Recruiting Forum Football Talk III

[bignewt]

You lost me at Chaney

CHANEY IS AN OVERPAID, OVERRATED HACK WHO SHOULD RETIRE YESTERDAY

 

[butchna]

Why don't any of those guys go to Texas or Big 12 schools though?

They do. Ever catch a NFL draft?

 

[Catbone]

Herman is better than Pruitt for sure, but I think y'all are overhyping a bit

 

[Smokeytom]

Herman with a great DC would be fantastic. He’s underachieved at Texas, but he’s still been pretty dang good. He’s likely learned a hell of a lot, and will get it right at some point down the road.

 

[Kingston Vol]

Herman with a great DC would be fantastic. He’s underachieved at Texas, but he’s still been pretty dang good. He’s likely learned a hell of a lot, and will get it right at some point down the road.

Yeah, with Herman and a few others, I think it's pretty easy to pair them with Kevin Steele and feel good about it.

 

[05_never_again]

They do. Ever catch a NFL draft?

The University of Texas puts large numbers of defensive players into the NFL? That's a new one on me.

Brandon Jones (3)
Charles Omenihu (5)
Kris Boyd (7)
Malik Jefferson (3)
DeShon Elliott (6)
Hassan Ridgeway (4)

That's the last 5 drafts - 6 players total, nothing higher than a mid-round pick.

 

[butchna]

The University of Texas puts large numbers of defensive players into the NFL? That's a new one on me.

Brandon Jones (3)
Charles Omenihu (5)
Kris Boyd (7)
Malik Jefferson (3)
DeShon Elliott (6)
Hassan Ridgeway (4)

That's the last 5 drafts - 6 players total, nothing higher than a mid-round pick.

You said Big 12 and doesn’t this stray from your point that the state doesn’t PRODUCE them?

 

[Newman]

 

[InVOLuntary]

I have no interest in watching this thing go down in flames for the fourth time this decade. If we are not going to make a change, I, along with many others, will find something else to do with my time.

The spinning of the coaching carousel is at least something interesting to ponder. Without it, we have nothing.

Maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but there’s no blind loyalty anymore.

For me I've come to the realization that TN football is done, at least the way we've viewed it in the past. There are too many people in power over there that are completely uninterested in UT football and it's success. If they don't care, why should fans care? I've said for years that they've counted on UT fans to show up come hell or high water, they totally exploited fan loyalty. They've continued to trot out suspect hires under the guise of "given the circumstances, that's the best we could do". They've continued to try and fix UT football by changing out questionable head coaches with other questionable head coaches, knowing that TN fans will always support the new guy. Then after 3-4 years when it becomes clear that another failed hire was made, they plug in another guy that has about a 10% chance of making it past year 4.

Now we find ourselves in the same situation, again. Let's be honest here, Jeremy Pruitt's days here are numbered. Whether he's fired this year or next, he's done. He knows it, fulmer knows it, recruits know it, everyone that gives a dam about UT football knows it. It's just a matter of how much we let it burn before we attempt to put the fire out. My guess is they'll let it burn to the ground again before they do it. That way they can break out the old "that's the best we could do" excuse again.

The huge question is, will the fans come out in numbers, yet again for another coach that has about a 10% chance of making it past year 4? As for me, no. I'll always be a fan. I'll watch from afar. I'll cheer from my sofa for the victories. I'll cuss at the losses (and possibly throw things) but I am pretty much indifferent to it 30 min after the game. I've come to grips with the fact it will be a really long time before TN is relevant if ever.

What will it take to turn things around? We've been plugging these coaches in like spark plugs on a car engine hoping it will be the fix when the real problem is we've got a blown engine. The problems lie in the UT administration. Some don't care at all. No one is rowing in the same direction. There are power struggles that extend to major boosters. The only constant is the majority of the fans. I'm talking about the minimum donation guys and gals. The bulk of the season ticket holders. The 80% that make up the 102K on Saturdays. Can they count on those fans when they trot out another hire that even Vandy probably wouldn't hire?

 

[Aesius]

1. Freeze
2. Herman (if fired)
3. Malzahn (if fired)
4. Napier
5. Marrone
6. O'Brien

 

[Devo182]

My one good reason is actually two things:

JG won’t be the starter.
Pruitt is a great Xs and Os coach - don’t laugh, he is. He will figure this out.

Bonus: Salter is going to be legit elite.

Having a bottom tier 3rd down defense in the SEC the past 3 years disagrees. We are giving up 50% this season lmfao that's insane

 

[MrVolton]

I wasn't impressed at all with what Sark did at Washington. That's a pretty good job with some historical success and you can win there, but he was the definition of "meh." Sark got the USC job because of his previous connections there, not because he demonstrated some great coaching ability at a previous job.

