Coach Doug Mathews Thoughts on OC

#27
#27
coffeevol said:
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 x’s and o’s”.

Since this is somewhat of an opinion newsletter let me share Chalk Talk’s thoughts on the change in offensive coordinator/play caller. Several things concerned me with last year’s 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 don’t 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 can’t 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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Great post. Carpal tunnel therapy may be in your future(hope not). :thumbsup:
 
#28
#28
seerob22 said:
I think our OC might have been "encouraged" to leave.
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I've been saying that. No money was thrown at him that I know or heard of to keep him to stay. No rumblings of him being begged to stay cause he was just so awesome at his job. His comments were spot on. Our power game was pathetic. ...3 and 1 we go 4 wide. Red zone got worse. Failure get ball to your play makers. And frankly we avoided middle of field to much where in certain games could have won it for us....aka uga game hit it early and had success and quit till 4th quarter where last drive or so went back to it and pushed ball down field in big way.....qb management or lack there of...maybe jake didn't want to tweak his offense.....or maybe butch doesn't want to and jake does. Who knows. Keeping Dobbs off field....crazy.....who made that decision.....who knows but I think there were issues here and is why Jake moved on just my opinion.
 
#29
#29
KingtUT said:
Do you really consider being the QB coach of the Tampa bay bucks a promotion from being the oc at UT?

I just don't.
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It may not be a promotion, but it is a good career move. If he can turn Mariota into a good NFL QB, bigger opportunities will follow.
 
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#30
#30
Great read.. n again he is saying the same thing that many posters have said all yr...but but... we know nothing because we r not employed by the university...

Sunshine sheep read it and realize that maybe its not negativity but good observations of intelligent vol fans.... lol.

Now back to the oc rumors..
 
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#32
#32
CountVolcula said:
Of course he was

Some of us weren't the only people to see something was wrong.
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Yeah, some plays that were being called on offense this passed year had a lot of heads from fans being scratched to the tune of wtf was that all about. I know I was hollering at the OC coach during the games for calling stupid bone-headed plays that got no yardage or a sack. I for one am glad the dude's gone. But I wish him luck at his new job tho. :)
 
#33
#33
I find it interesting that Coach Jake went somewhere that CBJ has had long standing ties. Have the bucs had a QB coach in the past?
 
#35
#35
Yankee_Vol said:
Is there a cliff notes version?
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Oh....the OP is sorry there isn't a Sponge Bob Square Pants version for you.

Perhaps that would have suited you better....you know... some 1 or 2 line sarcastic synopsis that appeals to 3rd - 7th graders.
 
#36
#36
I don’t 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

This drove me crazy as well. When all three were healthy, North, Pearson and Howard were our best receivers, but they were hardly on the field at the same time. Too many substitution packages that put your studs on the sidelines in crucial situations. Put your best players on the field and don't take them off until they start puking.
 
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#37
#37
seerob22 said:
I think our OC might have been "encouraged" to leave.
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I doubt it. Odd timing if so.

Coach Jake has 3 young kids. Recruiting is a 24/7/365 job. Think he saw an opportunity to take an attractive position (coaching one of the top QBs in this year's draft), while getting to spend more time with his family. The fact that he had little interest in the Central Michigan vacancy suggests this, as well.
 
#38
#38
I say hire coach Z and keep the same offense. The offense is fine, just needs some minor changes and maybe a different guy calling the plays.
 
#39
#39
Vol Catdaddy said:
This is huge! I think we need a more physical game plan when we get in the red zone. Thats how OSU was able to get Oregon when they pounded the ball.
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Wonder if watching that power running out of a similar system started a conversation between Butch and Jake? Leading to talk of a philosophy change that made the Tampa Bay Bucs QB coach job more attractive...just scattershooting. :question:
 
#40
#40
pastorlee said:
I don’t 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

This drove me crazy as well. When all three were healthy, North, Pearson and Howard were our best receivers, but they were hardly on the field at the same time. Too many substitution packages that put your studs on the sidelines in crucial situations. Put your best players on the field and don't take them off until they start puking.
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Since North, Pearson, and Howard were only healthy and playing together in two games this year it was kind of tough to have them all on the field at the same time.
 
