Did 5-7 record really reflect talent?

#1
Dr Dread

Dr Dread

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#1
Most of the pre-season predictions that I've seen, as well as numerous posts on the forums have the Vols hoping for a bowl game; and view a 9-4 record as quite a bit of over-achieving for the upcomming season. They often site last season's 5-7 record, and a lack of talent as reasons for thier opinions. But after seeing turn-around the vols made the season after they brought Coach Cut back, I have to ask this question.

How much was last season's 5-7 record a reflection of talent, and how much did it reflect coaching?
 
#2
#2
Good question.
I have been wondering this myself. I think it is obvious that the "Clawfense" at least played a role in the debacle that was 2008. The question is to what degree was the "Clawfense" responsible?

Cromptons performance was bad and there is no way around that. He missed passes by 7 yards, some passes that any college QB should be able to make.

This made the receivers look worse than they are.

As far as the O line, the word is they never understood Clawsons blocking schemes.

In my opinion (and hope) the Clawfense was mostly responsible for the pathetic offense we saw last year.
If Cut was still around we have a 2 or 3 loss season.
 
#3
#3
According to Eric Berry in the VQ interview that was posted this morning, there is a lot of talent on the team and they are 10 times more comfortable now than they were at this time last year. I tend to believe that guy.
 
#4
#4
personnally....the answer is yes and no.

no. because, everyone believes they were better than wyoming and ucla. auburn and tennessee were twin brothers (both could claim they were better than what they played like).

yes. because the fact that it was possible to lose to wyoming and be in a dogfight with northern illinois tells me something else was a problem. the mid to late 90's tennessee teams beat those teams in a blowout in their street clothes even if paris hilton were coaching the team.

in addition, certain things have been a problem at tennessee for a while now. they haven't had a great offensive line that knocked snot bubbles in the other team's defensive front for a while. they haven't had explosive players at the skill positions for a few years either.

so, i think the talent level is better than the record they obtained in 2008. but, i do think the talent level is closer to the bottom half of the SEC as opposed to the top half of the SEC.
 
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#5
#5
With the spirit of your question.

Last year our offense linemen have said in interviews that they were uncomfortable and often did not know what they were doing. The clawfense seemed to confuse and frustrate our players so that we could not score 40 against Maryville College.

Also we do not have to deal with fumbles at key points in the game from our RB over and over and over.

I think this team will be significantly better. Our O Line will seem better to everyone when they are just setting up (as skinnier and more in shape men) and blasting people. I think our QB will look better and I even believe Crompton will be drafted. When that happens everyone on here will say, "well I always said he was talented."

Brandon Warren instead of unused TE becoming regularly thrown to WR who can throw off of him any 1 on 1 DB including in the SEC? Great stuff.

Nukeese will look like Percy Harvin looked his freshman year. Bryce Brown will look like Jamal Lewis looked his freshman year. Can you guys see how important that is? Jamal did not play against UF because Fulmer loves seniors and because he did not know all the blitz pick ups. Kiffin has already said that will not keep our freshmen out.
 
#6
#6
Short answer: UT had the talent to be a 7-5 or maybe 8-4 team last year.
 
#8
#8
Lexvol said:
Short answer: UT had the talent to be a 7-5 or maybe 8-4 team last year.
Click to expand...

Agreed . . . Seeing the way they dumbed down the offense at the end of the year and beat Kentucky and Vandy proved that. We possibly could have squeezed out 2-3 wins against UCLA, Auburn and Wyoming playing that way earlier in the year.

Of course, it's easy to say that now. I think the coaches were honestly caught off guard by how bad the QB and o-line play was.
 
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#9
#9
Dr Dread said:
How much was last season's 5-7 record a reflection of talent, and how much did it reflect coaching?
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question could be asked of 2007 season also. Talent was not reflected of a 10-4 record and playing for SEC championship. Luck played a huge part in 10 wins and saving the coaching staff from being let go after 2007.

3 missed field goals versus UK, Vandy and S Carolina kept record from being 6-6..

Maybe the talent was 5-7 level last year...
 
#10
#10
GAVol said:
Agreed . . . Seeing the way they dumbed down the offense at the end of the year and beat Kentucky and Vandy proved that. We possibly could have squeezed out 2-3 wins against UCLA, Auburn and Wyoming playing that way earlier in the year.

