MikeHamiltonFan
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Dear fellow Vols fans,
While this year has been very difficult, it is going to get much better. It will get better this season, because the coaches will develop the players even more, and our level of competition is going down. Yet even with 4 wins in our last 6 games, we will really be hurting from the lumps we take this year and yet...
Help is on the way!
If you play college football video games you are familiar with the points system. Lets eschew letter grades and just go with echelons in CFB talent currently.
Florida and Alabama have top 5 talent nationally. They both have more talent than almost any team they face. Florida's talent is young, but they just had one of the finest defensive classes on paper in the history of CFB.
Auburn and UGA and SC and LSU and Arkansas.
I submit that these 5 teams all have top 20 talent nationally. When you have studs like Lattimore and Jeffrey come to SC, it only matters if you have the talent on the line to go with them. They do. Each of these teams has outstanding players we all know will be in the NFL. Cameron Newton wanted to come to TN but he would have been scrambling a lot more for our team. Switch he and Simms and Auburn has more losses but I am not sure if TN has more than 1 more win.
Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State.
Yes we are in the bottom tier talent wise. Whose fault is that?
Phillip Fulmer...
http://www.volnation.com/forum/tennessee-vols-football/112162-fulmers-last-two-classes.html
This is a good thread about it, but in summary, TN has from one recruiting class that are now seniors:
Kevin Cooper a serviceable FB
Gerald Jones, a WR who calls out the freshman OL but who drops balls that hit his hands
Denarius Moore who has been good at WR
Luke Stocker who was supposed to be AA and who cannot make a catch this year if the ball is thrown behind him (Jason Witten would have made almost everyone one of the grabs Stocker dropped as a college player)
Lamarcus Thompson pretty good LB but misses tackles after all this time. Has let multiple QBs get away from him, most recently a white guy who is about as fleet of foot as Manning.
Chris Walker an emotional leader.
Nick Reveiz a guy whose score football IQ wise is off the chart but whose body made him a walk on.
Gerald Williams who has yet to make an impact
Tyler Wolf...trying his best...
The rest are not worth mentioning.
In our junior class with his pedigree I hope Ben Bartholomew will do something.
Art Evans is getting replaced as soon as the recruits hit town.
Rae Sykes is vying to be the new Chris Donald, a disappearing man with sick athletic ability.
Tauren Poole runs very hard and is fun to watch but not in the building with Dyer and Lattimore talent wise.
Austin Johnson may end up being a very solid player...
That is it! Do you understand how bad that is?
Fulmer had two whole classes where he missed over and over and over on OL and DL. If we kept him as some on here argue we should have, he would still have been decimated by the awful recruiting on the line over that time period.
I read people talking about Crowder getting redshirted and I laugh. Crowder will be a starting C over Pope and Gooch from day 1. Gooch was a desperation scholly because we needed depth so badly and we may take another JUCO center again this year but Crowder barring injury will start.
We have one DT in Montori Hughes. Gabe Wright would come in and start immediately.
Eddrick Loften is closer to Janzen Jackson than any of the guys we have in the secondary today.
Help is on the way!
When Wilcox replaces:
A former track guy Minor Bowens who last played football at Tennessee State (!) with a 4 star DT, we will see huge improvement in the pass rush.
A guy who cannot hold onto balls that hit him in the hands with a ball hawking stud who likes to hit people.
A small and hardworking LB group with a large one that is slightly faster and has no bad habits to break.
We will start to see the defense that beat Oregon with 2 and 3 stars.
When Chaney:
Has a center who does not SUCK.
Has a left tackle who can stay in front of a defender.
Has a QB who takes less than 5 seconds to make a throw.
Has a skat back/returner who does not drop the ball and who can bust a long one when things are blocked perfectly instead of getting run down from behind.
and has another year of maturity for Justin Hunter and Da'Rick Rogers and Matt Milton...our offense will start scoring 35 plus a game even against the good defenses.
Help is on the way!
The players Dooley is recruiting now (with a few exceptions I will not name) are not Forrest Gump. Fulmer had guys who scored a 12 on the ACT the first time, and he did not realize that his offensive linemen were not capable of learning the Clawfense. We had lots of guys who struggled to learn the playbook and people would ask "what happened to so and so" and no one would say "he cannot read and he cannot learn to play his position".
Dooley is recruiting guys who are high character, who are intelligent and who can flat out play football.
Janzen Jackson, Jujuan James and Justin Hunter are superstars in the making. We have some other talent but those 3 stand out clearly. We are going to bring in more like them. If a team with better talent has some turnovers and mistakes, a team with lesser talent can win if they avoid the same. Right now I fear Alabama could spot us 5 turnovers and still beat us. Dooley is getting our talent turned around so that will not be the case by 2012. We will be by 2012 the equal to everyone in the SEC except for Florida and Alabama talent wise.
Dooley is in the toughest conference in America but by 2012 we will be back in the top 25 and we will talent wise be back in the top 20. Our current junior or senior class would rank somewhere in the 70s nationally in talent, while our freshmen and sophomore would rank in the 30s. If Dooley can get us back to the 20s and 30s TN football will be just fine moving forward.
Stay with our coach, brighter days are coming because:
Help is on the way!