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#41
#41
armchair said:
Glad to read that he, too, was puzzled by the decision not to play Dobbs until Worley got hurt. To run a read-option offense and not play Dobbs--at least see what he could do-- was pretty stupid.

I dispute his idea that UT didn't use its playmakers enough last year. In fact, the offense leaned heavily on Hurd, Howard and then Dobbs. Anybody else who might have been a playmaker got hurt or simply wasn't that effective.
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Agreed, and I was very worried about Hurd. If he wen't down, our running game was gone. I felt like they ran him too much, but it was out of necessity. Look at GA -- they had a great running game and distributed the touches between 3 backs -- even when Gurley was in the game.
 
#43
#43
I think the problem with the run game last year was pointed out during the telecast of the bowl game. Whenever we run straight ahead, the RB lines up about a yard behind the QB and is staggered to one side or the other. Whenever we were running to the edges, the RB lined up next to the QB. Of course we try to fix this by running the fly sweeps, but those have a fairly low success rate. I think a little more motion to the backfield would help this problem, similar to what Auburn does. At the very least, the motion creates potential mismatches and it also gives the QB more options and the defense more players in the backfield to keep an eye on. Anyone else notice this?
 
#44
#44
92volalum said:
Great read.. n again he is saying the same thing that many posters have said all yr...but but... we know nothing because we r not employed by the university...

Sunshine sheep read it and realize that maybe its not negativity but good observations of intelligent vol fans.... lol.

Now back to the oc rumors..
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I call it constructive criticism .
 
#45
#45
We had QB issues, a bad offensive line, lots of injuries to the wide receivers. Didn't get the ball to our playmakers? I think we did. Bajakian might have messed up the decision about who to play at QB, but I don't know that he can take a lot of blame for offensive issues--except maybe for the florida debacle. It's hard to get much done when you've got offensive line problems as we had last year. If Jones in fact encouraged Bajakian to leave--and then brings in Debord, well, that would be a huge head-scratcher.
 
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#46
#46
pastorlee said:
I don’t 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

This drove me crazy as well. When all three were healthy, North, Pearson and Howard were our best receivers, but they were hardly on the field at the same time. Too many substitution packages that put your studs on the sidelines in crucial situations. Put your best players on the field and don't take them off until they start puking.
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Didn't North go out with an injury about the same time Pearson came back from his?
 
#47
#47
KingtUT said:
Do you really consider being the QB coach of the Tampa bay bucks a promotion from being the oc at UT?

I just don't.
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UT to pros with Mariota to work with? Ummmmm, yes. Especially given where this program has been the previous 6 years.
 
#48
#48
armchair said:
Glad to read that he, too, was puzzled by the decision not to play Dobbs until Worley got hurt. To run a read-option offense and not play Dobbs--at least see what he could do-- was pretty stupid.

I dispute his idea that UT didn't use its playmakers enough last year. In fact, the offense leaned heavily on Hurd, Howard and then Dobbs. Anybody else who might have been a playmaker got hurt or simply wasn't that effective.
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I'm not stupid. But the one thing Dobbs has not shown is a great ability in passing. Unless you are Tim Tebow you are going to have to be able pass downfield accurately. Dobbs has not shown this ability yet (He may).

The other thing is the top wide receiver play makers got hurt and couldn't play. So at the end of the season we were dipping down into the 2nd and 3rd string receivers!!

What running backs? We have Jalen Hurd. I guess you could have ran him 25 - 30 times a game. Would he have made it through the season? With that offensive line who knows, I doubt it.

Why Bajakian left at this time is puzzling. In the end it will be good. He obviously didn't want to be here or Butch didn't want him here. And is the QB coach for Tampa Bay better than Head Coach at Central Michigan or OC at Tennessee? Doesn't sound like a great move up to me.

I guess I'm questioning Doug Mathews on when were these play makers not used?

And my belief is this, a pro style passing QB with athletic skills is your best option. NOT a great athletic QB with limited passing skills.

When has a champion in the NFL or College Football didn't have a good to great pocket passing QB?
 
#49
#49
Just curious. Did mathews call for Dobbs the whole time?
Or did he do as so many here did, Use the amazing power of hindsight to declare knowledge.
 
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