Of course, it's easy to say that now. I think the coaches were honestly caught off guard by how bad the QB and o-line play was.
Click to expand...

UCLA, Wyoming, and Auburn were all games we should have won with any offense. Auburn's offense was as inept as ours.
 
#11
#11
Well, it did reflect how truly awful both our entire offense and our quarterback play were last year
 
#12
#12
Everybody who wants to blame Dave Clawson for last year needs to go back and watch the 2007 game against Alabama again. Our offense did a pretty good job of being horrible when it counted even under the direction of the sainted Dave Cutcliffe.

Clawson was not good here, that's for sure. But it sure isn't like he came into a good situation and wrecked it.
 
#13
#13
I think that the talent is there, it was just a total breakdown of discipline for the most part.
 
#14
#14
Vercingetorix said:
Everybody who wants to blame Dave Clawson for last year needs to go back and watch the 2007 game against Alabama again. Our offense did a pretty good job of being horrible when it counted even under the direction of the sainted Dave Cutcliffe.

Clawson was not good here, that's for sure. But it sure isn't like he came into a good situation and wrecked it.
Click to expand...

You're really going to compare one bad game to an entire bad season. A game from a season where the offense could actually move the ball, and passed for over 3600 yards and 33tds to a one where the team as a whole threw for 1750 yards, 8 tds, and 9 ints all season? The most any qb on his own reached last year was in the 800s while Ainge was throwing in the 3600s.

We went from being ranked in the 20s in passing and dropped down to 109. We were certainly not a Texas Tech or Oklahoma situation, but he certainly did come into a pretty good situation and make the offense god awful
 
#15
#15
TrueOrange said:
You're really going to compare one bad game to an entire bad season. A game from a season where the offense could actually move the ball, and passed for over 3600 yards and 33tds to a one where the team as a whole threw for 1750 yards, 8 tds, and 9 ints all season? The most any qb on his own reached last year was in the 800s while Ainge was throwing in the 3600s.

We went from being ranked in the 20s in passing and dropped down to 109. We were certainly not a Texas Tech or Oklahoma situation, but he certainly did come into a pretty good situation and make the offense god awful
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Very true. I would say that having a 36th ranked offense with 44 TDs in 2006 and a 54th ranked offense with 56 TDs in 2007 are pretty good situations. I would expect a drop off because we did lose some key players on offense. However, dropping to 115th with 26 TDs would be considered "wrecking" it to me. I'm not saying it's all Clawson's fault, but I do believe coaching had a lot to do with it.
 
#16
#16
We underachieved. Did Utah have a great talent advantage over Bama? And speaking of Bama, in 07 we gave their go-to wr, Hall, a 10 yd cushion and seemed shocked that they would throw it to him time after time. Is that lack of talent by us? We were also shocked when Bama successfully attempted a self-kick on their opening kickoff. We were caught off-guard every time LSU tried a fake punt against us in recent years.
 
#17
#17
Trust In Eric Berry...
People have to realize that we've got a lot of talent on this team. Yeah, we had a 5-6 season, or whatever it was, last year, and a lot of people are dwelling on it. But we have a lot of talent on this team, and that's what people don't understand. It really makes me mad when people just say I'm the only one on the field, or I'm the only one doing this. I just feel like we're going to have to shock the world this year and just prove everyone wrong," Berry said with as much pique as you'll ever see from him in an interview.

"You can look at our defense last year. We were, like, (No.) 3 or 4 in the nation. The talent was there. We stopped people. I guess we just lacked focus at the end of the games or whatever. We didn't have any blowout games. The talent's here. Just mark my words. We're going to prove some people wrong this year."

I believe whatever that man says!
 
#18
#18
Currently, IMO, we have the talent to be a middle of the pack SEC team that has the capability to upset 1 maybe 2 upper tier teams. That's mainly in part to the HORRIBLE offensive recruiting we have done in the past 5 years. For those 5 years, most of our players never really turned out special, and most faded away after college and really haven't been thought of since. I miss the days of the Cedric Wilson's, Marcus Nash's, and the Peerless Price's. I think though, with some wins and the coaching staff we have we can get a few of those players here and there which will help us out tremendously.
 
#19
#19
Eric, I don't dispute your main point, but think that even guys like Chris Hannon and Brett (Smith?) had more talent than what we managed to wring out of them.
 