They won a total of 12 games in the 5 years before he got there, and were winless the season before he started. I thought it was a pretty solid turnaround. I’m sure he’s learned a thing or two since then as well.

 

[Vols4us]

So we are down to talking about what Pruitt needs to do in his lame-duck-before-he-gets-fired-year? We have a lot of practice with that, so Jeremy and Phil would approve. My rebuild of Jeremy and the program is...

HB starts the rest of the season and does not get pulled from any meaningful action. Period. They may COVID out of the season soon anyway.The other QB's are told to find another home this offseason. Pruitt has his love ya farewell party with JG - alone - just the two of them. Any recruit is told they will have to beat out HB for the job and if they don't, to be ready in case of injury or when it becomes their turn. Holiday can be trained to be the emergency QB with an RPO emphasis until the recruited QB's are ready, which could include a grad transfer.

Pruitt tells Chaney to go score points no matter how he wants to do it. He tells him he wants 35 points per game minimum. Then he leaves him totally alone to do whatever he chooses. Like some others on here, we know Chaney is not the issue. He can run pro set, RPO, whatever. He knows every position on the O because he has position coached every position on the O at a P-5 or NFL level. QB, a few position coaches, and control by a Gump are the issues on O. Chaney fires Weinke, Friend and maybe Osovet. Enough with the nonsense. Tee and Jay are good, proven position coaches who are needed as VFL's and links to the Vol tradition of winning with the roster and fan base.

Pruitt takes over the D. Ansley goes somewhere, just not Knoxville. Many good HC's handle one side of the ball until they build a winning program with talent in the roster and staff is developed. D is what he knows, what he is good at doing. It frees up a position for another D assistant. Pruitt then hires assistant coaches like he once had before the off season. Let's get real. He had a top 30 in total D defense in his second season using Botch's leftovers before his coaches on his side of the ball left. Red flags, warning bells, SOS, etc. applied. How did that all come about? Look at who he hired to replace. That has to be fixed. Jeremy has to be fixed. He's messing up what he is really good at doing.

Pruitt goes to remedial head coach training school. He cannot communicate with the public worth a tinker's d---. No more Cornbread and Gumpism's. Be professional like his mentor, just without the unearned prickly nature. This guy has a lot of fences to mend internally, with boosters, and with fans. Being honest about one's weaknesses and asking for patience and forgiveness will earn him respect and the time he needs to right the ship.

Or, go hire a real HC and leave the Jeremy reclamation project to somebody else.

 

[butchna]

For me I've come to the realization that TN football is done, at least the way we've viewed it in the past. There are too many people in power over there that are completely uninterested in UT football and it's success. If they don't care, why should fans care? I've said for years that they've counted on UT fans to show up come hell or high water, they totally exploited fan loyalty. They've continued to trot out suspect hires under the guise of "given the circumstances, that's the best we could do". They've continued to try and fix UT football by changing out questionable head coaches with other questionable head coaches, knowing that TN fans will always support the new guy. Then after 3-4 years when it becomes clear that another failed hire was made, they plug in another guy that has about a 10% chance of making it past year 4.

Now we find ourselves in the same situation, again. Let's be honest here, Jeremy Pruitt's days here are numbered. Whether he's fired this year or next, he's done. He knows it, fulmer knows it, recruits know it, everyone that gives a dam about UT football knows it. It's just a matter of how much we let it burn before we attempt to put the fire out. My guess is they'll let it burn to the ground again before they do it. That way they can break out the old "that's the best we could do" excuse again.

The huge question is, will the fans come out in numbers, yet again for another coach that has about a 10% chance of making it past year 4? As for me, no. I'll always be a fan. I'll watch from afar. I'll cheer from my sofa for the victories. I'll cuss at the losses (and possibly throw things) but I am pretty much indifferent to it 30 min after the game. I've come to grips with the fact it will be a really long time before TN is relevant if ever.

What will it take to turn things around? We've been plugging these coaches in like spark plugs on a car engine hoping it will be the fix when the real problem is we've got a blown engine. The problems lie in the UT administration. Some don't care at all. No one is rowing in the same direction. There are power struggles that extend to major boosters. The only constant is the majority of the fans. I'm talking about the minimum donation guys and gals. The bulk of the season ticket holders. The 80% that make up the 102K on Saturdays. Can they count on those fans when they trot out another hire that even Vandy probably wouldn't hire?

I’m not making any special trips and my wife was excited for the Oklahoma game before it got nixed. That’s one drop. I could see the faucet turn on if the fanbase sees no excitement for the unknown...just blasé acknowledgement of the present.

 

[Devo182]

we have good coaches. they have track record at other schools. why it isnt lining up here?