While this year has been very difficult, it is going to get much better. It will get better this season, because the coaches will develop the players even more, and our level of competition is going down. Yet even with 4 wins in our last 6 games, we will really be hurting from the lumps we take this year and yet...
Help is on the way!
If you play college football video games you are familiar with the points system. Lets eschew letter grades and just go with echelons in CFB talent currently.
Florida and Alabama have top 5 talent nationally. They both have more talent than almost any team they face. Florida's talent is young, but they just had one of the finest defensive classes on paper in the history of CFB.
Auburn and UGA and SC and LSU and Arkansas.
I submit that these 5 teams all have top 20 talent nationally. When you have studs like Lattimore and Jeffrey come to SC, it only matters if you have the talent on the line to go with them. They do. Each of these teams has outstanding players we all know will be in the NFL. Cameron Newton wanted to come to TN but he would have been scrambling a lot more for our team. Switch he and Simms and Auburn has more losses but I am not sure if TN has more than 1 more win.
Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State.
Yes we are in the bottom tier talent wise. Whose fault is that?
Phillip Fulmer...
http://www.volnation.com/forum/tennessee-vols-football/112162-fulmers-last-two-classes.html
This is a good thread about it, but in summary, TN has from one recruiting class that are now seniors:
Kevin Cooper a serviceable FB
Gerald Jones, a WR who calls out the freshman OL but who drops balls that hit his hands
Denarius Moore who has been good at WR
Luke Stocker who was supposed to be AA and who cannot make a catch this year if the ball is thrown behind him (Jason Witten would have made almost everyone one of the grabs Stocker dropped as a college player)
Lamarcus Thompson pretty good LB but misses tackles after all this time. Has let multiple QBs get away from him, most recently a white guy who is about as fleet of foot as Manning.
Chris Walker an emotional leader.
Nick Reveiz a guy whose score football IQ wise is off the chart but whose body made him a walk on.
Gerald Williams who has yet to make an impact
Tyler Wolf...trying his best...
The rest are not worth mentioning.
In our junior class with his pedigree I hope Ben Bartholomew will do something.
Art Evans is getting replaced as soon as the recruits hit town.
Rae Sykes is vying to be the new Chris Donald, a disappearing man with sick athletic ability.
Tauren Poole runs very hard and is fun to watch but not in the building with Dyer and Lattimore talent wise.
Austin Johnson may end up being a very solid player...
That is it! Do you understand how bad that is?
Fulmer had two whole classes where he missed over and over and over on OL and DL. If we kept him as some on here argue we should have, he would still have been decimated by the awful recruiting on the line over that time period.
I read people talking about Crowder getting redshirted and I laugh. Crowder will be a starting C over Pope and Gooch from day 1. Gooch was a desperation scholly because we needed depth so badly and we may take another JUCO center again this year but Crowder barring injury will start.
We have one DT in Montori Hughes. Gabe Wright would come in and start immediately.
Eddrick Loften is closer to Janzen Jackson than any of the guys we have in the secondary today.
Help is on the way!
When Wilcox replaces:
A former track guy Minor Bowens who last played football at Tennessee State (!) with a 4 star DT, we will see huge improvement in the pass rush.
A guy who cannot hold onto balls that hit him in the hands with a ball hawking stud who likes to hit people.
A small and hardworking LB group with a large one that is slightly faster and has no bad habits to break.
We will start to see the defense that beat Oregon with 2 and 3 stars.
When Chaney:
Has a center who does not SUCK.
Has a left tackle who can stay in front of a defender.
Has a QB who takes less than 5 seconds to make a throw.
Has a skat back/returner who does not drop the ball and who can bust a long one when things are blocked perfectly instead of getting run down from behind.
and has another year of maturity for Justin Hunter and Da'Rick Rogers and Matt Milton...our offense will start scoring 35 plus a game even against the good defenses.
Help is on the way!
The players Dooley is recruiting now (with a few exceptions I will not name) are not Forrest Gump. Fulmer had guys who scored a 12 on the ACT the first time, and he did not realize that his offensive linemen were not capable of learning the Clawfense. We had lots of guys who struggled to learn the playbook and people would ask "what happened to so and so" and no one would say "he cannot read and he cannot learn to play his position".
Dooley is recruiting guys who are high character, who are intelligent and who can flat out play football.
Janzen Jackson, Jujuan James and Justin Hunter are superstars in the making. We have some other talent but those 3 stand out clearly. We are going to bring in more like them. If a team with better talent has some turnovers and mistakes, a team with lesser talent can win if they avoid the same. Right now I fear Alabama could spot us 5 turnovers and still beat us. Dooley is getting our talent turned around so that will not be the case by 2012. We will be by 2012 the equal to everyone in the SEC except for Florida and Alabama talent wise.
Dooley is in the toughest conference in America but by 2012 we will be back in the top 25 and we will talent wise be back in the top 20. Our current junior or senior class would rank somewhere in the 70s nationally in talent, while our freshmen and sophomore would rank in the 30s. If Dooley can get us back to the 20s and 30s TN football will be just fine moving forward.
Stay with our coach, brighter days are coming because:
Help is on the way!
k:
