC championship and subsequent bowl game (two Sugars and one Cotton) the only three of Coach John Majors head coaching career with the Volunteers.
Only time will tell
It is interesting the approach the two most successful head coaches in the last forty years on the Hill, John Majors and Phillip Fulmer, took concerning assistant coaches tenure. Both spent sixteen years as head coach and I think I am safe in saying they were at opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to continuity on their coaching staff. Coach Majors had eight different defensive coordinators and six offensive coordinators, Coach Fulmer had two and three respectively. CPF chose to keep assistants and had very little turnover while CJM rarely had the same staff two years in a row and in at least two years had more than half his staff turnover. And you know what .both were highly successful. While I never had the chance to discuss with Coach Majors his approach to staff continuity I have had many discussions with Coach Fulmer on the topic. CPF talked with several of the longest tenured and most successful head coaches of his era and each told him keeping a staff together was foremost in their success. Additionally, much of the turnover on the staff while he was an assistant created unnecessary problems in his opinion.
The trade off in coaching changes is as simple as this new blood and new ideas hopefully brought in with new coaches from different coaching backgrounds vs. continuity in teaching, recruiting and staff familiarity by keeping a staff together. There can be a fine line between too much turnover and not enough changes from year to year. Paraphrasing Mother Goose .some wait too long to change a coach(s), some change too quickly and some (the successful ones) change at just the right time. My apologies to Mother Goose if I wrongly contribute this to her writings.
With offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian leaving Coach Butch Jones now has an opportunity to evaluate where his offense is after two years in the SEC and make any staff changes he deems necessary. There are a number of paths he can choose: promoting within the staff, bringing in someone he has worked with in the past or looking for new blood by hiring someone with a different background. The questions for Coach Jones ..does he believe the offensive system he is currently running gives the team the best chance to compete for championships? Does he need to tweak what he is currently doing offensively or are major changes needed? What will certainly complicate those evaluations is the woeful performance of our offensive line last season. A case can be made that any offensive system would have a hard time being effective with the offensive line we had last year. Tough questions to be answered for sure and future success will depend on his decision. Fortunately the influx of offensive talent in all areas of offense makes any system work better. As a wise (?) coach once said the Jimmys and Joes are much more important than the xs and os.
Since this is somewhat of an opinion newsletter let me share Chalk Talks thoughts on the change in offensive coordinator/play caller. Several things concerned me with last years offense and they had little to do with the style of offense we are running. While I do believe we are somewhat limited in short yardage and goal line situations in this offense overall it has been highly productive at other programs. Certainly Coach Jones has had success employing it. Also as alluded to above our offensive talent deficit would make any offense difficult to be consistently effective these last two years. My main criticism would be in the area of game planning and play calling. I dont think we got the ball nearly enough to our playmakers and I believe we played way to many different combinations in the skilled areas. It has been my experience as player, coach and observer of this conference the past forty or so years that the best teams keep their best players on the field and find ways to get the ball to them .often, very often. I know that has been the case with the best Tennessee teams. Even in the best of years the margin between winning and losing in this league is extremely small and not playing your best players is a big mistake. If you truly believe as a coach that any one play can win or lose a ball game, then you better keep you best on the field as much as you can. We, IMO, did not do that on offense last season.
One other issue concerning last season the decision to keep Joshua Dobbs on the bench until injuries forced him to play was puzzling. I have heard a lot of reasons why he did not play but frankly find most of them to be excuses. In the offense we are currently running a quarterback who can run the ball is not only preferred it is essential. It is hard to imagine that watching the two quarterbacks in practice every day would lead one to think #14 gave us a better chance to win offensively than #11. It also begs the question .what would have happened if #14 did not get hurt and #11 was not forced to play? Player evaluation is high on the list for a coordinator and in this case it proved to be evaluated poorly.
Whoever CBJ chooses to lead this offense into 2015 will have a lot more experienced players than the previous OC. He will however have the challenge of creating a power running game in short yardage and goal line and finding ways to get the ball to our playmakers at wide receiver.
One final thought . I have heard some talk about how losing our OC will negatively affect recruiting. During my ten years on the Hill there were many assistant coaching changes either by choice or by encouragement to look for another job. I cant recall a single time that we lost a recruit because of the change. On most occasions we gained players brought in by the new coach.
And finally there were three occasions where defensive coordinators were changed: 1985 - Ken Donohue replaced Larry Marmie, 1989 Doug Mathews replaced Ken Donohue and 1990 Larry Lacewell replaced Doug Mathews on each occasion the Vols won the SEC championship and subsequent bowl game (two Sugars and one Cotton) the only three of Coach John Majors head coaching career with the Volunteers.
Only time will tell
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