#20
#20
5-7 did not reflect talent. The year before we went to the SEC champ game and almost beat NC champs LSU. It was clearly coaching. Mainly Fulmer hiring Clawson. Play calling was clearly a problem for offense.
 
#21
#21
Vercingetorix said:
Everybody who wants to blame Dave Clawson for last year needs to go back and watch the 2007 game against Alabama again. Our offense did a pretty good job of being horrible when it counted even under the direction of the sainted Dave Cutcliffe.

Clawson was not good here, that's for sure. But it sure isn't like he came into a good situation and wrecked it.
Click to expand...

For the record, I'm not blaming Clawson. I'm just saying the offense was inept. I agree that there were a lot of contributing factors.
 
#22
#22
TrueOrange said:
You're really going to compare one bad game to an entire bad season. A game from a season where the offense could actually move the ball, and passed for over 3600 yards and 33tds to a one where the team as a whole threw for 1750 yards, 8 tds, and 9 ints all season? The most any qb on his own reached last year was in the 800s while Ainge was throwing in the 3600s.

We went from being ranked in the 20s in passing and dropped down to 109. We were certainly not a Texas Tech or Oklahoma situation, but he certainly did come into a pretty good situation and make the offense god awful
Click to expand...

A pretty good situation? 2007's offense couldn't do anything against Cal, was totally helpless in Florida and Alabama, took the second half against a bad South Carolina team off, and then could do absolutely nothing for most of three quarters against freaking Kentucky with a trip to the SECCG on the line. Clawson inherited an inconsistent -- and that's being generous -- offense that couldn't run the ball at all. And then lost its senior quarterback.

I'm not defending Clawson; I'm not saying that 2008's offense wasn't unspeakably bad. I'm just saying that pretending that the whole debacle was his fault ignores the stinking mudhole that the program had become in the last half-decade.
 
#23
#23
BigHenry07 said:
Very true. I would say that having a 36th ranked offense with 44 TDs in 2006 and a 54th ranked offense with 56 TDs in 2007 are pretty good situations. I would expect a drop off because we did lose some key players on offense. However, dropping to 115th with 26 TDs would be considered "wrecking" it to me. I'm not saying it's all Clawson's fault, but I do believe coaching had a lot to do with it.
Click to expand...

Taking over the 54th ranked offense is a good situation? And then from that mediocre offense, you lose your senior QB, the guy who did basically everything because you couldn't run the ball at all. That's going to be a challenging situation for any OC, much less somebody who's trying to come in and implement a completely different system.

The long and short of it is that Fulmer hired a guy with a system that takes two years to implement, and it turns out that they didn't have two years to play with.
 
#24
#24
Tennessee was 3 turnovers away from being 8-4.

Tennessee could have literally not thrown the ball and been better off on offense. The O-line lacks the talent it used to have and they had no idea what they were doing last year.

Run blocking was never great in 06,07 or 08 but Ainge did a good job of three step drops and getting rid of the ball. Crompton could not do that so the offense fell to an Un-Godly low.

The coaching wasn't great but the players have to execute.
 
#25
#25
gasguy98 said:
Cromptons performance was bad and there is no way around that. He missed passes by 7 yards, some passes that any college QB should be able to make.

This made the receivers look worse than they are.
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I disagree. At least part of those 7 yard misses were because receivers read the route wrong. With a few exceptions that his haters howled over, JC just took the blame.

It also didn't help that the OL was playing bullfighter... and scheme had little to do with that. They just flat got beat... and often.

Notice where CLK spent much of their time this spring and the one thing he consistently criticized... drop back pass protection.

In my opinion (and hope) the Clawfense was mostly responsible for the pathetic offense we saw last year.
If Cut was still around we have a 2 or 3 loss season.
Click to expand...

Clawson's offense has always taken a little longer to implement and stock with players. When he gets there, it is very good and hard to defend. Unfortunately for him, he had players that didn't handle it all that well, CPF didn't manage the team's attitude well, and.... there just weren't any more second chances left for Fulmer and Co.

BTW, if Cut had been around there would have been an on-going QB controversy that probably wouldn't even be resolved now. I like the guy and respect his work... but Coleman is probably gone now because Cut made him believe he was better than he is.
 
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