College football first-year coach grades

#77
#77
To be fair, perhaps some of these coaches asked at the beginning of the semester and were told it was non-testable...
 
#78
#78
BigOrangeMojo said:
A C+ is way too generous given the way we lost the last 2 games......
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Pruitt was left with a dog***t roster with underdeveloped and entitled players with a losing mentally, a bad OL who could dominate a Sun Belt team at best, and taking over for the POS that caused the worst season in our history.

Despite the horrible losses to Vandy and Mizzou, we beat two top 20 teams in Auburn and Kentucky and came very close to beating a good Carolina team on the road. Many expected us to go 3-9, or worse. And we have slowly improved in some areas. Some of you expected for us to compete for the SEC East right away like Kirby Smart, even though he was left with great talent while Pruitt was left with a team with few blue chippers and mostly a roster of Sun Belt players.

I didn't expect to go in the season to compete for the East. That was asking for too much. Many of you got your expectations too high for a huge letdown when it didn't happen. With our schedule and what we had, I think that a C+ is very reasonable.
 
#80
#80
Let me clarify at least my feelings on this. Of course I am disappointed in the Vandy game result. Of course I wanted a bowl game. But it wasn't surprising to me to see this team fall short. And solely blaming Pruitt for it is asinine, in my opinion. The dude has a garbage roster. Look at the depth chart going into the Vandy game. It is an absolute mess. I believe he did the best he could, with what he had, for them to beat Auburn at Jordan-Hare and a 2 loss UK at the time.

Last year, this board was full of hate for Butch and the players that had clearly given up. You guys expect the dude who was hired after a dumpster fire of a coaching search to come in and motivate guys who are more than likely done with football completely? ****, look at all the Drew Richmond hate currently going on. You expect these players to be motivated after you sit here and **** on them?
 
#84
#84
GreGGo said:
A majority of this forum has no basis in reality. 6-6 was the ceiling this year and they fell one game short because half the roster couldn't care less.
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If we had went 12-1 and won the East, our fans would be in tears of joy.

Saying otherwise is just stupid.
 
#85
#85
Brave Volunteer said:
1. If we played Vandy like we played against KY I do not believe we would have lost. So it's hard to answer that question.

2. Losing to Vanderbilt is complete and utter nonsense, regardless of the year, and yes, I do believe we had enough talent on this team to beat them. Lack of talent got us beat against teams like Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, and Florida. It did not get us beat against Vandy.
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The biggest issue I have with your analysis is the match ups. We beat two teams with lesser quarterbacks in Kentucky and Auburn. Most teams with real quarterbacks chewed us up. Matchups are key to determining the type of game and final score. Vandy and Missouri were horrible match ups for us and the score showed....just like last year.
 
#87
#87
Honestly, a D is generous for Kevin Sumlin. It wouldn't be out of bounds to give him an F.

He got a lot of players back from last year's 6-6 team and a dynamic QB tailor-made for his offense and ended up one game worse at 5-7.
 
#88
#88
As a note on improvements, we were outscored this year by 62 points on the season. Last year was 111. Seems to me we got 2 more SEC wins and better point differential this year.

In an ironic twist, we only had about 15 fewer points scored on us but managed to score nearly 50 more points.
 
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#89
#89
Samuellbronkowitz said:
Pruitt was left with a dog***t roster with underdeveloped and entitled players with a losing mentally, a bad OL who could dominate a Sun Belt team at best, and taking over for the POS that caused the worst season in our history.

Despite the horrible losses to Vandy and Mizzou, we beat two top 20 teams in Auburn and Kentucky and came very close to beating a good Carolina team on the road. Many expected us to go 3-9, or worse. And we have slowly improved in some areas. Some of you expected for us to compete for the SEC East right away like Kirby Smart, even though he was left with great talent while Pruitt was left with a team with few blue chippers and mostly a roster of Sun Belt players.

I didn't expect to go in the season to compete for the East. That was asking for too much. Many of you got your expectations too high for a huge letdown when it didn't happen. With our schedule and what we had, I think that a C+ is very reasonable.
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So Auburn and Kentucky must be terrible to have lost to this "dog***t roster with underdeveloped and entitled players with a losing mentally", right? Since they were so bad to lose to us, those couldn't be quality wins at all, right?
 
#90
#90
BeardedVol said:
So Auburn and Kentucky must be terrible to have lost to this "dog***t roster with underdeveloped and entitled players with a losing mentally", right? Since they were so bad to lose to us, those couldn't be quality wins at all, right?
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Ah, but you guys want to blame Pruitt for Vandy-Mizzou without giving him credit for Auburn-UK.
 
#91
#91
dduncan4163 said:
College football first-year coach grades: Florida's Dan Mullen gets an 'A,' UCLA's Chip Kelly does not


Jeremy Pruitt 5-7.... There were bright moments, like the win at Auburn, and awful ones like losing to Missouri and Vanderbilt to close out the season. Baby steps and patience, Vols fans. C+


That's about right imo. The late losses sting hard but beating a ranked Auburn and Kentucky is still pretty damn sweet. All in all it was a decent first year for Pruitt.
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I believe this is fair and about right.
 
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#92
#92
GreGGo said:
Ah, but you guys want to blame Pruitt for Vandy-Mizzou without giving him credit for Auburn-UK.
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Cant have it both ways. If the roster is so utterly devoid of talent that losing to Vandy should have been expected, then Auburn and Kentucky are terrible as well to have lost to us, and we have zero quality wins.
 
#94
#94
It does seem like most people agree somewhere between D and C with C+ being a little generous. I am not sure the difference is worth arguing especially since it will not change any games. We will need to see what happy next year. Just like Butch before Pruitt, there are some warning flags with Pruitt from this year that are worth monitoring in the coming 2 years. These could be valid or outliers and we will not know until we play more games.
 
#95
#95
spyfish007 said:
It does seem like most people agree somewhere between D and C with C+ being a little generous. I am not sure the difference is worth arguing especially since it will not change any games. We will need to see what happy next year. Just like Butch before Pruitt, there are some warning flags with Pruitt from this year that are worth monitoring in the coming 2 years. These could be valid or outliers and we will not know until we play more games.
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Admittedly I do tend to look at these situations a little more "black and white" than others might. I just know that in the end, coaches are judged on wins and losses. The circumstances behind those wins and losses hold very little weight in the grand scheme of things. For me, going by OUR standards, I just cannot give a passing grade to a coach that fails to even get to 6 and 6 and reach a damn bowl. This should be the absolute sub-basement floor for a program like ours. Tennessee should never miss going to a bowl, and it damn sure should never lose to Vanderbilt. Failing to do both of these things for our program is utter nonsense.
 
#96
#96
Jack Burton said:
Could have been a 9 win team is fantasy. They were a 5 win team when we played. It’s not like we played Alabama.

If that’s the best we can expect from this staff with our talent then get ready for another 4 or 5 wins next season because this roster isn’t getting overhauled enough to make up for this lack of talent. We’ll have new players but they’ll be freshmen.
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You dont pay much attention anyone other than UT do ya? Vandy had Notre Dame beat until late in the fourth quarter. Kentucky was tied late in the 4th and same for Missouri. So if you take those 3 games and get a couple breaks then their 6 wins becomes 9 wins. Aint math grand!!
 
#97
#97
To me, the grading scale for our coach and team should be something like this…



A+ Win the SEC Championship and win the Natty

A Win the SEC Championship but lose in the playoffs

A- Lose the SEC Championship but win a major new years day bowl

B+ Finish 2nd in the SEC East but win a solid new years day bowl

B Finish 2nd in the SEC East but lose a solid bowl game

B- Finish 3rd in the SEC East but win a decent bowl game

C+ Finish 3rd in the SEC East but lose a decent bowl game

C: Finish 4th in the SEC East but win a crappy bowl game

C- Finish 4th in the SEC East but lose a crappy bowl game

D+ Finish 5th in the SEC East but win an even crappier bowl game

D Finish 5th in the SEC East but lose an even crappier bowl game


Anything worse than these, we are probably finishing at best 5-7 and not reaching a bowl at all. Like I said, any season that results in us losing to Vandy and not reaching a bowl game is an automatic fail IMO.
 
#99
#99
piratelifeforme said:
You dont pay much attention anyone other than UT do ya? Vandy had Notre Dame beat until late in the fourth quarter. Kentucky was tied late in the 4th and same for Missouri. So if you take those 3 games and get a couple breaks then their 6 wins becomes 9 wins. Aint math grand!!
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#100
#100
GreGGo said:
We could hire Nick ****ing Saban, him go 12-1, and yall would still find a way to bitch about the loss.
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People say stuff like this all the time, but no one is upset about not competing for the SEC title this year.

A bowl game and a win over Vandy were not exactly daring to dream the impossible dream
 
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