We have a staff of recruiters. The Saban way. But Saban knew how to develop the players regardless and made up for the coaches (unless they got too high up the ladder like Lupoi as DC was awful).

 

[MrVolton]

I didn’t know where he was from. I didn’t even really know who he was until this year. So I looked up his record and who he has beat. He has improved every program he has been at. He beat Napier this year, game day is at his school, and has coastal ranked. Butch inherited a team with good players and Chip Kelly’s coaching. He never built anything.

Napier beat him something like 48-7 before he got there. Chadwell may be great, but his resume is lacking.

 

[Bassmaster_Vol]

We have a staff of recruiters. The Saban way. But Saban knew how to develop the players regardless and made up for the coaches (unless they got too high up the ladder like Lupoi as DC was awful).

This is true. It clearly doesn’t matter who Saban has on staff. Development still happens and so do wins. We could literally switch staffs with Bama (except for Saban) and Bama players would continue to develop and ours wouldn’t

 

[vol9799]

And who's fault is it that JG got chance after chance to gift them those points? Also does his turnovers matter when the defense is getting the ball shoved down their throats all game? How about when we couldn't run or pass against them? UK dominated the LOS against us.

Hey man, don't misunderstand, I am not arguing Pruitt deserves to stay. JG playing is on him, agreed. I am there is no path to replacement this year and trying to look objectively at how to salvage another 12 months, give us a chance to part with him gracefully without destroying the program.

On KY, I could not watch it again and wouldn't ask anyone else too, but if we did, I think we would see the LOS dominance was all 2and half. Remember we drove 75 on them without a pass last drive of the 1st half and all their 1st half TD's were on JG. I ain't defending the D, I am saying JG being trotted out there and repeating his crap time after time has been the straw that broke this team's back. To your point, it is easily the second biggest indictment of Pruitt.

 

[05_never_again]

You said Big 12 and doesn’t this stray from your point that the state doesn’t PRODUCE them?

For a football-mad state like Texas, they don't really produce them, no.

There are currently 173 players on NFL rosters from the State of Texas. 83 of them play defense, 90 play offense. As a point of comparison, there are 200 players currently on NFL rosters from Alabama, a state with one-sixth the population. 115 of them play defense. Hell, with those numbers, you could argue that the State of Texas doesn't produce football players, period, like a state of that size should.

There are a bunch of QBs and WRs from Texas on NFL rosters, I'll give them that. However, they are actually lighter than you'd expect at most other spots.

 

[butchna]

I think it’s worth asking if Texas high school football is over-rated.

It’s rated about right.

 

[MrVolton]

I’m with ya
Are fans are part of the recruiting problem for this class also
Running around with pitchforks and burning sticks is not helping right now at all

I’m not so sure that playing the fiddle while Rome is burning helps anything either. Everyone with eyes can see the $6¡7show for themselves, especially the recruits and their circles of influence.

 

[vol9799]

Excuses. It’s his job to develop a QB. If we didn’t have one, take a transfer or two. He didn’t. We are 2-5 because of his decisions. We have to stop playing the what if game and stop giving Pruitt excuses.

Again, if I had FU money, he'd be gone. I would have personally funded his buyout last year when he didn't dismiss JG from the team after the Bama incident. I put it all on him. I am working solely from the assumption that no FU money will step up this year.

 

[05_never_again]

It’s rated about right.

It's overrated. Texas is a gigantic state, which is why they produce so many players, plus high school football is uniquely popular there, more popular than other parts of the country that also like football. You used the word "mythology" to describe something I said earlier...well, there's a certain mythology about Texas HS football too - Friday Night Lights, Varsity Blues, the 25,000-seat high school stadiums, etc. It's well-known broadly in the culture how crazy they are about HS football there. It's possible for someone who doesn't know to make the same mistake about our program...Wow, they have a 100,000-seat stadium, so they must be really good, right?

Per capita, they are not at the top of the heap. Last I saw, it was actually Louisiana that produced the most relative to the size of the state. Georgia and Florida were very close behind.

 

[MrVolton]

I didn’t know where he was from. I didn’t even really know who he was until this year. So I looked up his record and who he has beat. He has improved every program he has been at. He beat Napier this year, game day is at his school, and has coastal ranked. Butch inherited a team with good players and Chip Kelly’s coaching. He never built anything.

Napier beat him something like 48-7 last year. Chadwell may be great, but his resume is just way to light on big time experience.

 

[Aesius]

It's overrated. Texas is a gigantic state, which is why they produce so many players. Per capita, they are not at the top of the heap. Last I saw, it was actually Louisiana that produced the most relative to the size of the state. Georgia and Florida were very close behind.

I think Urban would fit in much better at USC. It's a better job as well IMO.