Much debated/maligned class of ‘17

[05_never_again]

The Bob Shoop years in Knoxville have mystified me. Culture and players not physically ready to play are the only explanations for the product on the field. Shoop is a great coach.

Was he ordered to have zero public presence during those two seasons? Because ESPN and CBS both tend to highlight coordinators during games and there was never even a shot of him during any of those games, and simply brief mentions of his experience with Vandy and PennSt.

I'm not sure about the zero public presence; he definitely had some. He was made available to the media quite often (his explanation for the Florida Hail Mary in 2017 was particularly revealing) and I remember shots of him in the coaching box up top during games.

I think there were multiple things that led to his demise:

1 - I don't think a single Shoop assistant came over from PSU.
2 - He perpetually had to deal with a ton of injuries during his time here
3- Correct me if I'm wrong, Shoop ran a lot of 4-2-5, which isn't his base defense. I think he was doing that because of injuries + he never quite had the personnel he thought he need to run a 4-3. Or perhaps he ran a lot of 4-2-5 Penn St and at Miss St too, I'm not sure. Regardless, it seemed like he was always trying to "make do" with that he had.

 

[JonGrudensAgent]

I think this is partly true.

But the other part of the formula was that some of his staff coaches at Cincy and the early years at UT were reasonably good. Bajakian was underrated as was Azzanni. Note that while the 2013 and 2014 teams didn't have a ton of talent, they played very disciplined, particularly that 2014 team.

The more times Butch had to replace people on staff, the worse his teams played. When Bajakian left, he replaced him with Debord, who was good at game-planning, but all the sudden our mental mistakes seemed to surge (more penalties, more turnovers). And when Debord left, he was replaced with Larry Scott, who wasn't really good at anything other than recruiting. When Azzanni left, Butch made a very disastrous hire of Kevin Beard. When Butch ditched Mahoney, he made a disastrous hire of Walt Wells.

And then of course, Butch ran off our S&C coach in Dave Lawson and that's when things really turned south. Suddenly half our roster was out of shape and then the number of injuries started to surge.

So it was a combo of things IMO. And then just throw in the fact that he simply "gave up" sometime around late 2016, so that it felt like he wasn't even trying any more. The fact that he refuses to take a job above "Saban's intern" right now really says a lot to me; dude made his millions and doesn't really want to work any more.

Don't forget bringing in noted QB guru and all around offensive genius, Mike Canales, of North Texas fame.

Personally think if Jones would have been less insecure and hired better assistants, he might have made it here.

Instead of hiring the Best Staff In America, he ended up hiring probably the 8th best staff in Texas.